The Most Magical Day of the Year
There was no snow. No matter. The weatherman had said there was a good possibility of some snow, but it was just a good possibility. Susan had hoped, but not really expected it. It was Christmas—the most magical day of the year! No snow; no problem. She glided out of bed, careful not to wake her husband, George.
He would sleep at least another hour. She couldn’t understand it. They’d been up late stuffing the grandkids’ stockings, but come on! This was Christmas. Once a year! She couldn’t wait to see their faces.
No one was up for another hour. Susan’s daughter, Jennifer, came slowly downstairs, rubbing her eyes.
“The casserole will be ready in about twenty minutes,” said Susan, handing her a cup of coffee. “Should we get up the kids?”
“No,” said Susan, yawning. “It was a long day yesterday—the service, and carols, and cookies. And everyone was up late watching the movie.”
“Yeah,” said Susan, turning to hide her disappointment. “I’ll make sure the cinnamon rolls are ready.”
An hour later, Susan watched with delight as her grandson and granddaughter bobbed around the table, snatching pieces of cinnamon roll and yammering loudly about nothing. Precious. But what was she forgetting—was there something?—No, it was nothing.
George carved into a piece of the casserole he had reheated. He smiled. His black coffee steamed from one of their old Christmas mugs. A snowman on a sled with a red handle that got too hot. Susan smiled back, but only with her lips. It was magical, and yet…and yet…there was something missing. Something they needed.
Music! Susan realized. She’d forgotten to put on Christmas music! She swiped urgently at her phone and a few seconds later, Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas jangled through the dining room speaker. The grandkids talked louder.
Before long, the kids were clamoring to open stockings. It was beautiful chaos. Heaps of candy strewn across the floor. Mini stuffed animals, gum, crayons, and socks featuring woodland creatures. Red glowed everywhere and reflected off shiny plastic.
Susan’s own stocking was spilled across her lap, forgotten, as she soaked in her grandkids’ squeals of discovery. Beautiful. But…she was missing something. It was sliding through her hands. Pictures! She needed to be taking pictures of all of this. She felt sick. How could she have forgotten?
Susan scrambled around, crouching, gesturing, arranging.
“Up here! Smile! Smile! Can you show me? Can you show me the socks? No, no, both of you get the socks. George, can you tilt that chair to the side so that it’s not blocking the tree? Good, good.”
It was good, Susan thought, thumbing through the pictures. But not totally. She frowned.
They were unwrapping their second round of presents when it came on Susan again, stronger. You’re missing something. They went through their routine. Everyone opened one present at the same time, then they’d all examine and praise each other’s gifts. Sweet. But it’s slipping away, Susan fretted. The sugar buzz had faded and the room had quieted. A dull energy was seeping in. This wasn’t right. The lighting—her candles!
First, she switched the tree lights to pulse mode. Much better. Gentler. Most of the living room candles were electric and on timers, but Susan had some real ones—red and green Christmas ones she always forgot to light. She remembered this time. She sat and smiled at the flicker. That was the subtle magic that would light the grandkids’ memories.
The pain persisted. Somehow the candles made it worse. Maybe it was too good? Susan wondered. Overly sweet? No, that wasn’t it. It was more of a hollowness, like opening a bag of chips. You know it’s half air, but when you look in, it’s more empty than you imagine.
After lunch, Susan went to the living room to clean up. George had picked up all the wrapping paper. He had his feet up in his chair and was watching football with a Diet Dr. Pepper. Everyone else was in their rooms.
Susan walked to her pile of gifts. She’d gotten a new cookbook. The latest from her favorite chef. She thumbed through some of her breakfast ideas, looking for something she could try tomorrow. This is fun, she thought. She held up a cardigan with flowers and big buttons. Very nice. The grandkids had each given her a framed photo of their school picture. Really thoughtful.
It was over. It wasn’t even two-thirty. It couldn’t be over. There was something they should be doing.
“You’re watching football?” she asked George with irritation, deciding this was the problem.
“Sure.”
