Christmas Day recalls magic and wonder of childhood

This Christmas afternoon is passing languidly without the excitement, noise and stimulation usually associated with the holiday when children are involved. Children are absent from this household, so the opening of a few gifts "late" (i.e., after dawn) on Christmas morning was a quiet affair. Later this afternoon, we expect to see grandchildren who will likely be still hyper-kinetic from the "magic" of Christmas and the stimulation of too much candy.

As a young father, I discovered that Christmas can be as wonderful for a parent as it is for a child. I watched my children's excitement, their wonder, their joy and found it infectious. I found a form of Christmas joy exceeding a child's impatient enthusiasm.

But some aspects of Christmas cannot be replicated in a mature mind, bereft of wonder at the unknown and credulous of everything irrational and impossible connected with Christmas. At an 11 p.m. church service last night, I recalled my childhood eagerness to go to bed soon after sunset, allowing Santa plenty of time to visit. As a child, I would never have been up so late, thereby risking a "passover" by Santa, and my children followed the same rule. Last night I looked into the night sky, not searching for tell-tale trails from a magical sleigh and flying reindeer, but seeing evidence of today's weather. Christmas Eve was like any other night — a concept that would have drawn my strongest argument as a child.

In losing our belief in things magical and mystical, in losing our credulousness for any exciting tale told by adults, we have matured into an existence missing the essence of wonder. Children enjoy their myths, and so do adults. The creation stories of every culture are far more interesting than the dry cosmology of a Big Bang theory or the formation of galaxies. We need these stories to fill the hollows of our soul, just as a child needs his wonder at Christmas and other times to develop his mind.