The holiday season has snuck up on me. Again. Time to survey the lists of errands and expenditures for which I’m sure I have neither the time nor money. How can I hope to keep up? Some overachiever up the road had his yard decked out in lit-up reindeer before Thanksgiving, for goodness’ sake.
These signs of impending Christmas also mean my annual reviews of various and sundry oh-so-familiar holiday shows are just around the corner. Not another “Nutcracker”! Yet one more production of “Christmas Carol”? What could I possibly have to say about the latest incarnation of “It’s A Wonderful Life?”
Bah humbug! I’d rather settle down for a long winter’s nap. So I trudge off to the theater or the grand auditorium, feeling like Scrooge himself. On my way, I snarl about the season’s endless commercial trappings that make me feel like I live in Pottersville.
But then I enter the theater, and that’s when it happens – again. The magic. The sense of transport. The music swells, the curtain goes up, the familiar pirouetting snowflakes appear, the lines I can recite from heart make me feel as redeemed and renewed as Ebenezer Scrooge or George Bailey themselves.
It’s as though I got that nap and I’ve woken up, like Scrooge on Christmas morning, laughing giddily. That’s what these shows do to me. There’s an involuntary lifting of the heart that always happens, no matter how cynical or disaffected I felt when I entered.
Tchaikovsky’s majestic music overtakes me, and I close my eyes to envision the waltzing fairies, or the surreal expanding Christmas tree which makes of the parlor it sits in a sort of wonderland accessed through a rabbit hole.
I am not alone in my rapture. My daughter, who has accompanied me to “Nutcracker” since she was a preschooler dolled up in velveteen, loves this annual cavalcade of exotic dance. When she was small, she was more taken with Mother Ginger in the land of sweets, and all those gymnastically inclined orphans hiding under her skirt. Several years and many ballet lessons later, she, like Clara, is coming of age herself, and she turns her awe to the romantic pas de deux.
Sitting through these Christmas productions I reap wonderful, unexpected benefits. Not the least of which is getting up to leave after the last curtain call, only to see middle-age men dabbing at their eyes. Sure, they might try to pass the tears off as the result of some environmental irritant.
But I know in truth they were touched, as were we all, by the story of one George Bailey, redeemed by a certain angel second class, buoyed by his community’s support and overjoyed at the homecoming of his brother Harry, who proclaims a toast: “To my big brother George, the richest man in town.”
The holiday shows have done it again. They’ve kicked off the festive season within, and let me know I’m ready for it now.
Yes, let the season begin. Bring on the decorations, yes those endless boxes of decorations. Bring on the cooking and cleaning. Bring on the shopping and the wrapping. Bring on the gathering clan. I’m ready for it now. Like George Bailey, I want to live again.
I walk out of the theater into the crisp, frosty night air, the strains of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” still ringing in my ear. Indeed, I half expect to find Zuzu’s petals in my pocket.
Holiday arts &entertainment
Options for holiday entertainment are practically unlimited. We have assembled an overview of the entire five-week season in today’s A&E section.
In the weeks to come, we will highlight events in the weeks in which they occur.
If we missed your event or performance, please e-mail Tanya Sampson at tsampson@heraldnet.com or fax 425-339-3459.
Holiday arts &entertainment
Options for holiday entertainment are practically unlimited. We have assembled an overview of the entire five-week season in today’s A&E section.
In the weeks to come, we will highlight events in the weeks in which they occur.
If we missed your event or performance, please e-mail Tanya Sampson at tsampson@heraldnet.com or fax 425-339-3459.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
