The Stories of my Life

The Stories of Christmas: 15 Timeless Tales That Capture the Spirit of the Season (Day 13)

Since we are isolated and stuck inside during this Christmas season, I decided this year I was going to put together a list of of my favorite Christmas stories. The angle I took in putting this together is Christmas “pairings”, be it in book form or film. These are stories that seem to me to have a connection in spirit and focus, and which have inspired me over the years.

I have come up with 15 pairings of films/books in total, and my plan is to present those films one a day along with a brief reflection on why these stories resonated for me, how I see them fitting together, and what I think they can say to us in a more difficult Christmas season.
Here is my thirteenth pairing 🙂

A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS and HOLIDAY TALES: CHRISTMAS IN THE ADIRONDACKS

“I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”

– Charlie Brown

Lucy Van Pelt: Are you afraid of responsibility? If you are, then you have hypengyophobia.
Charlie Brown: I don’t think that’s quite it.
Lucy Van Pelt: How about cats? If you’re afraid of cats, you have ailurophasia.
Charlie Brown: Well, sort of, but I’m not sure.
Lucy Van Pelt: Are you afraid of staircases? If you are, then you have climacaphobia. Maybe you have thalassophobia. This is fear of the ocean, or gephyrobia, which is the fear of crossing bridges. Or maybe you have pantophobia. Do you think you have pantophobia?
Charlie Brown: What’s pantophobia?
Lucy Van Pelt: The fear of everything.
Charlie Brown: THAT’S IT!

There is something deeply affecting about the timelessness of A Charlie Brown Christmas. The simple nature of the message, the heartfelt and patiently crafted story, the beautiful animation. The memorable and relatable characters.

Charlies M. Schulz had a personal investment in the character of Charlie Brown, basing him off of his own struggles with depression, isolation and lonliness. And in this Christmas special we find Charlie Brown struggling with a season that often has a way of exasperbating these feelings of melancholy and remorse. He knows he is supposed to feel a certain way, and the fact that he doesn’t makes him feel less than normal. And even a counseling session with Lucy cant seem to turn his melancholic state around. It turns out he is as afraid of not feeling happy as he is about being happy.

There is a stark message evident here as well about the hypocrisy of commercialism, contrasting with the final and glorious monologue from Linus that reminds them of what Christmas is supposed to be about. “For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord” Linus declares. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

This is where it becomes clear that Charlie Brown’s disallusionment with the world and the season reaches much further than his own, personal struggle. It is sometimes difficult in the busyness and commercialization of the season for the message of love that Christ’s birth embodies and declares to all of creation to break through our depression, our lonliness, our isolation, our feelings of being something other than happy.

In the equally classic holiday tale, Christmas in the Adirondacks, we see a similar focus on uncovering the true value of Christmas. The setting is a log cabin located in the middle of a tranquil, untouched winter landscape with a fireplace occupying its centre. Around this fireplace is food, struggle, stories, people, experiences. This fireplace symbolizes warmth and togetherness, fueled by its wood and its imaginative comforting glow. Reading this from a modern lens, the intimate depicition of a long lost era functions as a nostalgic and often poetic rendering of the classic American Christmas. The way it is able to bring a lone cabin, the remote snowy terrain, and above all a crackling fire to life and infuse it with meaning is a big part of the book’s enchantment.

There are some wonderful relgious undertones reflected in the book’s prose as well, including a poignant moment in which one of the main characters reflects on what it is to read scripture from the lens of the wonderment and good will of the Christmas story. He wonders about how it is that we make this journey from the raw and rugged stories of the Old Testament to arriving at the glorious announcment of the birth of Christ. Facing the often confusing and sometimes evasive language of scripture, he then describes the art of learning what it means to really encounter a difficult text. He speaks of the art of allowing oneself to sit in the silence with a word or a sentence waiting to see where it leads. It’s such a marvelous picture of how we can let the Chrsitmas story break through into our own story. And as the main character expresses his honest struggle, which at its heart is a spiritual one, this way of reading and encountering the Christmas story begins to connect him to the world he sees all around, often in vivid form. Beauty emerges from the isolated landscape, transforming the snow and the trees into an imaginative and magical sense of the Christmas proclamation. For me, this draws me back to A Charlie Brown Christmas and the way their willingness to let the text simply wash over them transforms Charlie Brown’s percpection and brings the whole group together, turning a small, withering tree carrying Charlie Brown’s hopes and burdens into a vibrant and powerful picture of community.

To end, this quote from Christmas in the Adirondacks I think captures this beautifully:

“Thus were they seated, ready to begin the repast ; but the plates remained untouched, and the happy noises which had to
that moment filled the cabin ceased ; for the Angel of Silence,
with noiseless step, had suddenly entered the room. There’s a
silence of grief, there’s a silence of hatred, there’s a silence of
dread ; of these, men may speak, and these they can describe.
But the silence of our happiness, who can describe that ? When
the heart is full, when the long longing is suddenly met, when
love gives to love abundantly, when the soul lacketh nothing
and is content, then language is useless, and the Angel of
Silence becomes our only adequate interpreter. A humble table,
surely, and humble folk around it ; but not in the houses of the
rich or the palaces of kings does gratitude find her only home,
but in more lowly abodes and with lowly folk ay, and often
at the scant table, too, she sitteth a perpetual guest. Was it
memory ? Did the Trapper at that brief moment visit his absent
friend ? Did Wild Bill recall his wayward past ? Were the
thoughts of the woman busy with sweet scenes of earlier days ?
And did memory, by thus reminding them of the absent and
the past, of the sweet things that had been and were, stir within their hearts thoughts of Him from whom all gifts descend, and of His blessed Son, in whose honor the day was named ?

