ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 25, 1995 TAG: 9512260021
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-15 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
THE SOUNDS of this season are overwhelmingly joyful. Words of hope and celebration ringing in your ears. Symbols of light and everlastingness blinking wherever you look.
But perhaps on this great festival morning, you are alone. Perhaps you are working, or you're ill or bereaved. Perhaps you are angry, depressed, exhausted, drunk. Sick of the lights, sick of the songs, sick of the sugary press of flesh, of the unrelenting good humor. Perhaps this holiday feast means nothing to you, and you're relieved the hoopla's nearly over.
I have struggled with what to say to you his morning. For me, this day commemorates a deeply important event. The lights and songs lift my spirits. The giving and receiving of gifts - and the love they signify - are genuinely meaningful to me, high points in my year, sweet opportunities that come just this once. I look forward to the festivities - all of them. And I love the season's expansiveness.
But I'm not ignorant of, nor am I immune to, this holiday's obscenities, either. Its crass opportunism and frantic consumerism, its greed, its desperate clutch on no-longer- significant traditions, its terrible sentimentalities.
This year, as every other, I've had my days of hair-pulling frustration. I've panicked over all there is to do and the deadline by which it must be done. I've struggled with the relatives, the obligations, the costs. I've known the disappointments, and the depression: How can anything so freighted ever measure up, either to expectation or to memory? I've felt the loneliness of crowds.
And yet, I love Christmas. I love this day, this season of promise and light. On this day, I know joy.
So what can I say to you who don't know joy? You who can't or don't want to share my sentiments? You, who've already heard everything about Christmas that you ever want to hear? You, who, with good reason, have lost all patience with goody-two-shoes blandishments and hollow messages of hope?
I say, "Thank you."
Because you judge the world as it is, and not as the shallow thinkers - or holiday advertisers - would wish it be. Because you see through the sugar-coatings. Because you touch rock-bottom fearlessly, and plant your feet firmly there.
And because, from there, you bear witness to the real roots of the season. You look around and remind us, "How we are fallen! How we are cut down to the ground!"
And in so doing, you point out the staggering breadth of the promise: "A shoot shall come out from the stump, and a branch shall grow out of the roots."
Is there genuine joy in a life that's never known grief? Is there honest appreciation of comfort in a life that's never known want?
These words are small and miserable comfort to the suffering. I know that. But they are all I can think to say.
I wish for everyone a merry Christmas. I wish for everyone peace and safety, food and warmth, security, health, and the knowledge of personal love.
And yet I know that many of you are lonely, ill, bereaved, or cold. Hungry of soul and body. Overworked, frantic, overlooked, sad. What right have I to speak this day to you?
None at all.
But a light has come into the darkness. Perhaps if you close your eyes, if you sit very still, for just a minute, perhaps you will see it, too. With all my heart, I hope you do.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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