The Secret of the Holidays - What It Is!

The holidays are upon us. This time between Thanksgiving and New Years is in some ways one long holiday season. What is it? Holidays? Yeah, that's what it is. What it is indeed!

First of all there are all those childhood memories of the magic of those times. Even for those for whom the holidays of bygone days had some disappointments, the holidays still were believed in as promising to be a time of magic: gifts, happy family gatherings, Santa, surprises, hope, friendship, and the fullfilling of the dream. Hollywood does a good job of perpetuating this childhood dream with its movies and shmaltz. The cliches keep being repeated over and over again: "It's A Wonderful Life", "Miracle on 34th Street", "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", or "A Charlie Brown Christmas", "Home Alone", or any of the many many variations of Scrooge in a "A Christmas Carol". In all cases there is the ending - the sense the permeates the story and for which we all wait while watching - where the family comes together, love and goodwill ( a particularly holiday sentiment) triumphs. George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life" questions the meaning of his life and discovers that he is a success because "No man is a failure who has friends." This is the very simple thread that runs through all these movies and is at the core of the holidays: friendship and belonging. Charlie Brown, in a Charlie Brown Christmas starts out wondering why he is so depressed at Christmas. He loses control of the Christmas play, is demoted to finding a Christmas tree. He resists the artificial and finds a pitiful but real tree, which is much ridiculed. But after hearing the Christmas story as told by Linus from the Gospel of St. Luke everyone gathers round and decorates the miserable Charlie Brown tree around which all gather in the end - including Charlie Brown - to sing and unite. In some way or other all these stories end in the same way. The lone figure realizes that he/she is not alone and in the company of friends discovers the meaning of Christmas/the holidays. So there it is: the holidays have this message that cuts two ways: we are saved by our sense of belonging. Yet we don't always feel that we belong and so the holidays come and remind us and prod us to make those connections and console ourselves. We feel disappointed because we can't constantly feel the joy of reconnection and the reassurance of belonging on a day-to-day basis. It is a feeling of returning, and sense of coming home - "I'll Be Home For Christmas" . . . "if only in my dreams". It is a dream and it is one that nobody can ever give up on. Whether or not it has anything whatsoever to do with the Christian story of Christmas it has everything to do with the hope of being delivered from our misery, whether through Christ's birth or through the secular promise of gifts and friends. In either case we want change - we want things to be much better. We want to be with others and to escape our singularity.

Big Frank hopes that all of you out there reach out to your friends and realize that it is one of the most beneficial things that one can do for oneself and for others. It is the way to happiness and that is the core of the holidays; that is why we have holidays: it is a way of reminding ourselves that only with others can we achieve that magic - not only the holiday magic, but the magic of life. We come into this life alone and we leave it alone; but that doesn't mean we have to spend the time in between those mile posts alone. Join hands - that's the holiday spirit.