O Memory ! thou tuneful bell that ringeth on forever, friend
at our feasts, and friend, too, let us call thee, at our burial,
what music can equal thine ? For in thy mystic globe all tunes
abide, the birthday note for kings, the marriage peal, the
funeral knell, the gleeful jingle of merry mirth, and those sweet chimes that float our thoughts, like fragrant ships upon a fragrant sea, toward heaven, all are thine ! Ring on, thou tune
ful bell ; ring on, while these glad ears may drink thy melody ;
and when thy chimes are heard by me no more, ring loud and
clear above my grave that peal which echoes to the heavens,
and tells the world of immortality, that they who come to
mourn may check their tears and say,” Why do we weep ? He
liveth still!”

The Stories of Christmas: 15 Timeless Tales That Capture the Spirit of the Season (Day 12)

THE DEAD (novella by James Joyce and 1987 film adaption) and LITTLE WOMEN (2019)

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

– James Joyce

Joyce’s short story The Dead, is a brilliant treatment on how it is that we find our identity in both our personal ambitions while also in relationship with friendships, partnerships and marriages, communities and families, culture and heritage.

As the story unfolds, we followGabriel Conroy, a socially awkward Irish intellectual who arrives at a Christmas gathering with his wife. He is supposed to give a speech around the table, something that is causing him great anxiety, and as we watch Gabriel gradually interacting with the different characters in the room we get the sense that he has arrived at this party with a lot of unspoken angst and anxiety in tow . The speech, it would seem, embodies these unspoken thoughts and emotions that are creating this anxiety (personal, political and religious, social), and yet one would have to be willing to see behind the words in order to see what it is that is truly shaping him in this moment.

As we enter this holiday season facing further isolation and mandated social distancing, The Dead is a reminder of that even in a normal year holiday gatherings can be places of anxiety for many. We often arrive in these spaces with many unspoken emotions of our own, with roles and functions to play and expectations and responsibilities to fulfill, and these feelings can fluctuate between being a wanted intrusion on our anxious thoughts or a weighty obligation and being overwhelmed. For those who feel this and carry this, even the fact they have these thoughts can carry a level of shame and confusion.

And yet, as The Dead suggests, these functions of relationship are also important and necesssary, something we see in the astute observation of its story arc. It is as Gregory leaves the party with his wife that he is finally able to reflect on the anxiety he carried through those doors and the different persons that are shaping his world. And a chance to retreat to a hotel with his wife offers him an opportunity to narrow in on the most intimate of these relationships. It is here though that his anxiety and his joy are able to come together in an unexpected moment of clarity. A quiet revelation from his wife uncovers the fact that even in the most inimate of relationships we still carry these unspoken feelings and can feel very much alone, and it is when we are able to peel back these revelations that we can gain a bigger picture of who we are and who someone else is within these feelings. The final scene in the film manages to capture the final notes of the page in a brilliant fashion, with Gabriel looking out the window alone at the falling snow and giving himself over to the season’s powerful sentiment of togetherness. Looking out the window he imagines all of the relationships that make us who we are, living and dead, political and religious, family and heritage, culture and community, and it ultimately leads him to a sense of awe.

In the recent adaptation of Little Women, Director Greta Gerwig brilliantly brings together the different aspects of the popuular story’s origins and subsequent adapatations to say something important about these relationships that define us. For author Louisa May Alcott, the author of the source material, she wanted to write a story that challenged the conventions of her day and which expressed something of her own story being raised in a somewhat divided home and seeing the oppression of a male dominated society first hand. As a feminist, the story she imagined in Little Women wanted to cast a female character that both celebrated the bonds of family togetherness while also upholding the freedom of personal aspirations and independence. What Gerwig does is bring together this vision of the story with the fact that the story that eventually made it to page was essentially forced to marry Jo off in order to serve conventions and get published. Gerwig looks to redeem the story of Alcott’s vision while also honoring its tradition, using this to say something about the growing (and yet still complicated) freedom that women do experience today to tell the stories that they desire to tell.

All throughout this most recent adaptation we see Jo being shaped by the relationships around her, much in the same way that Alcott was in her own life. Some of these are living, some of these are dead. She is shaped by the socio-political expectations of her day as much as she is the social conventions. She is also shaped by her family and her heritage. As she begins to explore who it is that she is (as a writer, which Gerwig uses to tell Alcott’s own story) against and within these realities, we gain a profound sense of the unspoken personal tension and anxiety she carries. The sentiment she expresses about feeling very much alone and yet also burdened by all these relationships is reminiscent of what Gabriel carries into this holiday gathering in The Dead. It is a complicated place to be and exist, and yet all of these things are integral to who she eventually becomes as an independent woman.

Christmas can be a reminder of both our lonliness and our togetherness shaped by our unspoken anxities, joys, aspirations and concerns. It is often a time when we are able to allow these two things to sit in conversation with one another. A reconciling of self and relationship. A time of reflection and a time of revelation. And a part of the power of the Christmas celebration is the way it celebrates the power of the God-Human relationship to both shape who are as truly liberated children and as the community of the beloved. A place where both our lonliness and our togetherness can be informed, and where our anxieties and our joys can find their fullest expression.

The Stories of Christmas: 15 Timeless Tales That Capture the Spirit of the Season (Day 11)

WINTER ON FIRE (2015) and A MIDNIGHT CLEAR (1992) and 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST (2006)

[The protesters’] unity was fascinating. Their power was fascinating.

We realized history was being made,”

– Evgeny Afineevsky (Director of Winter on Fire)

With plans to fly to Kiev and stay for only 2 weeks, Afineevsky’s efforts to capure the current crisis in Ukraine soon found him caught in the middle of the Euromaiden Revolution. He describes it as a small group that quickly exploded into a full blown resistance, with him and a second camera person capturing every second of it. The result is one of the most intimate depictions of a revolution “in process” ever captured on film.

