By Kathryna Hoyman · Managing Editor
As I write this, the first snow of the season falls on Grove City College, bathing all those who care to look up from bracing against the wind in heavy-hearted nostalgia.
At least here in western Pennsylvania, the first snow marks the oncoming of the holiday season. Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas and New Year’s are approaching swiftly and with them comes giddy anticipation and a strong sense of reminiscence.
There is also a sort of scrambling feeling to the holidays, like we must soak up every moment and fully experience the festive cheer. Perhaps this explains the prominence of the debate centered around when it is acceptable to begin listening to Christmas music (see Randall’s article in the Entertainment section) or why the Christmas spirit is such a common topic of conversation around this time.
There is such pressure to have a magical holiday season, but what is the purpose of such a spirit, even if we do attain it? Even if the season turns out to be our own personal Hallmark story, complete with perfect family unity, ad-free football on Thanksgiving and matching plaid pajamas, what does that do for us as soon as the holidays end? How can we change how we go into this Yuletide season so that when New Year’s Day inevitably comes, we don’t face the predictable hollow let-down?
The post-Christmas gloom often comes when we direct too much anticipation toward the holidays. Yes, something is magical about the season, especially here at Grove. The trees in Crawford, the wreaths on every lamppost, Harbison decked to look like the Great Hall in Harry Potter during the holidays and dearest Parkhurst’s occasional hot chocolate bars add something to the air that can only be met with mirth (unless you’re the Grinch, of course).
These holidays are as near as we get to extended festivals and celebratory feasts in postmodern America, and the “magic” should serve more than a brief escape from our everyday lives. They offer a much-needed retreat at the unfolding of the cold season, not to be treated as a rest that offers a distraction from the supposed dreariness of our lives, but rather as a season of repose and remembrance that enhances and makes clear the wonder of our existence, frigid weather or not.
Unfortunately, saying, “the real magic of Christmas is the love all around you,” sounds like a statement straight out of a tasteless Santa Claus movie.
But I think that sentiment carries further than we usually take it. If it is true, New Year’s Eve should be the most joyous day of all. If we treat the holidays less like a blessed interruption in the monotony of life and more as a true celebration of and delight in the people we love, the world we live in and the Savior who is now Emmanuel, then we can go into this season and travel forth from it with, as Elizabeth Prentiss says, “surely a thousand reasons for thanksgiving, for joy and for hope.”
Nostalgia — the flipping of your stomach at the thought of a time that came before — is not only a stagnant sensation of remembering, but it is also an experience that begs for application. It presents a touching study of how far we have come and those who have poured themselves out for our thriving, so that our past dependence may come to influence our devotion today. Nostalgia is a weight carried on the backs of memories, made and protected by those who have loved us.
As tacky and mechanical as it is to say, the holidays are about our loved ones rather than gifts and some vague sense of Christmas spirit. If we go into this season less obsessed with making the most of the festivities and more focused on loving and doing so actively and sacrificially, we foster hope in our relationships and draw needfully near to God.
Nostalgia need not be reduced to some forceful but fleeting sentiment, for if we let it draw us into true and thorough recollection to spur appreciation and ungrudging charity, then the joy of the season will carry on abundantly, even after New Year’s Day.
