By Stan Caldwell
stanmansportsfan.com
“They said there’ll be snow at Christmas
They said there’ll be peace on Earth
Hallelujah Noel, be it heaven or hell
The Christmas we get we deserve.”
I Believe In Father Christmas
Lyrics by Greg Lake, performed by Emerson, Lake & Palmer
—
I have always been struck by that last line of the Christmas classic by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, how we always get the holiday we deserve.
I’ve come to believe that, that we get out of Christmas what we put into it, and I’m not talking about spending money for gifts or time into celebration.
Rather, I believe you get out of Christmas what you put into your life over the previous 12 months.
If you put rancor and bitterness into your life over the course of a year, your Christmas is likely to be shallow, superficial. But if you put into your life a giving spirit and a positive attitude, your Christmas will have meaning and purpose, beyond just giving and receiving gifts.
Christmas, with New Year’s Day coming exactly one week later, is a time for discovering that meaning, of divining one’s purpose in life. It is a time of reflection over the actions of the previous year and a renewal of one’s spirit heading into a new year.
Reflection and renewal have rarely been more important – or needed – than at the end of 2020. This has been such a difficult year for everyone, and I don’t know of anyone who will be sorry to see this year in the rearview mirror.
Everything has centered around the Covid-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 300,000 and left many thousands more seriously disabled. And that’s just in the United States alone. The global toll from this disease is even greater.
America has also struggled through a divisive presidential election campaign that has strained our democratic traditions almost to the breaking point. There are many who argue that the U.S. is more politically divided than at any time since the end of the Civil War in 1865.
It seems like our world is falling apart, bursting at the seams, with countrymen – and not just Americans – seeing other countrymen as enemies, where we can’t even agree on how to best combat the pandemic, with many arguing that there is no pandemic at all.
And the worst part? There is no guarantee that 2021 will be any better.
Yet, through the doom and gloom, there are little specks of light that have been peeking through as the year has progressed. On a personal level, 2020 has not been a total disaster, and in some ways, it’s been a very good year.
Sure, I didn’t get to see any musical shows which have been a big part of life for me and my wife in years past. No Dead and Company at Jazz Fest, no Zombies concert for which we had tickets, no live musical performances of any sort.
In February, before the pandemic started getting real, we did get to see Wishbone Ash, which was my very favorite band when I was in high school, and the Guess Who, who played at the first concert I ever saw, back in 1970.
I especially regret not getting to see the Taj Mahal show scheduled for late April at the Saenger Theater in Hattiesburg. I was supposed to go with the older of my two sons, the one with whom I share much in musical tastes.
Nevertheless, there have been virtual shows to watch, repeat showings of great performances from past years to enjoy, and I’ve dusted off my late mother-in-law’s electric piano and begun to try relearning some of my skills from when I took piano lessons as a kid.
True, there were no high school or college baseball games in the spring, little in the way of sports of any kind through much of the summer, and what there has been in the months since things got restarted has simply not been the same.
I mean, watching sports on TV this year has been a little hollow, about like the piped-in fan noise in mostly empty stadiums that has been the case for a majority of games and events.
Still, there were some moments where it almost seemed like things were normal. Mississippi had an exciting high school football season against the odds, including some of the best championship games I’ve ever seen, and that was a blessing.
On the home front, for a long stretch of weeks during the spring, when everything was locked down, there wasn’t much to do, and a dangerous sort of ennui started to take hold of our lives.
So, my wife and I decided to take use our time more wisely, taking advantage of limited entertainment options by working in the yard, exercising and getting on a proper diet. The result is we have both lost a significant amount of weight.
I believe we’re physically stronger and healthier than we’ve been in years, and while neither one of us are particularly vain about our appearance, we are both happier about our looks than we’ve been in some time.
All of this has been a kind of renewal, of appreciation for health and fitness, and a commitment to making the best of the time we have left.
More to the point, I feel like I appreciate all the little things in life more. We have, as a society, taken a lot of things for granted, and having those things taken away suddenly has left a lot of us spiritually and emotionally unmoored.
At my house, we have chosen to take the misfortunes, the deprivations of 2020 and turn them into positives.
I don’t mean to diminish the troubles of those who are struggling economically or who have lost loved ones through this pandemic.
I understand that I am immensely blessed this holiday season to have good health and a positive attitude, something that has not always been the case in my life, as I have battled through periods of clinical depression.
I have been blessed that my family has thus far avoided contact with Covid-19, that the members of my extended family who have a brush with the virus have recovered with no lingering effects.
I have been blessed to still have the wisdom of both of my parents, who though they have each had their health issues in their advanced age – Mom turned 90 in November and Dad is 89 – are still of relatively sound mind.
I am blessed to be living in what I am convinced is one of the best cities in the country, doing things with my life that I still enjoy, such as watching young people compete on the field of play and writing stories about them.
Finally, I am blessed to be able to celebrate Christmas with my small family – so many others don’t have that privilege – and I am looking forward to ringing out the old year and welcoming the new with that family.
On New Year’s Eve, weather permitting, we’ll have a large bonfire, accompanied by some good old rock and roll, and symbolically cast into the fire all the negativity and ills of the past year.
Like the phoenix of legend, I hope that out of the ashes of that fire, a better year emerges, we can put 2020 behind us and look ahead to a better year in 2021.
Earlier this week, we watched in fascination at an astronomical phenomenon, a confluence of Jupiter and Saturn that only happens about every 400 years. Many have said this was the origin of the Christmas star that supposedly led the Magi to the Christ child.
It was a reminder that for all of life’s troubles, there are still things that are eternal, things that can still inspire awe and things that leave one ever more appreciative of God’s creations. It was a gift from the heavens this Christmas season that we should not take lightly.
So, with that, I want to wish everyone the best possible holiday season, a Merry Christmas and a happy, productive New Year.
Stan Caldwell is veteran sportwriter with more than 35 years in the Hattiesburg area.