At least part of what makes this film hit home for me is that had we not been handed the sudden sale of our house 5/6 years ago, we would have found ourselves stuck in this same revolutionary war. Being in the middle of our adoption process at the time, the next step was to fly to Kiev where we would spend the next 2-3 months finding a child and completing the process of becoming a family. Currently living in rural Manitoba, we had decided we wanted to move back into the city before we left. The problem was we couldn’t sell. We had been sitting on our home for a good year or more before, leading into December, our projected leave date for Ukraine, we were suddenly presented with a chance to move. We decided to stall the process while we made the move, eventually leaving the following the August. In the meantime, we watched from this side of the ocean as the events captured in Winter on Fire got worse and worse. Coincidentally, we had the privilege of arriving in Kiev on Ukrainanian Independence Day following the revolution, which featured an incredible display of unity unlike anything I have ever witnesssed before.

In 12:08 East of Bucharest, a name which is a nod to the time of day Romanian Dictator Nicolae Ceausecu fled in the 1989 Romanian Revolution and the place he fled from (Vaslui), we approach the idea of a revolution from a slightly different vantage point. This dark, satirical comedy sheds a light on post communist Romania by posing a simple question- did a revolution actually happen, with the inference of this leading to a second question, how do we know? The answer seems to be, by the people participatig in the revolution. The film’s biting commentary digs into the nature of this kind of revolutionary “language” as we follow these men who decide to hold a live television broadcast with guests and inviting people to call in as a way of celebrating the ousting of this Dictator. When the original guests bow out (to which they bring in two new ones), those who call in to the live broadcast begin to question the truthfulness of their claims, suggesting that none of them were actually there on the ground when he fled. Thus can it really be called a revolution?

A Midnight Clear, a quietly affecting and introspective World War 2 film, suggests that when it comes to this relationship between the world we are fighting against and the world we hope to inherit, it is often the witness of the people on the ground that carries the most weight when it comes to understanding why revolutions happen.

All three of these films take place at Christmas time, which I think adds a powerful undercurrent to this disscussion of revoluionary language. An element of the Christmas story that often gets neglected is its own revolutionary language. Jesus came into a world divided by empire and power, and thus the Gospels are intimately concerned with saying something about empire and power. In his wonderful book “The Day the Revolution Began”, N.T. Wright says:

“Whether we believe in Jesus, whether we approve of his teaching, let alone whether we like the look of the movement that still claims to follow him, we are bound to see his crucifixion as one of the pivotal moments in human history.”

What Wright does is try to peel back the layers of more problematic readings that have tended to equate Jesus with the wrong kind of power and bring us back to the heart of the Gospel as revolutionary language (opposing the kind of power that marginalizes and oppresses). The problem Wright says is primarily an interepretive one, something that has led to the Gospel’s diminished ability to say something about the world we hope for in a Christian sense, while also aligning Christianity far too often with the wrong kind of power.

What Christmas is able to remind us of is the way in which God revealed himself as one who is bringing about the true revolution, the new creation, which begins with the birth of Jesus and climaxes in the death and the resurrection. As we celebrate the Christmas story we celebrate the proclamation that “a new sort of power will be let loose upon the world, and it will be the power of self-giving love. This is the heart of the revolution that was launched on Good Friday.” (Wright, The Day the Revolution Began)

And yet, crucial to this revolution is that fact that in Jesus, in the incarnation, we are called to the be image bearers of this new Kingdom vision. In the ancient world, the idols of the god (or gods) were the last thing to be placed in the temple, and in the Judeo-Chrsitian story we are the idols meant to bear witness to the image of God through our participation in this self-giving love. We are called to bear witness to a different kind of story. And in a poignant reflection on this very reality, Wright suggests that one of the most powerful tools that we have in telling this story is the creative process.

“If we are talking about the victory over evil and the launch of new creation, it won’t make much sense unless we are working for those very things in the lives of the poorest of the poor. (And) If we are talking about Jesus winning the victory over the dark powers and thereby starting the long-awaited revolution, it will be much easier for people to believe it if we are working to show what we mean in art and music, in song and story. The great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “It is love that believes the resurrection,” and hearts can be wooed by glorious or poignant music, art, dance, or drama into believing for a moment that a different world might after all be possible, a world in which resurrection, forgiveness, healing, and hope abound. Gifts that stir the imagination can frequently unblock channels of understanding that had remained stubbornly clogged when addressed by reasoned words.”

The stories we choose to tell can help shape the trajectory of our present societies. This is how film itself is a revolutionary language in the light of history. It is also how sharing in the Christmas story can help reshape our own understanding of a divided world, bringing hope to the hopeless and life to the lifeless.

In Winter on Fire, Afineevsky chooses to enter into the trenches and tell the story of a people caught in the cross fire of political and empire laden powers on either side, a people left struggling to see the promise of new creation in their midst. The final scene which takes place over the holidays offers an incredible picture of a people allowing themselves the freedom to imagine a new world, with unified song and glowing candles constrasting with the death and the guns.

In 12:08, we see a people celebrating the new creation of a post communist dictatorship while being confronted with the question of how it is that they arrived where they are.

And as A Midnight Clear imagines a people caught in the middle of these two perspectives, I see the Christmas setting of these three narratives offering the means through which to see and understand all three stories through a larger perpective, a larger narrative vision. The celebration of Jesus is a celebration of a new revolution, the beginning of this movement towards the new creation. It provides us with a vision of hope for the future while also arriving in the midst of this present darkness. Christmas becomes a light breaking into our midst and calling us to a greater participation in the way of this self-giving love. A call to persist in the face of contrary and destructive forms of power in the hope that a new kind of power might emerge in its midst, a power that promimses to make all things new.

