Choosing me, the Sunday school teacher was confident I wouldn’t blow my lines, because there weren’t any.) (As a kid my only Christmas pageant glory was to get a role in the Magi section. The real news that night at the church was the startling fact that such nativity scenes, after 2,000 years, still happen. Motorists honked as they passed (automotive cheers, it seemed to me, not jeers.) After 2,000 years, believers still go to this trouble on a frigid evening. The players in a nativity, any nativity, gather into themselves a special quality of peace and quiet. The calmness invites other people into it. Christmas has a way of reminding society of the paradox and potential of human life. We’re built to cherish family memories and yet imagine larger beloved communities. ’Tis the season of complicated emotions of love and loss, a hot splicing of momentous Bible passages, haunted childhood images, and yearnings of joy to the world.
The jarring jumble of personal memories includes thunderous snippets from the Book of Isaiah, the jazz trio soundtrack to “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” the scent of candles at crowded Christmas Eve worship, the movie “The Lion in Winter” (a tumultuous royal family Christmas in 1183), seasonal tangerines and brazil nuts on the table, a Handel oratorio on TV, the parents’ gentle banter as we tinseled the tree, my teenage immersion in the Beatles’ Abbey Road (an early gift that year) – all under the grinding constellations above and the churches’ insistent message that we are all little arks of divine purpose in this mortal world. The nativity scene I peeked in on featured some basic human elements – good-humored shepherds, pensive Magi, brave young family positioned at ground zero for world-bending news of a birth.
Strangely what I recall is a glow of light – not a light bulb or string of lights but a glow nevertheless.
I don’t remember inquiring about the electrical circuitry on hand, though the pragmatic shepherds could have told me. I’m content to remember a soft glow and leave it at that, with words from “O Little Town of Bethlehem” trailing along even now: “Yet in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting light/the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”Ĭolumnist Ray Waddle, a writer and editor, is a former Tennessean staffer.This article contains Tenet spoilers. You can read our spoiler-free review here.Ĭhristopher Nolan has a reputation for making complicated, hard to understand movies, but in all honesty, that reputation is unearned.
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