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Saturday, December 11, 1999
Kirby: My Wish --Snow In My Relatives On Christmas Saturday, December 11, 1999
BY ROBERT KIRBY SALT LAKE TRIBUNE COLUMNIST
If God meant for Christmas to be a time of peace, how come he gave us relatives?
It is a fair question. The one day of the year when you should be able to expect a little peace and quiet is the precisely the day when you drive yourself nuts to meet family expectations and traditions.
My idea of a great Christmas is to stay home, eat, listen to music and maybe play a little cutthroat poker with my daughters and their boyfriends.
A perfect Christmas would include a horrendous blizzard that made road travel impossible.
In fact, that is what I want for Christmas this year -- a blizzard that traps me and everyone I'm related to inside their home for a silent, restful 24 hours.
Christmas ought to be a time to put your life in perspective and muster some hope for the coming year. It's a good time to think about Jesus and the message of love that he brought to the world.
I think about Jesus on Christmas. I ponder His message of peace. I also ponder the fact that if none of Jesus' relatives came to visit him when he was born, how come I have to drive all over creation on Christmas Day and visit mine?
It's because mankind has lost the true meaning of Christmas. Proof can be found in Christmas manger scenes. With the exception of Mary and Joseph, everyone who came to visit Jesus was a perfect stranger.
You see donkeys, sheep and camels in manger scenes, but no aunts and uncles, and certainly nobody who brought Jesus a gift that year just because they picked his name out of a hat.
It isn't the Lord's fault that we've strayed from the true meaning of Christmas. It's strictly an earthly problem. The reason for it is that every family has tradition mongers who make Christmas insufferable for everyone to make it perfect for themselves.
Usually it's an irritating sister or some looney aunt insisting that Christmas function according to a prescribed set of pagan rules that would have boggled the mind of J.R. Tolkien. They use tears, guilt and shrill demand to get what they want.
According to this Christmas sheriff, you are a nasty scrooge if you don't think driving 90 miles to nibble summer sausage on Ritz crackers among people with whom you share little more than DNA isn't just the best Christmas you ever had.
It's worse in Utah, where most families are the size of military units. All over the state on Christmas morning, people gather up their kids and converge on the old homestead to visit ma and pa.
The homeward bound jam the freeways, making a Christmas commute 10 times more dangerous than normal weekday rush hour. Mainly because every car seems to contain children wired on enough sugar and loot to make them glow like nuclear reactors.
Who wants to spend Christmas in an overheated house with grandkids careening off the walls and adults yelling to be heard over the top of the noise, and nothing to eat but Kool-aid and mince pie?
I hope this Christmas is different. I hope the spirit of Christ's love descends all over the world and turns the hearts of everyone to a message of peace and harmony.
And I hope it snows like hell.
Page Modified December 18, 1999