The Stories of Christmas: 15 Timeless Tales That Capture the Spirit of the Season (Day 10)

ARTHURS CHRISTMAS and A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS/A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES

Baed on a story by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, these adaptations of his classic prose “A Child”s Christmas in Wales”, one animated and one live action, do a wonderful job of capturing the context and the focus of his story. Thomas was born during the dawn of World War 1, and the story reflects back on the Christmas’ he experienced as a child in Swansea, a small, unassuming, seaside town, shedding light on the shifting economic challanges and the Welsh resistance.

An encycopedia article delves further into Thomas’ influence, suggesting that, “as a national icon, the poet in Wales plays a role similar to that of the cowboy in America. Reputed to have mystical powers and linked to the mysterious druids (religious figures from ancient times), bards are the national heroes of Welsh culture.”

This describes the poet as one who is able to capture the stories of the culture and the people, and both film adaptations share this same mytholical concern. And for Thomas, Christmas affords him the perfect opportunity to remember the world and traditions that shaped dhim.

In the book, an older Thomas is looking back on his own childhood Christmas’ and imagining this as a conversation between a boy and an aging man. In both of the screen adaptations, this comes through a young boy’s relationship to his grandfather where he listens to him reflecting on how Christmas used to be and how it has changed through the years. At one point the young boy remarks on the fresh snow only to have the Grandfather insist that this snow is nothing like the snow that he played in all those years ago. This sparks the reminiscing, the telling of these tales which begin simply and grow seemingly taller and taller as they go on. In some way, the taller the stories get the more honest they become, bringing together cultural perceptions, traditional myths and personal experience.

The animated version is most positioned to capture the gradually building nature of this story in all of its imaginative glory, while the live action version relates it back to the real world history of a time and place that a period piece is able to embody. Both films though share a concern for the relationship between this young boy and this older man. As the old man looks out on the world he no longer seems to recognize it. And so he locates it in his memory. For the boy, these memories and the world he occupies don’t feel that far apart. And the more he shares in these stories the closer these two worlds become. The memory they are creating together becomes the bridge between the past and the present.

In Arthur’s Chrsitmas we find a similar generational theme in play. It tells the story of the Santa family line- the retired grandfather who mourns the loss of the old days as his old sled and the reindeer that once navigated the world sit neglected and collecting dust. This aged man lingers around in the shadows wrestling with feelings of being obsolete and rendered useless in a world he no longer understands.

There is the father, the current Santa who is nearing the end of his time. He is also wrestling with a world he no longer understands, especially when it comes to all this technological advancement. Of utmost concern is who will take on the role of Santa after him.

And then we have the two sons, both potential heirs, the younger (Arthur) seen as awkward and incompetent while the older one is a go getter who has managed to revamp the Christmas system using modern technology, with his sights set on taking over the Santa role.

As the story unfolds, it is the stories shared between Arthur and his Grandfather that help to bring these generations together. While the vision the older son has for a modernized Christmas experience sits in an unspoken tension with his father’s, the sharing of these stories help to remind Arthur and his Grandfather about how much they share. It is through the sharing of these stories that we rediscover what it is that makes Christmas meaningful, bridging the gap between these generational voices and uniting them around a shared tradition.

In both of these stories I am reminded about the power that story holds in this season of celebration. As we share the stories of our tradtions and our experiences, even in a time when we are forced to be apart, this can do the work of reconnecting us to us what it is that we share as a family, as a people, as a culture, even when the world we once understood and the world we now inhabit sits in tension.

And perhaps most of all, as Christians, Christmas reminds us of what is is we share in Christ, with God’s story giving our individual stories a place to co-exist and a way to participate in and understand the world together. It is this sentiment that we find in the powerful final picture of A Child’s Christmas, and it is this same sentiment that carries through the lessons that we find in Arthur’s Christmas.

The Stories of Christmas: 15 Timeless Tales That Capture the Spirit of the Season (Day 9)

KLAUS and LETTERS FROM FATHER CHRISTMAS
In the film Klaus, our central protagonist (Jasper) is the young son of a Postmaster General who isn’t taking his schooling (postman academy) or his life very seriously, relying instead entirely on his father’s fortune. Believing that his son needs a wakeup call, his father decides to send him to a remote, northern village called Smeerensburg where he must deliver 6,000 letters or else lose out on his inheritance.

Once he arrives, he discovers a town caught in a long standing fued essentially divided down family lines. Letter writing isn’t exactly a bustling business in these parts. When one family has something to say, they say it straight to the other family’s face. Uncertain about what to do, a chance encounter with an isolated and reclusive older woodsman named Klaus eventually helps to turn his life around.

At the heart of this film is a message about perspective and the ways in which the seasons of our life can cloud our perspective. For Jasper, he knows very little about what it means to struggle and needs to gain a greater awareness of the world. For Klaus, he has experienced immense struggle in his life and, in the narrowing of his own world needed to be reminded about why life matters. For the town holding a long standing grudge, they need to be reminded about the world they are handing the younger generation. What changes these perspectives is a letter, written from a young boy with hopes and dreams for the future set against his own personal struggle, which forms into subsequent letters from children (and adults) all over the town, all expressing their own hopes and dreams in their own way. Klaus’ skills at making toys and Jasper’s interest in mailing letter’s lead them into a partnership that uncovers some deep rooted secrets of their own, both of which have colored their ability to hope and dream for a better and more meaningful perspective on their life and the world.

In Tolkien’s Letters From Father’s Chrsitmas we find a long standing family Tradition meant to bring his family together in the midst of their own struggle. The book is made up of 20 Christmas’ worth of letters that Tolkien, under the pen name Father Christmas, would write to his kids (marked as mailed from the North Pole) each and every year. It starts with a simple letter and over the years grows into a world building exercise, borrowing from American and British/English/Scandivian Traditions, incorporating different languages (including Finnish, which was an inspiration for Tokien’s Lord of the Rings) and invented languages, and creating a rich world of supporting characters, including evles and goblins (precursers to the LOTR), and a bumbling Polar Bear.

