Woody Herb, my infamous ne’er-do-well uncle and mentor, always had this to say about Christmas: “The question isn’t whether Ol’ Santy Claus is real or not, the question is whether he’s going to bring you a little sumptin’ sumptin’ and stick’er in yer stockin’.”
He’s right, of course. Christmas and other holidays are not the appropriate time for delving too deeply into the metaphysics of reality; that is to say, looking for those lines that separate “fantasy” from “the real world.” We refer to this in English class as “the willing suspension of disbelief,” and this means basically that as readers we need to be willing to trade whatever issues we may have with “that would never happen in real life” for the pleasures we can have from enjoying the story.
Thus, if we really want to take pleasure in a bit of fantasy, we must be willing to let some things go. If you are bothered that in J.K. Rowling’s magical world, people can transform themselves into cats and mice, but Dumbledore, arguably the greatest wizard of all times, needs to wear glasses to correct his vision – you’ve got to learn to let it go. Some people who have no problems with Superman being able to fly and see through walls get totally bent out of shape by the idea that Lois Lane, a prize-winning investigative reporter, can’t recognize that the superhero she has a crush on is the same awkward nerd she shares an office with.
That Sigourney Weaver’s character in Avatar was a cigarette smoker nearly ruined the film for my wife, Ruth. “Like a company is going to let people smoke in a building that took them trillion of dollars to build on a distant planet that needs to filter out the deadly atmosphere they found there,” she said to me as we walked to our car after we first left the theater. “A company is not going to go to all the expense of sending a highly-trained expert to a distant planet than then let her damage her health with tobacco,” she said on the drive home. And later that night, “This movie is supposed to take place in the future. Does it seem very likely to you that that far in the future, someone as educated as Sigourney Weaver’s character is going to be dumb enough to smoke?” I could have said, “Well, perhaps that far into the future, we’ll be able to cure cancer by swallowing a tiny pill shaped like a Flintstone,” but I didn’t. I said, rather, “You’re right. It doesn’t make sense to have a character smoking in this movie. I don’t know what the director was thinking when he decided to let her smoke on screen.” Now, even though I thought there were lots of places where the Fabric of Not Likely was beginning to fray in that movie, I didn’t initially have a problem with the smoking. On the other hand, I don’t work for the Tobacco lobby or the Screen Writer’s Guild, and I love my wife – so that’s the point, see? I can sincerely agree with her that the smoking in Avatar was bothersome because since it ended up bothering her so much, it ended up bothering me as well.
And this is precisely what Christmas is, isn’t it? It’s about picking and choosing which aspects of reality we’re going to let bug us and which aspects to let go. Christmas asks us to temporarily put aside our cynical and critical “yes, buts” and let things go for the pleasure of the serenity that comes when we’re all getting along. This temporary peacefulness may be as artificial as the sweeteners in the candy canes, but if you want to insist this serenity isn’t real, just hold that thought until January while we’re scraping the ice off our windshields to get back to work. For right now, however, do me a favor and just let it go. Hark the Herald Angels sing! Can’t you hear them?
Can a single person using flying reindeer visit every household in the world in a single night? Yes, absolutely, and, furthermore, if you use the phrase “speed of light” to explain to me why I’m wrong, then you totally missed the point of the question. Did God impregnate a virgin and send her miles and miles over rough terrain on the back of a donkey while simultaneously providing a star for others to find her and the baby later in a barn? Yes, absolutely, and if you want to say that stars are massive hydrogen reactions that exist light-years away and as such are not amenable to being drug across celestial space for the purpose of terrestrial navigation, then you may know plenty about particles and parsecs, but I’ll wager you don’t know much about what is significant to the human soul.
One of the aspects of Christmas I like the most is this communal understanding that the whole Peace on Earth business is only going to work as much as we’re willing to believe it’s going to work. This is to say, we all need to make an effort to be extra nice about those things that bother us even if what’s bothering us is the need to be extra nice.
Why do we do it? We do it because when we’re a little extra nice to others, we recognize and appreciate the effort others make to be a little extra nice to us. If this requires us to willingly suspend our belief in the good intentions of others, then let’s do that. It’s only for a month, so let’s filter out the question of what motivates people to do nice things for others, and let’s just focus instead on figuring out what can we do for them to make their life a little easier as well.
When the Ghost of Jacob Marley comes to visit his old business partner, Ebenezer Scrooge’s first response to this visit is to focus on the reality of Marley’s existence rather on the importance of his message. Scrooge tells Marley’s ghost that perhaps he is a dreamlike hallucination brought on by some indigestion: "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
This, for me, crystallizes fundamentally what Dickens was getting at in “A Christmas Carol,” and ultimately the “true meaning” of Christmas: we can only open ourselves up to transformative spiritual experiences when we put aside all the empirical proofs that would otherwise keep them from us. Does “Santa Claus” really exist? Yes, he does, and he lives in my heart. Furthermore, I promise you this: if until December 25th you can practice the willing suspension of disbelief, you may or may not find a little sumptin’ sumptin’ in your stockin’ but you’ll certainly find a little extra room for tolerance in your heart. God bless us, everyone.
Olivia says:
Did you happen to watch a Very Glee Christmas? (Ok, the secret's out, world ...) It was so touching. Brittany still believes in Santa and everyone goes leaps and bounds to make sure she still does. I may or may not have cried.
And I am so excited to come home for Christmas. I think Christmas reaches different peaks according to age. When I was young, I dreamt about Santa even in April. As I became older, it became about that one perfect morning where everyone is nice and happy. Now, I'm at the age where I tear up a little bit when I hear "I'll be home for Christmas ... "
I can't wait!
