Holidays With Meaning
I love how well cinema captures the heart of humans during the holiday season.
1) It’s A Wonderful Life
I think we all see a little of ourselves in George Bailey. Stuck in a rut while watching others flourish with their grand cars and big careers.
In the end, we are reminded that richness means more than money, and cars, and vacations, and medals of honor. It means community and love from those around us.
2) Scrooge
Oh it is easy to get caught up in pinching pennies and watching ourselves, especially in a season that promotes excess.
That thin line into miser, bitterland can sneak up on all of us.
How do we keep Christmas in our hearts all the year long? How do we make mankind our business?
3) A Charlie Brown Christmas
The kids all know that Christmas is a big commercial, and yet Charlie Brown is fighting the urge to join the crowd.
Linus saves the day with his monologue, “That is what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.”
4) How The Grinch Stole Christmas
The Grinch, in all his grinchy ways, sits above the town judging the holiday and the joy it brings out in all the Whos. Intent on keeping Christmas from coming, he goes and takes all the symbols that make up Christmas.
Yet he realizes, Christmas didn’t stop from coming because perhaps in means a little bit more. Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store.
Allow me to ask:
What have we learned throughout this year of changing sands and shifting traditions?
Maybe it is a mixture of those cinematic characters. Like how rich we were in friends and family and took some of that for granted in years past.
Or how, like the Who’s, nothing will stop Christmas from coming. Maybe the outer experience looks different than before, but regardless we are singing with cheer in our hearts.
Welcome Christmas Come This Way!
Or like Scrooge how mankind is our business and what is Christmas without charity and merry making.
The true meaning of the holidays are up for debate this year. Can you design it with joy and intent?
What will you release and what will you amplify?
Take these next few days to spend some time in the highway of memories. Break out the old camcorder videos. Pull up the box of unsorted pictures.
Dive in and relish in the legacy of Christmas long past. Your past.
I will leave you with this final thought before signing off the holiday:
A gift is not a life sentence.
There is nothing wrong with giving and receiving but allow yourself the space to do with those gifts what you will. No need to hold on to it forever if it doesn’t fit your life and style. The joy is in the exchange. From there you are free from the responsibilities of holding on to any gift forever and always.
Merry Christmas friend!
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