As we edge closer to the final letter, what becomes clear is that these heartfelt creations were intended to inspire hope and imagination in his kids. The way he incoporates origin stories for real world events and breathes adventure into this mythological setting gives his final words, this grand “goodbye”, a powerful context. He is saying goodbye to his children’s youth while also saying goodbye to the world they once knew on the eve of the world war. The pure innocence and unrestrained imagination of these letters become a poignant reflection on innocence lost and, as the letter’s appear to long for, innocence retained and restored. These are letter’s which are meant to inform the ways in which his kids could now go out into the world and imagine it as a better place as they form their own adventures.

While the film Klaus does get a bit too distracted with needing to streamline its story towards providing neat and tidy origin stories for all of the familiar modern, American Christmas traditions (most uncomforably in how it makes the kid’s gift getting tied to being naughty or nice), it has something similar in mind in terms of how this letter writing premise is meant to evoke a reinvogorated sense of hope and imagination for the season in all of us. This is not unlike the ways in which Tolkien leans into those familiar Chirstmas traditions before weaving them into a story that looks and feels entirely new. It’s a reminder that Christmas is not meant to be bound by our past or by antiquated idea lost to time, but rather is meant to be seen as an opportunity for reinvention and recreation. The traditions become our foundation, with the ensuing adventure that they inspire being their manifestation. This is what it means to grow up. It is also what it means to grow down, especially when things are hard and we experience struggle. The way that Klaus finds a renewed opportunity to invest his time, skills and his heart represents one of the most beautiful moments in the film, with his grown up position being humbled downwards into the hopeful imagination of the town’s children. We see this equally so is the final, heartfelt letter from Tolkien to his now aged kids facing an uncertain world. No matter how dark it might seem, Christmas’s arrival is a reminder that the light still shines and that there is always opportunity to grow our perspective.

The Stories of Christmas: 15 Timeless Tales That Capture the Spirit of the Season (Day 8)

CRONOS and THE POLAR EXPRESS

The word (or Greek name) Cronos (Chronos) literally renders “time”. The personification of time in philsophical terms, usually portrayed as an old wise man (Father Time). If you were to dig into the history and backstory of Chronos, you would find an interesting relationship between these two words- Chronos and Kronos, two distinct ideas that have become unfortunately conflated over “time” (pun intended). Chronos is a word that denotes the (one way) trajectory of time that cannot be reversed (thus associated with the movement from life to death), while Kronos refers to the meaning of time, or the value of a moment. In Greek mythology the ealier representation would be Kronos, with Chronos establishing itself as a more concrete entity later.

In either case, both words are intimately connected to the story of Zeus and to Zeus’s earlier prototype. Which is to say, the concept of time lies at the center of life and creation itself. In traditional understanding, Father Time is associated with New Years and the idea of “rebirth”, of time beginning afresh, but what is interesting to note here though is the relationship between Father Time and Father Christmas. Behind the origins story of Santa lies this idea of Father Time working in relationship with Father Chrsitmas which is how we can explain the idea of Father Christmas being able to deliver presents to the whole world all at once (through the pausing and manipulation of time). Thus this conflating of Chronos and Kronos sheds some interesting light on what it means to be present “in time” and space. We can see this development as the Latin meaning of the word present gets passed on through the old French into english from being present in time, or more directly in the company of someone or something, and bringing a “present” as in a gift, something we pass on to someone or something else. As the popular quote from A.A. Milne always suggested, Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a GIFT. That’s why they call it the present.” This is a play on words in the English sense, but in the larger sense of these word’s original meaning, they help to return to us what Kronos and Chronos actually signified in relationship to one another. In the concrete passing of time (Chronos), we find our meaning in the present (Kronos).

One of my favorite directers of all time made a film called Cronos, which delves into the words mythological and historical presence (pun again intended) in just such a way. It tells the story of a 14th century Spanish alchemist who invents a device that injects its claws into the flesh and imparts immortality. When an earthquake topples the building where he is, he is buried alive and found with his heart pierced by a stake.Years later an aging man named Jesus Gris, an antiques dealer by trade, buys a wooden statue of an archangel where this device is hidden in it and accidentally uses it and gets bitten, receiving the gift of immortality. A second aging, and subsequently dying man had discovered a journal and the truth of the alchemist and the device and had been searching for the statue for some time. He hires someone (Ron Perlman) to track down the device, which brings these two aging men together, one stuck in the immortal cycle of his life, the other desperate to escape his coming death and to achieve immortal life.

“One of the curious things about immortality in fiction is that it almost always seems to be possessed by those unworthy of it.”- Roger Ebert

To get at the heart of Del Toro’s Cronos, there are two distinct ideas that surface in this conflict between the two aging men. The first is that that this immortality requires death. Immortality comes with a price, which is that it requires the consuming, and thus shedding of blood. In the scope of this story, we are forced to wrestle with the idea that the death of another brings immorality to oneself as oppposed to the sacrifice of ones self offering life to another, with the lifeblood signifying its source. Caught within this tension is the idea of feeling caught in the cycles of our death weilding tendencies, the constant wrestling between the two natures of ourselves, one that values the sin of our self serving tendencies, and the other that values the life of our self giving choices. Cronos as a singular, forward moving notion of time in its trajectory towards death evokes these self serving tendencies. Kronos as a concept of being present in time evokes the self giving tendency.

