Serving Barnwell County and it's neighbors since 1852
As is our holiday custom, my wife and I were watching the highly entertaining Muppets version of the timeless tale A Christmas Carol last week. Viewing this version of the story began when my children were very young but has persisted to this day because it is so deliciously joyful and funny. The satisfying viewing of this movie, juxtaposed with the multiple layers of grief our families are dealing with this holiday season, prompted me to write this column to be read on Christmas Day. It became very clear to me that we all deal with three distinct types of grief: 1) The Grief of Christmas Past, 2) The Grief of Christmas Present, and 3) The Grief of Christmas Yet to Come.
We adults have all lost our childhoods, through no fault of anyone other than Father Time. That period of my life, and perhaps yours, included a magical sense of mystery, awe, and wonder around Christmas time. The delicious smells of cookies and cakes baking, roasting turkeys and savory hams, tangy cranberries and other delicacies hold prominent places in my olfactory memory. The lights were brighter, the music sweeter and the family more physically present than ever when I was a boy. The rain drops I heard on my grandparents’ house’s tin roof were most assuredly the prancing feet of tiny reindeer. The rustling in the living room was surely Santa opening his pack and placing the meager but magical piles of gifts for each of us, always including some fresh fruit right alongside the cap guns and fighter pilot helmets. I can still feel the painful, sole-numbing cold of the wooden floor as my feet came out of the warm bed first, heading across the hall toward the glow of the Christmas tree, the aroma of my grandfather’s pipe tobacco guiding me to where he was lighting the heaters. The big family meal, dare I say meals plural, would come later in the day, with what to my young boy’s eyes was the largest dining room table full of food the world had ever seen. My grandmother arranged cakes and pies and cookies by the dozens on top of the old freezer chest in the corner. The marvelous excess was a manifestation of love. Pure love. Many of those at that table are no longer with us. That house is a heap of boards and overgrown vegetation. The dinner bell on the post outside has been silent for decades. They are not the same, but like Scrooge, we are visited by their memories every year.
Grief for Christmas present? How can that be, you ask me? My wife and I have lost two people in our family since August, and we miss them just as much in December. As we age, we also grieve the rapidity of this season, the way it burns brightly and too soon joins the countless other Christmases in our memories. Only by knowing past griefs and sorrow can we fully revel in the joys of this blessed time. Yet, only by fully experiencing joy will we ever be subject to loss and sadness in the future. It is a holiday wager that some choose not to make, foregoing the present brightness of love and holiday bliss to stave off the inevitable sorrow and grief that waits for us all. The house always wins.
The future is uncertain, but if we carefully observe life we know some of what it holds. We can predict, prognosticate, and outright guess. We can plan. But as our troubled friend Scrooge asked of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in that cold graveyard, can we be absolutely certain that these are the shadows of what will be, or of what may be only? As he tearfully pleaded, clinging to the hand and robe of that terrible but sympathetic spirit, we can change. We can try our best to altar those shadows that lead to fear, suffering and death, and a life lead without purpose, leaving an empty legacy.
What to do this holiday season? How to cope? Scrooge gives us sage advice here as well. We can choose to “live in the past, the present and the future.” The spirits of all three shall strive within us. We shall resolve to smell the smells, tell stories of those gone before, eat and drink, and be mindful of the present moments that shower us with love, light and hope. We shall not choose to worry about “the shadows of the things that may be only.” “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”
Good advice in 1843, when A Christmas Carol was published. Good advice in 2023, when the “shadows of what may be” are in large part up to us.
God bless us, every one.
