Tag: CS Lewis

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Ho, Ho … WHOA!

By now, I should be used to the wacky and the tacky at Christmastime, from beer-can trees to Kris Kringle toilet seat covers. But nothing in a lifetime of holidays prepared me for The Ugly Sweater.

The best thing I can say about The Ugly Sweater is that it’s one-of-a-kind, because the existence of two on the planet would cause me to despair for the human race. To properly envision it, imagine a sweater created with the budget of Donald Trump and the taste of Liberace on a bender, with just a touch of George Lucas for panache.

A-glitter with nearly 25,000 gaudy crystals, it features Santa Claus flying through space on a unicorn, while garishly red-and-green planets gleam in the background. There’s even a faux diamond necklace around the collar – because, you know, if you’ve gone this far, you might as well do it with class, right? The price tag for this little gem? About $30,000.

Hey, who needs a car, anyway?

Yes, it’s real. You can Google dozens of references in a blink as long as you remember not to eat first. And it’s tempting to be just a little outraged at someone spending thirty grand for a sweater that’s too heavy to even wear comfortably. (Yes, of course it comes with a frame!)  But anytime something like this comes to my attention, I usually calm myself with two thoughts:

1) Anyone who would blow $30,000 on Santa Bling Is Coming to Space probably wasn’t about to spend it on widows and orphans as their second choice, anyway.

2) Unicorn Santa and gewgaws like it make a nice lightning rod for people with much wealth and little judgment, relieving them of their cash before it can do some serious damage. Sort of like taking the keys from the inebriated at New Year’s, only with less need for breath mints.

Besides, while it’s easy to laugh – and I did my share, believe me — it is possible to turn the question around.

What have we done with our time and money that could have been better spent elsewhere?

Reality check: I don’t live like a monk and I’m not about to force anyone else to do the same. We all do fun things, frivolous things, even downright bizarre things with our resources at times, and that’s not a bad thing in and of itself. It’s even part of what makes this world a fun and colorful place to be.

But it’s also never wrong to ask “Have I done all the good I could do?” Maybe we don’t live in golden palaces or have Rudolph the Ruby-Encrusted Reindeer, but many of us have something. Compared to much of the world, we have a lot.

What are we doing with it?

It’s a question that becomes very palpable at this time of year. It’s one that should be more visible at all times.

The writer C.S. Lewis once said that the only safe rule for charity was to give more than we could spare. “If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they were too small,” he wrote. There should be something you would like to do, and can’t, he insisted, because of what you’ve already given.

It can look overwhelming, I agree. But just because we’re not doing everything doesn’t mean we can’t do something.

Is there someone to be helped? A friend, a relative, a stranger not yet met?

Is there a task that needs our skill? A hurt that needs our comfort? A wrong that can be made right, however briefly?

All it takes is a willingness to start. And if each of our littles can equal a lot, that is one dazzling gift, indeed.

Even more dazzling than Santa Claus on a space unicorn.

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For Your Own Good

There’s a lot for a preschooler to learn – shapes, colors, how to play nicely with other kids.

Now, it seems, they also have to learn how to please the Lunch Inspectors.

I take you now to beautiful Raeford, N.C., home of West Hoke Elementary School. It’s at that school where a young girl arrived with a seemingly innocuous lunch from home: turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice.

Not bad. Sounds pretty good, actually.

But not good enough to satisfy the Lunch Inspectors. A USDA worker at the school said the lunch lacked the full two servings of fruit and vegetables and that she’d have to have a school lunch instead – at Mom’s expense.

And at Mom’s outrage.

“I pack her lunchbox according to what she eats,” the girl’s mother told the Carolina Journal. “It always consists of a fruit. It never consists of a vegetable. She eats vegetables at home because I have to watch her because she doesn’t really care for vegetables.”

As a side note, the girl ate exactly three chicken nuggets from that school lunch.

Lot of vegetables consumed there, huh?

Now, I do understand that not every home situation is a good one. There are parents out there who’ll send their kids to school with two saltines and a can of pop – or who can’t send the kids out with anything at all. Situations like that need to be noticed and even helped, if they can.

But this was hardly abusive or neglectful. This was someone coloring outside the lines. No, I take that back – this was someone coloring with an unapproved crayon.

A higher-level state worker later said the lunch should have been passed. But to me, that misses the point. Passing the lunch, short of an obvious problem, shouldn’t have even been an issue. All it did was offend the parent and embarrass the school, without even solving the supposed problem.

But then, I really shouldn’t be surprised. There’s a lot of people today who seem to know what’s best for us. Everyone except us, apparently.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive,” C.S. Lewis once wrote. “It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

I’m not saying it’s wrong to care. I’m not saying that no one can ever be corrected, or that a helping hand can’t ever be extended. But anything, taken to extremes, can cross the line. Just as too much insistence on self-reliance can become an excuse for neglect, too much insistence on “let me help you” can become a burden.

It doesn’t even need to be the state doing it. We’ve all seen the “helicopter parents,” hovering close lest their child’s foot hit a stone. A recent NPR story found that now many of those parents are now invading the workplace, calling employers to push for their children. One Michigan State study of 700 employers found that a third had received resumes by a parent and that four percent had even seen parents show up at the job interview.

But why not? It’s for their own good, right?

Maybe, just maybe, our society needs a cooling-off period. A chance to remember those preschool lessons about keeping your hands to yourself and doing your own work. A chance to land all the helicopters, official and unofficial, and just let kids have a normal school day.

Don’t act like a turkey.

Save it for the sandwiches.