Which brings me to the second distinct idea that surfaces in this film, which is found in the relationship between Jesus and his granddaughter. Once we move from the tension that exists between the stories of these two aging men and their warring tendencie, we come to the heart of the story, which is about the relationship between this young child and the aging grandfather, offering us two distinct perspectives on time and its relationship to immorality. It is the granddaughters perspective on time and present-ness that helps shake Jesus from these death weilding tendencies and move him towards a different idea of death evoking life- the notion of self sacrifice. It is in the self giving act that true life is found, and it is in the finding of true life that we can recognize it as a gift.

And here was what struck me the most in my most recent viewing. Del Toro has a deep connection to his own religious and Catholic roots, and this religious symbolism is written into the text of this script that is ultimately about ancient and timeless truths regarding the nature of humanity and the divine. What is interesting to me is how the Judeo-Christian idea of God approaches this old idea of time as “being present “, or being present with another, in a unique way. The idea suggests this picture of occupying the same space as someone or something, and in the Judeo-Christian tradition it is the indwelling of the spirit that remains intrinsic to this understanding of God. Whereas God in the broader sense or the gods in the ancient sense are traditionally seen as entities that govern the world and humanity from a distance, it is this indwelling that became the defining point of Yahweh as one who dwells among us. God with us. Or as John’s Gospel famously put it, a God who “tabernacled” among us, a word that connects the arrival of Jesus in a “Christmas” sense with the image of the ancient Tabernacle, the very embodiment of this indwelling. It is out of this that God calls us towards the self giving nature of his spirit, a participating in the activity of the divine. The breaking of the perpetual cycles of sin and death that hold us in bondage in (Kronos) and through (Cronos) time. To be truly present in this world and with one another. In a very real sense, this is how we arrive at immortality as a sense of timelessness embodied, where what holds true value, true meaning, true virtue can come most fully into view. The indwelling of God in us makes us God’s image bearers in the ancient sense, the idols occupying the heart of the temple, which in the Judeo-Christians sense brings together the cosmological and earthly realities into this piciture of a single, interconnected throne room. The temple is the entire creation, and as God’s image bearers we are meant to bear witness to its meaning, its worth. And that happens in relationship to one another, by occupying space with another.

In both the book and the adaptation of the classic The Polar Express, we gain this sense of timelessness in the author’s decision to build this story around the notion of a train. It captures a moment in history that evokes certain ideas of capturing time in its essence. A train reflects this idea of “slow travel”, of slowing down time in order to appreciate our surroundings. The author explains,”there are a lot of places a train could go and take a child, but where would a child want to go more than anywhere else? As I reflected on this mysterious train, it occurred to me that it must be a cold night, because the engine’s steam is heavy. It might even be winter. Maybe some snow is falling. Perhaps its December, close to Christmas, or even Christmas Eve. Then I asked myself again: where would a child want to go more than anywhere else on Christms Eve?”

The author goes on to say,”The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It’s also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but on that disappears as we grow older.”

In the context of this childlike imagination, what The Polar Express reminds us of is how this idea of “Cronos” (time passing) can often cause us to forget how to see and know the present (Kronos). As a child we see the world in its endless possibility, a world without boundaries. As an adult we grow to see the world in its limitations and its challenges. A world caught within the boundaries of time. And thus making sense of the present and finding meaning in our reality requires us to reconcile our experience of the present with the passing reality of time as a temporary reality that is moving in one directoin. Regret can be a powerful force. When these things appear to be at odds it can be difficult to reconcile the art of living in the present with the passing of time.

This is what we see in the story of Cronos. In the case of Jesus, immortality arrives as an unexpected gift. In the case of the second aging man, his struggle drives him towards seeking this immortality. In one case this immortality comes at the expense of the present, and thus life itself loses its meaning. In the second case, life gains its meaning through the value of the present, or being present with his granddaughter. Here life gains itself meaning. If death becomes the common enemy in this story, death is redeemed precisely through the life giving act of this gift of presence. In The Polar Express, this same idea is seen entirely through the eyes of the children. Imagination is born from the idea of endless possibility. The desire to actually “reside” or take residence in the world and to believe that in occupying this space (the giving of ourselves) the cycles that hold us bondage can be broken. This is what it means to have faith, to believe. And in the scope of this story we once again find that this childlike faith is intrinsinctly connected to this unendeing belief in the “other”.

As the conversation unfolds between the conducter and the child, we see him greet the child as “the man with all the questions”. The simple gift afforded to this child, the lesson imparted to all children who take the ride on this train, reads on his ticket- “Believe”. The gift of faith itself.In his review of the film Cronos, Ebert refelcts, “If, as religion teaches us, the purpose of this world is to prepare for the next, then what greater punishment could there be, really, than to be stranded on the near shore?” What Ebert evokes here is the sense of being caught in the cycles of our adult cynicism. The idea that we cannot reconcile our notion of the present with the idea of Cronos, time moving foward towards death itself. A common ascertation of the West in its dependence on the self made person and human progress is that time is made immortal by way of human ambition and accomplishment, the gaining of all of “knowledge” in the philosophical sense. And yet, when we begin to pare this down to the personal stories, the faces and experiences that define who it is that we are and why our lives matter, why living actually holds meaning especially in the face of struggle and suffering, this has much to say about Cronos but little to say about Kronos.

What’s also true though, considering Ebert’s statement, is that this striving after immortality can become equally meaningless when it becomes detached from the present. In fact, this is precisely what leaves the Enlightenment view with such a conundrum. Progress evokes this drive for immortality all the time in the push to extend life and eradicate disease, but with little ability to say why it matters once we arrive wherever it is that humanity is heading, either succumbing to the cycles of death or conquering the vast expense of the universe. In the smallness of our lives in the here and now we are left to imagine these elements of meaning in order to give us a sense of meaning, which humanity does all the time and in many different ways. The question then is, does this imaginative process come from a given sense of meaning or is it something we simply create. Does this inate need for things to matter point us to a God, or does it point us to our need to create these gods, in the ancient and modern sense. What both of these films suggest is that what appears to be at stake in this question is how we understand the art of the imagination and its ability to point us to something beyond ourselves, to a greater truth about who we are and who God infact is.

