377 days, Blog #107 snow and Christmas are okay

I walked out of the theater tonight (the theater that has already been Christmased inside) into the darkness of Common Street.  Not total darkness.  There are actually street lights in the center of Barre.  And the theater has a spotlight on its sign announcing the next play.  It took a bit – and the validation of my company who preceded me out the door – to see in the shadow of the light that it was, in fact, snowing.

And I admit, I got that burst of six year old glee.  The first snowfall of the year.  Magic cascading down from the clouds obscuring the stars.  I smiled inside… and kind of wrestled with it outside.

All day long people at work made that conversation you do when you don’t really have anything better to talk about, so let’s complain about the weather.  And it was all pretty much a how dare you Mother Nature, it’s going to snow tonight kind of attitude.  It’s an easy sort of eyeroll and begrudging with which to go along.  I mean, snow.  Who likes it?

A six year old.  A six year old who believes in magic.  And play.  And the beauty of something that falls from the sky and glows in the light of a spotlight cast against a building.

I am kind of amazed that we are already at the point in 2014 where Thanksgiving is two weeks away.  It seems as though I should still be leaving the Museum with daylight in the sky and 60 degree temperatures (although the latter did happen a couple times this week).  But Thanksgiving?  Already?  Wasn’t it just Labor Day?

But just in case I forget what November is about, Facebook posts keep reminding me with harsh words or a cartoon of a turkey shoving a finger rudely in Santa’s face saying November belongs to him.  Yes, that speaks so much of the spirit of giving thanks. 

I don’t get it.  Why do we have to segregate Thanksgiving and Christmas?  Why do we have to be so miserable about the anticipation of a holiday that was the penultimate of days when we were six?

I thought about that as I got in my car and turned on the windshield wipers to clear off the rapidly melting snowflakes.  Why do we resent the approach of something we know is coming every year at this time?  The inevitable events that will occur when the clocks turn back and the hours of darkness outnumber those of light?  At what point did we lose that six year old’s awe and wonder at the magic of these things that could never come soon enough… and start to begrudge the hint of them coming too soon?

It’s a choice.  One in which I have indulged and may again.  But now, I think I’m in a place where I would rather empathize with the six year old instead of think like a 30 something who freaks out about getting to work on slippery roads or how it is just the beginning of a long haul and having to use up my oil and firewood.  How Christmas is an annoying explosion of red, green, and glitter all trying to sell cheap plastic shit that is contradictory to the necessities of the hurting world right now.  Yes, I could think of that.  

Or I could think of magic.

Credit yellowcloud via Flickr Creative Commons