Is anyone else not feeling the Christmas spirit? It dawned on me recently why I'm not. Christmas music and Christmas television shows and Christmas sales have been going on so long that all the "wonderful" has gone right out of one of the most wonderful times of the year. Local radio station Mix 95.1 FM, for example, has been playing non-stop Christmas music since the beginning of November. Stores have been stuffed with tables and racks and displays of pre-packaged Christmas gifts to the point where I feel bloated just walking through those places. . . . Just buy this crap and check another person off the list! Don't think! Of course, it's hard to think while stores pump our ears full of some alternative band's alternative version of "Jingle Bells" that is so hideous, it would make Santa want to jump, not down, but off the nearest chimney to an icy, but eager death. We should all be grateful if the Grinch stole this modern Christmas.
There was a rhythm to Christmas when I was a boy, a slow but steady march toward the Big Day. Right after Thanksgiving, the first Christmas cards would arrive. I got to open any that included "& Family" on the envelope, because as an only child, that was I! Soon decorations began to appear throughout the neighborhood. Then came the Friday that we made green and read construction paper chains to put on the elementary school tree, and there was that special night that How the Grinch Stole Christmas was broadcast for the one and only time that season. In another week, the entire neighborhood was decorated, and I knew we were getting really close to Christmas when my mom started baking cookies. Turn an 8 year old loose with the sprinkles and the kitchen becomes a blizzard of red and green sugar crystals!
It took forever, but the last day of school finally arrived and we bound off the bus, with cards that we had made for our parents. The next day was Christmas Eve! The High Holy Day of Anticipation. What was Mom wrapping back there? What would Santa bring? Would he leave presents for me at Grandma's, too? Always, right before bed, my dad would stop, a surprised look on his face, and he would shush me. He'd look at me and say, "I think I hear something on the roof!" I loved that tradition, long after I knew that there were no reindeer knocking about our rooftop, because it was a call to believe in hope and in joy. It was the one thing that connected this Christmas to all the Christmases that I had ever known or that I ever will know. . . .
. . . Ah, so that's it. As I write this, I realize what is truly wrong with these modern Christmases. I'm being asked to believe in excess and gluttony; and I'm being asked to believe that stuff can fill all our empty places as though our souls were stockings simply to be filled with things. But filling is not the same as fulfilling and so I refuse to believe the new Christmas Story. I'm going to cling to the belief that if I listen hard enough on Christmas Eve, I'll hear something on the roof.
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