12/25/2023
I've posted this several times on Christmas Day through the years. It still rings true, possibly now more than ever.
In the classic 1988 movie “Scrooged”, Bill Murray plays a jaded television Producer named Frank Cross. The film, a parody based on the Charles Dickens classic, sees Frank Cross as he is visited by three spirits. At the end, Frank makes a statement about society during the holidays: “It's Christmas Eve! It's... it's the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we... we... we smile a little easier, we... w-w-we... we... we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be!” I think the key word in all of this is “hope”.
Pandora, according to the myth told by Hesiod, opened a jar (or “box”, as it’s been mistranslated). As she did this, she released all of the evils and diseases that have plagued humanity through the ages, leaving only hope inside once she closed it again. A later version told by the same author indicates that she reopened the jar and allowed hope to flutter free like a moth into the world, carrying with it its healing touch.
The biblical definition of hope is "confident expectation." Other world religions don’t necessarily subscribe to Christmas but do have positions on hope. Islam teaches that we should never lose hope, as do followers of Judaism. Buddhism teaches that hope is the antithesis of doubt and that false hope draws us away from the present moment, damaging our peace. Atheists profess the need to do something which adds to the collective good as their expression of hope. Nietzsche writes, “Hope is the evil of evils because it prolongs man’s torment.” His premise is that, by depending on hope rather than accepting reality, we make the suffering worse.
We live in a world where truth has become much like the desert’s shifting sand. We have independent news, mainstream news and fake news, all reports rife with contradictions. Allegations. Insinuations. False expectations. When all is said and done, what we have left to us is confident expectation, or hope. Ponder for a few hours this Christmas season, what do you hope we might be? What can we do to make it so? Let’s not just practice peace…let’s perfect it.
Merry Christmas and happy holiday to you all!
