“Christmas is a piece of one’s home that one carries in one’s heart.”
Freya Stark
“Christmas is a piece of one’s home that one carries in one’s heart.”
Freya Stark
BY ATHLING2001
I’ve always believed that, to start a war, one must be a monster. That, however, was before I realized the worse monsters wore the best human faces. Don’t give me the Wolfman, Frankenstein, the monsters in the closet or under the bed. They are mild compared to those whose faces have contorted into human form. Hitler. Lenin. Papa Doc. We all know now what they were. They never hid the monster. Were they were monsters from the first, born monsters?
If not, how did they become monsters? The Wolfman was bitten by another werewolf; Frankenstein was built by a mad scientist; monsters in the closet and under the bed came from the darkest reaches of a child’s imagination. Or, at least, from the darkest reaches of man’s imagination. I don’t believe children dreamed these monsters. They came from somewhere else, from millions of years of human consciousness, from endless darkness outside the warm circle of a fire.
Are monsters just those who are more closely connected to this vast well of memory? Was Hitler born a monster or did he become one? How about Jeffrey Dahmer? Could a child be born with the need to destroy, to eat flesh, to degrade another person to nothing? Can a child be born a dictator?
Or were all the wars this world has seen the prologue to the monsters to come? Did the hate and bitterness and rage from time unmentioned predispose some children to be born with emptiness in their souls?
What of the Grinch? How did he come into his grinchiness? Birth? Nature? Nurture? And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could stand in a circle, holding hands, singing joy and love and peace to alter the heart of the coldest monster? To fill their souls with that same joy and love and peace.
But we can’t. It doesn’t work that way. The Grinch is made-up. Fiction. A story to teach us joy and love and peace overcome all evil. But I don’t think they do, not in the real world. The world is getting darker and harder when one would think the opposite should be true. Shouldn’t our growing knowledge of the universe – the increases in food and medicine and all things human – make the world better? Shouldn’t we care about global warming and starving children? Don’t we realize that it is our world we are killing? Or are we all born with something of the monster inside? Are monsters god’s dice toss, watching to see which way we go? Or are wars and monsters just fragments of a collected dream?
So which do you think comes first? The monster or the war?
Or are we all both?
“Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won’t make it white.”
Bing Crosby
“Christmas is forever, not for just one day. For loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away.”
Norman Wesley Brooks
“Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.”
Janice Maeditere
“Peace on earth will come to stay, when we live Christmas every day.”
Helen Steiner Rice
“Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.”
Winston Churchill
“Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.”
G.K. Chesterton
“Christmas is the day that holds all time together.”
Alexander Smith
You must be logged in to post a comment.