I was watching The Polar Express and, near the end, I realized one thing about Christmas: believing in the magic is essential to our way of life.
Man just cannot live in a sheer material world, concerned about just material goals. Christmas is as religious as emptiest in the Western cultural tradition.
We all hate meeting people we wouldn’t meet in our regular lives, buying presents as a mandatory act and eating against our health. But, we all feel that we have to be social and take part. We hate it as much as we love the idea of it.
We want to believe in the good ghosts, and as soon as we enthusiastically jump into the atmospheric Christmas we realize that everything isn’t more than a set ready for the actors to play. Just before getting into the play, we understand how ridiculous we would eventually be within the act, but reluctantly enter the scene wearing a grin and hoping this won’t be too long.
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5 febrero 2010 a 11:28 am
listener
Dear wonderer,
I can see where you are coming from ..but I can’t share your point.
Man just cannot live in a sheer material world, concerned about just material goals. Christmas is as religious as emptiest in the Western cultural tradition.
Besides the lack of connection between xmas and religious, don’t you think that the world as it is (as real as it is) can provide us with an element that transcends simple material goals, the daily pursuit of meaningless ambitions ? Don’t you think that in your line of thoughts xmas could be substituted by art, music, culture and indeed as you nicely mention: literature.
If we wanted to push it to the non-physical realm, maybe xmas should be replaced by a significant search for God and satisfactory search to fulfill our spiritual needs. Buying mandatory gift and stuffing ourselves with unwanted guests ? I don’t think is the answer.
Later.