If you haven’t guessed by now I am one of those women – the Hallmark Channel’s target market. One of those viewers who will watch, hour after hour, the sappy, silly, sometimes romantic, most often cliché, holiday narratives featuring the widowed mother of small children who is afraid to fall in love again, or widowed father who is struggling to take care of his two children who is afraid to fall in love again, or the heartless boss who is Scrooge-like in his hatred for the Christmas season and is afraid to fall in love again. There are all the stock characters, and basic plots, and for some reason I can’t stop watching.
Perhaps it’s because I’m comforted by the resolution of the stories. The widowed parent always finds love. The cruel and apathetic boss becomes empathetic and full of the holiday spirit. The cynical reporter gains faith after covering the story of the town where the holiday spirit never dies. The big city bank does not foreclose on the struggling family-owned farm or the family widget-making factory is saved just before Christmas Day. Miracles happen in this world, at least during the Christmas season.
When I was a little girl I couldn’t wait for the countdown to Christmas to begin. It started December 1st, with the making of the “Christmas Chain” in class. We would spend a few days during arts & crafts cutting red and green construction paper in thin strips, then we’d shape the strips into circles and link them into a chain configuration. We made 24 of those links and attached them to one gold link at the top of the chain. Every day of the month we would cut one link until Christmas arrived and only the gold link was left. For a grade school age child, the ritual served several purposes. Like most traditions and rituals, the Christmas Chain reinforced the cyclical nature of our lives, offered comfort, promoted patience, and alleviated some of the anxiety of waiting for the big day to arrive.
My Christmas story addiction probably started then. The Frank Capra film “It’s A Wonderful Life” was required viewing every December in our home. Every year as a family we would watch the story of what the town of Bedford Falls would have become if George Bailey had never been born. On Christmas Eve, George, played by a young Jimmy Stewart, finds his world crumbling around him with a life seemingly so desperate he contemplates suicide. He had always wanted to leave Bedford Falls, but circumstances and his own good heart caused him to stay. He sacrificed his own dreams to keep the family-run savings and loan afloat and in essence protected the community from an unscrupulous businessman who wants to control the town. As George prepares to jump from a bridge, his guardian angel intercedes; showing him what life would have become for the residents of Bedford Falls if he had never lived.
As an adult, my holiday traditions have become sporadic at best. Every once in a while, I become nostalgic for the traditions and rituals of my past holidays and find myself playing Lou Rawls’ “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” one of my favorite Christmas songs from childhood that I have downloaded on my iTunes, or hanging the stockings from the fireplace mantle, or even sending my husband and son to pick-up a Christmas tree so the house can really smell like Christmas. But what has been consistent is the Christmas story addiction. Even as I sit writing this note, “The Santa Suit” is on the Hallmark Channel starring Kevin Sorbo as the unyielding and obdurate boss who unknowingly switches places with Kris Kringle in a story that must have been pitched as “Freaky Friday” meets “A Christmas Carol.”
Stories inspire. They instruct. As writer Jonathan Gottschall explains as humans we are so addicted to story that we even construct them in our sleep. So I look forward to next year when I will once again be reacquainted with George Bailey, Ebenezer Scrooge, and the hundreds of characters in the dramas and romantic comedies I’ve come to enjoy this time of year. And the resolution, like all good Christmas stories, will remind me why this is the season of joy, faith, compassion, and yes, even miracles.