“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” Clarence, The Angel in It’s a Wonderful Life.
December 20, 2023, And Every Wednesday
By Linda Case Gibbons, Esq.
(Check out Lest We Forget and FYI.)
No matter how happy Hallmark movies try to depict it, Christmas is a heartbreaker.
The scent of a Christmas tree can stop you in your tracks, bringing up memories of bygone days.
In the ‘70’s, Paul Anka recorded a song that climbed the charts, simply because it hit the nail on the head memory-wise.
It was for Kodak, and was at a time when cameras used flashbulbs, and you had to wait a week for your film to be developed at the corner drug store.
“Good morning, yesterday. You wake up, and time has slipped away. And suddenly it’s hard to find. The memories you left behind. Remember. Do you remember the Times of Your Life.”
It was a tear-jerker.
It brought to mind how you wanted to remember how his voice sounded after he was gone, and how you saved his messages on the answering machine so you wouldn’t forget.
And the photos you looked at from a lifetime of living, made you wonder how the people you loved could ever have been that young.
They’re the times of your life.
Your children, young and healthy, their lives ahead of them.
The animals that meant the world to you.
Your first job in the city. Your first apartment, the rooms of which you still walk through in your mind.
People and places that anchored your life. You thought they’d always be there.
This week we could have talked about the Republicans who don’t have the b*lls to impeach Joe.
Or discussed the way Democrats showed they do have b*lls, in graphic detail, this week, in Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building.
Hamas, anti-Semitism on the campuses of formerly respected colleges, and Colorado’s decision to manipulate who we can choose as president.
But why give them the air time?
It’s Christmas, the birthday of Jesus, a Guy who could really read a room.
There is no doubt where He stood. Or what He was willing to give.
If you are confused about abortion, or the trafficking of children, He showed us how we should treasure the gift of life, of the blessing that children are, by His coming into this world as a baby.
“Let the little children come to Me,” He said. “And do not hinder them. For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
If you are conflicted about women’s rights, He regularly addressed women directly in public, something that was unusual for a man to do at that time in history.
And He didn’t make rules that demanded women should hide themselves under veils. Or separate themselves away from men in the business of life, and to be treated as lesser beings, as other religions demand.
Love was the message of what came to be called Christianity.
It did not depend on interpretation, by edicts from the Vatican, or on man-made rules.
And looking at the world this way, everything else falls into place.
It makes Christmas the day it should be. Filled with memories, and gratitude for the gift of having the honor of having those memories, those people, in a life filled with love.
And magic.
In 1897 New York Sun editor Francis P. Church wrote to a little eight-year old girl, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist.
“The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.”
Merry, merry Christmas.
Hold the line, America.
Stay strong, America.