As I reflect on this for myself. I am reminded of N.T. Wright’s often held picture of the Judeo-Chrsitian faith not being about escaping this world in order to go to heaven, but about heaven being brought down to earth and, through this relationship between Chronos and Kronos, making all things new. This is where he sees the present gaining its meaning, is in the idea that what we are building today in our present reality holds eternal significance for what God is doing in the new Kingdom. And the great truth of the incarnation, Jesus coming to dwell amongst us as God made flesh, is that this presence in us calls us to be present with one another. This is the message of the Chrtistmas season and the gift giving tradition. This is the sacrificial language that binds us together through an eternal, childlike hope, the same hope that imparts this gift of faith to this young boy and the gift of leadership this young girl in The Polar Express.

May we gain a fresh perpsective on what this means for us in the middle of this pandemic and social distancing this Christmas season.

The Stories of Christmas: 15 Timeless Tales That Capture the Spirit of the Season (Day 7)

THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS and RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE

For those who struggle with the holiday season, sometime a little bit of darkness to help offset the deulge of Christmas cheer can be a welcome addition to the seasaonal fare. Rare Exports is bound to do the trick, with it’s Nordic setting and revisionist take on some of the darker edges of Scandinavian lore blending together a perfect of mix of drama, horror and action. It’s a dark fantasy film at it’s core that takes its mythology seriously. The film explores what it means to revive old traditions, with a studied attention to the ways in which buried history (and there is history represented here) so easily gets coopted by commercialism and capitalist pursuit. If unpredictable and potentially unhinged elves in the form of old, naked Finnish men isn’t enough to unsettle ones senses, the potential for human corruption on display certainly is. The notable absence of women makes this male dominated landscape that much more resonant as a modern commentary. It’s not wonder Scandinavian traditions don’t shy away from scaring little children into the magic of the season. If you haven’t encountered some of these traditions, they are actually quite wonderful and beautifully practiced and cherished in their cultural context.

Perhaps then, there is no greater symbol of this tension between the dark and the light than the infamous and classic animated tale, The Nightmare Before Christmas. Here we find a bridge between two (in North America) notable celebrations- Halloween and Christmas. Or the Day of the Dead in Mexican Tradition and this fusion of Winter Solstice and St. Nicholas traditions that formed into the quintessential American festival of gift giving, feasts and joy. As these two seasons are able to look at each other and mutually wish one another a Merrry Christmas and a Happy Halloween, we are offered a hope filled picture of the dark and the light co-existing together. In many ways, Halloween Town and Christmas Town need one another in order to make sense of a hard, complicated but also beautiful world. And even if we are someone who calls one place home, the chance to visit and explore this new city once a year can help broaden our perspective, helping us to remember that the darkness and the light are not seperate entities, but in fact the diverse expression of the human experience working in harmony.

The Stories of Christmas: 15 Timeless Tales That Capture the Spirit of the Season (Day 6)

A REINDEER’S JOURNEY (2018) and THE SNOWMAN (1982)

I can remember the Christmas when I got a set of cross country skiis for Christmas. Having never tried it before, I made my way to Birds Hill to take them for a test run. I was familiar with the park and its paths of course, but I had never travelled those paths in the winter. This new means of mobility provided me with a different vantage point through which to take in the untouched winter landscape that greeted me as the fresh snow covered the once lush forest. I felt a fresh awareness of Christmas as a season of new beginnings, the start of a grand story in the liturgical sense, ready to unfold with the dark days of a long winter promising the eventual light of the spring that lie ahead.

What accompanies the memory of this Christmas as well is the fact that this stood on the precipice of two big changes in my life- losing my beloved dog and being the last one of my siblings to move out of my parents home. Two massive changes in my life that would beckon a change of season and a new beginning.

The wonderful nature doc, A Reindeer’s Journey (also titled Ailo’s Journey), might not seem like your traditional Christmas classic, but what struck me watching it this year is the way it is able to capture a life lived within the seasons. Set in the luscious landscape of snowy Lapland, located in the Arctic Circle of Scandinavia stretching from Norway all the way into Russia, it follows a Reindeer newly birthed as it navigates it’s first year of life in the isolated terrain. It’s a beautiful reminder not just of of the magic to be found in the natural landscape, but of the way in which life moves through the seasons, with each new season reflecting a kind of rebirth of sorts. It’s also a reminder that in every season of loss, struggle and uncertainty comes the promise of new beginnings, a reminder that in the darkness there is light.

To pair this with the stunning animated short, The Snowman, is to be reminded in a year filled with the shared struggle of the pandemic that Christmas, for all it’s magic and allure, doesn’t mean the absence of struggle. It simply means that darkness and struggle can gain a context, a larger narrative through which to be understood. The context of a life lived in season. As it follows this young boy and this new found friendship with a snowman who magically comes to life, the short unfolds in two parts, the first part welcoming this snowman into his home, the second part following as this snowman lifts this young boy to the heights as they fly to his home. And in the process the boy is able to gain a new vantage point, a fresh perspective of the world and the magic of the season- hope in the darkness. It’s a transcendent story that arrives filled with a stark reminder of the seasons of life, but one filled with that necessary context. And as I came to the startling ending of The Snowman’s grand journey, I can see The Reindeer’s Journey just beginning.

The Stories of Christmas: 15 Timeless Tales That Capture the Spirit of the Season (Day 5)

J.T. (1969) and PRANCER (1989)
“Why did it have to happen?

