On the Christmas Eve attitude I hope we can all find a way to embrace more
fully.
It’s a cliché, but having spent these last five Christmas Eves with boys
who were old enough to know what was coming, I can say with certainty that it’s
one of the most accurate clichés out there: nothing exemplifies excitement and
anticipation like a kid on Christmas Eve. I know the boys would disagree, and
so would my youthful self, but honestly I think that the excitement is the best
part of the holiday—better than the presents themselves, better even than the
family togetherness (that’s good, but hopefully not unique to the holiday), and
definitely better than the inevitable letdown when all is opened and moving
back toward normal. To me, the magic of Santa is likewise caught up in the
anticipation, and the traditions that go with it—hanging stockings, putting out
the milk and cookies, preparing the house in that time before anything has
happened and when it’s all still in the future to which we look forward so
excitedly.
I don’t want to speak for everybody here—or at least, as always, I’d love
to hear your own thoughts, even (no, especially) if they entirely disagree with
mine—but I think we’ve largely lost the possibility for that kind of
anticipation, as a society. Obviously it’s always been and always would be
harder for adults to feel such pure excitement than for kids, given all the
things we carry around in our heads and lives, the hopes and pressures, the
responsibilities and worries, the memories and baggage. But I also feel as if
the constant stream of bad or threatening news, the very real effects of
recession and climate change and political and cultural and social divisions,
the way in which any triumph or positive moment seems immediately and
inevitably greeted by a backlash of naysaying and anonymous internet trolling,
just so many aspects of our 21st century moment make it very hard to
feel, or at least to keep, an individual (much less a communal) sense of
anticipation and excitement about what the future might bring.
And that’s a very bad thing. I’ve written many, many times here about my current
book project on hope, and at the end of the day that’s what hope is:
anticipation and excitement that the future might be good, might be better, might
be what it ideally could be. So AmericanStudies Elves, today’s wish is that we
can find a way, as a nation, to get back to Christmas Eve-level anticipation
and excitement about the future, at least sometimes and in some ways. How we do
that is obviously another and a tough question—I believe, as the book will argue,
that it comes at least in part from a more accurate awareness of our past, of
where we’ve been, of who we are. But as with any positive change, part of it
will also just be admitting the possibility, recognizing that we can and should
strive for such excitement, that there’s nothing wrong with believing at night in
the magic of a next morning on which our wishes can come true.
Next wish tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Responses to this wish? Wishes
of your own you’d share with the Elves?
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