Month: November 2017

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Ho-ho-humbug?

Every year, without fail, the holidays become a time of wonder.

“I wonder where we put the Christmas decorations?”

“I wonder why only half the tree is lighting up?”

“I wonder why Alvin wants a hula hoop anyway?”

You know – the important mysteries of life. The ones that go back to the first Christmas, when magi from the East came bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh because they were the only boxes that could be found in the basement.

But in the cold and the dark, it’s tempting for another undercurrent to start bubbling to the surface.

“I wonder how this season got here so fast.”

“I wonder how we’re going to make it through the month.”

“I wonder why we’re bothering to celebrate this at all.”

It’s easy to go there. Understandable, even. Especially in times when so many people are filled with so much tension for so many reasons. When the dark and the cold start closing in, a string of Christmas lights can feel like a feeble barrier with which to hold them back. What the dickens can anyone do about it all?

What the Dickens indeed.

***

My association with Ebenezer Scrooge goes back to elementary school. In sixth-grade, I played the tight-hearted old skinflint in our school musical, stalking and dancing around a hastily-constructed stage in the gym that shook slightly with every jump and thump. (I’m pretty sure cafeteria tables were involved somewhere.) It was a gleefully wonderful way to celebrate the season, to share in an audience’s laughter and applause, and of course, to learn just how long it takes to wash white shoe polish out of your hair when the show is over.

I saw a lot of old Mr. Scrooge after that. Who didn’t? After all, he’s a Christmas villain without peer (sorry, Mr. Grinch) whose story has been told and retold and recycled and transformed. Some great actors have plunged their teeth into the role. Alastair Sims. Michael Caine. Albert Finney. Mr. Magoo.

Of all of them, though, my favorite remains George C. Scott. His Scrooge never ranted, rarely sneered, didn’t flourish or posture like a comic-book supervillain. He was quiet. Even understated. There was no doubt there was steel beneath the surface, and you could feel the chill, but he didn’t have to raise his voice to make it known.

With a few quiet words, we could all identify with him. With a man who had been hurt and then scabbed over the wound, who pulled back from a time of year that seemed to mostly bring pain and expense without any recompense for either.

“What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you?”

Many of us are there. Even if we’re not quite ready to see every wisher of “Merry Christmas” boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

But the reason the story endures – maybe one of the reasons we endure – is that it doesn’t stop there. It gets Scrooge to look beyond himself. He’s shown the people that once meant something to him. He sees the people he can help now. He even gets a glimpse of how much that help, or its absence, could mean after he’s gone.

Yes, he goes out and buys a goose, and joins his nephew’s Christmas party, and gives Bob Cratchit a raise, and all that. But those are just outward symptoms. The real change is that he’s acknowledged he’s not alone, that other people matter. The bills are still there and always will be (even if he’s better able to meet them than most), but there are still other people he can reach out to, and give joy to, and draw joy from.

That’s the heart of the story. And the season. And a little something extra to draw on when the world seems dark.

We do not have to stand alone. We can share our fears. Share our joys. And be a little stronger for it.

And isn’t that a wonder?

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A Ring of Support

Among the usual headlines for the week – foreign trips, political accusations, football uniforms that looked like bad Nintendo graphics from the 1990s – a story slipped in that caused an earthquake in the geek world.

Christopher Tolkien has retired.

Normally, a retiring 93-year-old might not draw much attention, aside from admiration for staying on the job so long. But in Christopher’s case, “the job” involved heading up the Tolkien Estate. For over four decades, the son of J.R.R. Tolkien has been the principal guardian of his father’s literary legacy, holding the rights as closely as dragon-gold and weighing on the worthiness of those who would adapt Middle-Earth to their own purposes. Inevitably, he was also his father’s foremost literary scholar, publishing reams of information about how the world of Elves and Hobbits and Rings of Power came to be, along with works by Tolkien that had never seen the light of day.

In The Hobbit, when the dragon’s treasure becomes unguarded, armies come racing to claim it as their own. Much the same has been happening in the real world, but with less chainmail and more contracts. There are already reports that the Tolkien Estate is working with Amazon on a Middle-Earth-based television series, and a lot of speculation about whether this means a new era for the classic tales or the final downfall of the West.

But for me, the real story is both smaller and greater.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun to play the guessing game of what a new adaptation will look like and who might be involved. (“Morgan Freeman leads an unlikely band of heroes to death and glory in … A Game of Rings.”) But lost in all of this has been Christopher Tolkien himself, and the role he has played for so long.