It seems like life got a whole lot more questions than answers to it. You start out young asking questions and you end up old asking questions. And the puzzlement is, they most mostly the same question. There’s just a very few years in between where you think you got the answers that match up with the questions…

I just don’t understand. I don’t understand nothing.

What you gotta understand child is yourself, and that’s no easy matter.”
– J.T.

We are all born into a world full of questions and uncertainty. In J.T., we follow a young boy growing up with the uncertainty of a world of poverty and struggle. Likewise, in Prancer we follow a young girl facing the questions of her own darkness with the loss of her mother and possible seperation from her dad.

For young minds and old minds alike, the truth is life doesn’t make sense most of the time, and learning to live with the questions in the absence of answers is most of the battle.

What both of these film’s suggest though is that living with the questions means searching for the light. To keep asking the questions. This is what it means to hope. And for both of these young children, the most important questions to ask is of themselves. When everything seems dark, how can I be a light. And for both of these children, knowing the darkness at such a young age opens them up to hope in a powerful way, leading them to shine a light into the darkness through a simple act of compassion, an act of love. For the young boy in J.T., this act of compassion comes through helping a lost and homeless cat. For the young girl in Prancer, this act of compassion comes from her willingness and desire to help an injured reindeer. And in both cases this act of compassion becomes a way to believe that that there is light in this world, that there is hope. There is a powerful scene where the boy in J.T. reflects on the idea that the darkness does not need to be the final word. In Prancer, this young girl’s persistent faith in this reindeer flows out into the world as a beacon of trust in the idea that there is more than just the tragic stories of this world. In the tragedy we find beauty.

Christmas beckons us towards such a childlike faith. It shines a light on the idea that what we long for, what we hope for will one day come to fullness in the person and revelation of Christ. And it is through this Christ like living towards acts of kindness, faithfulness, giving, service, compassion and love, that what we hope for and long for can be made known even when the questions persist.

In both of these films, ‘why” and “I don’t know” find a welcome place in the mystery of the season. These are the very questions in fact that can help ensure that we remain open to seeing the light.

The Stories of Christmas: 15 Timeless Tales That Capture the Spirit of the Season (Day 4)

THE GRINCH (2018) AND A CHRISTMAS VACATION (1989)

If Christmas can be described as a season full of hope, joy and togetherness, it is also true that not everyone experiences these things in the same way. For those who are struggling, isolated, facing loss, dealing with illness or depression or economic struggle, the season’s joy filled celebrations can often be experienced more as a weight and a burden, a reminder that life is not always filled with joy and togetherness.

The recent adaptation of The Grinch might seem like an odd choice as one of my favorite Christmas films, but it has quickly became a new holiday tradition over the last few years since its release. It is an inspired take on a classic tale and it is filled with so much beauty and love, from the gorgeous animation to the resonant themes and the creative approach to the character arcs. Structurally speaking, I really love how it chooses to expand on the source material, paralleling the two storylines with the Grinch and the little girl from Whoville as a fun, caper type of narrative. Some smartly constructed scenes help us to narrow in on who these characters are, helping to flesh out a strong, visual and redemptive arc, while at the same time keeping a highly entertaining pace and some excellent comic timing. It’s quite shocking just how good these technicals are purely on the level of the film’s construction.

Even more so though, and pertinant to this reflection, is a memorable message about the crippling power of depression and lonilness. The film sheds light on how a season about togetherness and joy can also make someone who is experiencing emotions that are different than these things feel like they are somehow lesser or broken. Or in the case of The Grinch, not wanted. Which is why it is so important to recognize that all of us encounter the season’s celebrations differently. As the film suggests, there is probably no other holiday that has the power to evoke such polarized emotions all at the same time, and as we see The Grinch responding to his own inner struggles, which have been masked by this grinch like persona, we also see the real need for empathy. The kind of empathy that can be gained from learning to see the world from a childlike perspective, something the season tries to foster and develop.

Similarly, in Christmas Vacation one of the things that really stood out for me on my recent rewatch is just how how earnest and innocent the character of Clark (Chevy Chase) is as he deals with his own inner struggles. Formed by memories of his childhood and feelings of loss and regret, all he wants is to create a memorable celebration for his own family. But of course everything that can go wrong goes wrong, no matter how good and earnest his intentions are. This is a part of the joy of the film and what has made it a favorite for many over the years.

This is more than just comic fluff though. What we come to discover is that the stuff he is carrying into the season shapes how he responds to the season’s expectations, expectations that he places on himself as a weight and a burden. And for us much as it is easy to laugh at Clark’s escapades and mess ups throughout this film, it’s equally easy to find the necessary empathy. It is near impossible not to feel for his situation, even with his very first world problems, especially as we come to see the context for these expectations.

In both The Grinch’s story and Clark’s story we are offered a somber reminder of the season’s darker edges, be it in the Grinch’s desire to resist the trappings of the season altogether (and subsequently steal them so that everyone else can partake in his misery) or Clark’s need to go overboard with Christmas in an effort to make it the perfect celebration. It is by making space for the fact their experience of Christmas is not the joy filled experience it is supposed to be that Clark and The Grinch are able to then accept that their experience of the season is valid. Likewise, it is when the people around them, be it familiar friend and family or unsuspecting stranger, are able to see their struggle and likewise make space for it by growing empathy for that struggle, that the joy and togetherness of the season was able to be truly realized, not as a manufactured idea but as a wonderful embrace of these different perspectives and experiences. This empathy becomes the bridge in which these polarized experiences of Christmas are able to then co-exist in relationship, informing the other and bringing the experiences together.

This is the image we find in the final scene of The Grinch, with everyone gathered a table big enough to hold all of these experiences together in community, the most powerful part being that child like perspective that holds it together. It’s a beautiful reminder of what the season is really all about.