All my life my favorite Christmas song has been “O Holy Night”. That is, till a few years ago when James Horner stole my heart forever with the heart-rending song, “Where Are You Christmas?”, sung by a little girl in the movie called The Grinch.
The message has so much meaning for me. “Where are you Christmas? Why can’t I find you?” I cannot possibly tell you how it touches me. But I need to try.
There was a Christmas Eve, back in 1976, when life suddenly came alive for me. When all the years before and since became the trimmings on a tree that stands in a lonely corner of my mind. I can still see the bare apartment of my date who became my fiancé, the soft holiday music, and the sparse tree whose multicolor lights were the only light in the room. And in each kiss, sparklers! A moment in my life like some childhood fantasy, swirling and spinning like an emotional dream. Only kisses, the heart of innocence, nothing more. But I will take that moment over every hour of every day of complete intimacy I have felt since.
Like James Horner’s song, I too wonder where Christmas has gone. Why the innocent days when suggestion was enough in a film, and you and I didn’t need a deluge of skin and lewd behavior to understand and enjoy a SciFi show like BSG. Have we fallen so far, you and I, that moral heroes are not enough, that right and wrong must be gray, and we need to chase our children away, so that even evening’s shows find us apart?
“…My world is changing, I'm rearranging. Does that mean Christmas changes too?...”
Time crumples the edges of our vision, and yellows the images we thought so pure when we were young. The world we see tumbles aimlessly like some dried and wind blown weed. And we like jaded stars expect the world we brood over to roil with new temptations, each more exciting than the last.
Today is just a page in someone else’s diary, their pen a plea for more. And that’s okay, let the insatiable gorge on values’ fall, if they will. I will take the simple wink and smile, the night when I felt Fourth of July in December, in my heart.
Affectionately to each and everyone,
Muffit
Sparklers for Christmas