A role that I think many of us could empathize with.

Most of us are never going to write a bestselling novel. (Though I do hold out hope.) Nearly all of us will go through life without having won a Nobel prize, or led a nation, or opened the new smash hit of the Broadway season. That’s no judgment on anyone’s skills or talents, just a simple fact of life in a world of more than 7 billion people.

But all of us touch someone’s life. All of us have the chance to take who we are and use it for someone else. A friend. A relative. A chance-met passenger on the bus. Whether for moments or a lifetime, we join our story to theirs. And the tale is forever changed.

in The Lord of the Rings, it’s Sam Gamgee carrying Frodo on his back when his friend can’t take another step … unheralded strength that means more to the world than all the armies preparing to clash miles away.

In the real world, it’s been Christopher Tolkien putting his shoulder to his famous father’s epic for decade after decade, illuminating and enhancing it for millions with maps and histories and tales not told – tales that included The Silmarillion, his father’s lifework of Middle-Earth mythology that was never completed in his lifetime.

For all of us, it’s that someone or something that truly matters. Enough to earn our help, our sweat, our outstretched hand. Not for spotlights or applause, but because it needs to be done and we care enough to do it.

We don’t have to be epic heroes. We just have to be willing to see where we’re needed and take the step. Because enough steps, from enough stories, can scale even Mount Doom.

All it takes is a willing heart. And that’s worth more than all the dragon gold ever forged.

Even with the television rights thrown in.

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It’s About Time

Time marches on. Except about now, when it decides to run an obstacle course instead.

This is when the Great Christmas Invasion continues the offensive it began about three weeks before Halloween, driving Pilgrims and turkeys into a distant corner to mutter and reflect.

This is when baseball peeks ever so briefly into November, long enough to confuse hardcore football fans, and add the sting of frozen skies to a world Series defeat. (Well, as frozen as it ever gets in Los Angeles, anyway.)

And of course, inevitably, this is the time of the Great Sleep Restoration. Of the Real Time Revolution. Of the End to All Clock Mockery.

Or, more simply, the end of Daylight Saving Time. Thank goodness.

I’ve never been a fan of the twice-a-year clock jumping. It saves no energy. It makes drivers a little more groggy and a little less safe. And it confuses dogs and cats across the country who have no idea what the silly clock says, they just know they’re hungry NOW. (Granted, our Big Blake is always hungry now. But go with me on this one.)

I used to offer my lifetime vote to any politician who succeeded in ending the madness … preferably (in my opinion) by falling back and staying back, so an hour of sleep wouldn’t fall permanently into the abyss. And slowly, the country seems to be getting the message. Over the last few years, bills to lock the clock have been seen in Utah, in Canada, even here in Colorado. The latest effort, out of New England, involves three states trying to coordinate a change, and maybe jumpstart a movement.

Granted, none of them have won yet, not counting longtime holdouts like Hawaii and Arizona. But Bill Murray didn’t get it right the first time in Groundhog Day either. Or the second time. Or the … all right, it took a while, OK?

In fact, if there is any value to Daylight Savings at all, it’s in reminding us that time is what we make of it.

As usual, Missy sets the example in our house. For most folks, the Christmas season starts after Thanksgiving (unless you run a superstore, of course). For our developmentally disabled ward, there is never a bad time to play Christmas music. Pop in a Pentatonix holiday album a week after Memorial Day? Why not?

For most folks, an evening activity at 6 p.m. means a certain amount of time on your hands until then. For Missy, it means keeping an eye on the door and the window in breathless excitement, even if it’s 2 in the afternoon, in case the world changes and it’s suddenly time to go.

And of course, the notion of the clock governing bedtime is approximate at best. We manage to hit roughly the same time each night, but the real deciding factors are things like: Is it dark? Have I listened to enough music? Have I had my story yet? Do I feel tired? Scared? Frustrated? Did I get my evening’s worth today?

It can be a little disorienting. But it’s also more than a little freeing, as you start to sort out what HAS to happen now and what can be displaced. Sure, the world goes around, the seasons go by, everything changes and ages. But how we greet it all, how we mark and measure it, how we fill the time and make it our own – that’s up to us. We can make it a mess or a joy. (And since Colorado can have four seasons in 24 hours, we may even get multiple opportunities.)

With that kind of freedom, why spend any of it in reprogramming car clocks and microwaves?

Think about it. Make your time what you want it to be.

And if you want it to be without a certain spring-forward-fall-back ritual – well, that’s clearly an idea whose time has come.