“Shouldn’t we watch a Christmas movie? Maybe start something?”
“Later,” George said. “Maybe tonight. Everyone wants to play with their gifts.”
Susan sat down with a sigh.
“I think we forgot something. It feels shorter this year,” she said. “What did we miss?”
George chuckled and patted her hand. “You always feel this way. Everyone had a good time. Don’t worry, it’ll all come around next year.”
That was it, Susan thought with a little smile. Next year. Next year would be better. They’d do more.
Nostalgia and Disillusionment
“If I go with you by my side,” The Killers' Brandon Flowers croons in his heartbroken yearn, “Can it be the way it was?”
For over two decades, the Killers have struck this chord with me better than any other—the painful reckoning of American disillusionment. This Christmas story is a tribute to that same song. How do we reckon with the grandness of our dreams in the cold morning light of a sore back, a stained coffee mug, and zero Nobel Prizes?
Maybe you never wanted a Nobel Prize. Maybe it was just a marriage that lasted, or to share a laugh with your grown child, or to spend a couple months in a Swiss mountain town. But, as Flowers reflects later in the song, “sometimes a dream, it don’t come true.”
I don’t know if there’s any occasion that elicits this feeling more universally than Christmastime. A few years from now, I expect Costco will begin hawking five-foot tall Elmos in Santa caps in mid-March. Yet when December 25 comes around, it’s all so spectacularly…banal. Not that it can’t be good, but the goodness is often overshadowed by a gnawing bewilderment that…this is it? It’s like showing up for a night on the town that turns out to be bowling and fries.
The bitter pill, if you’re like me, is that as you get older, the feeling of Christmas disillusionment bleeds increasingly into daily life. Every year feels further removed from the wonder of childhood—one step further along the irreversible descent into a low-decibel grumble. Christmas just comes as an exclamation mark: Why doesn’t this feel like I remember? Why can’t I recapture that feeling?
Disillusionment is nostalgia pulled forward and lived out in the present. Disillusionment says Life was supposed to be so much more. Then nostalgia offers the proof: See, it says, it was more. Sweeter, fuller, richer. Of course that’s a lie, or a partial truth at best. Nostalgia is your memory’s way of dressing up your past in wedding clothes, with good hair and studio lighting.
Disillusionment is nostalgia pulled forward and lived out in the present.
Nostalgia isn’t all bad—after all, who would want the only way to remember the past to be by reliving it blow by blow? Nostalgia coats your memories in a good deal of butter and allows you to reflect on and savor your past from the safety of your couch. But it always comes with a flavor of sickness—stronger the more you indulge it—the regret that comes from not enjoying it more at the time. If only I’d known then!
In Pilgrim’s Regress, C. S. Lewis’s allegorical autobiography of his journey through different philosophies in search of happiness, he is always searching for an island he saw far off in the sky when he was a child. That initial sight of it filled him with inexpressible longing and delight—a pure, transported wonderment that nothing else he tries comes close to.
Lewis’s spiritual journey is not unique. That’s why Bono sings, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” The sad-sick of nostalgia is real because we have lost something. There is something we’re missing right now—it’s enjoying the full presence of God. If we realize what this missing ingredient is, we’re more than halfway to treating the pain.
There is something we’re missing right now—it’s enjoying the full presence of God.
“Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this,” Ecclesiastes warns (Eccl. 7:10). It’s not that your childhood Christmases held genuinely superior circumstances to the ones you have now. You cannot bring back the magic by gathering the same people and stuffing yourself with the same poundage of KitKats and candycanes. The “magic” was a mind that lost itself in the joy of the moment.
The truth is often that the better an experience is and the better memory it affords afterward the less aware you were of how good it was in that moment. You had some sense of its goodness at the time, but you would have spoiled it had you focused too much on how much you’re enjoying it or not. The happiness of a moment eludes you the moment you start evaluating how much you’re enjoying the moment.
This is why children possess an enormous developmental advantage in experiencing happiness. They have less capacity (and less of a timeline) for reflective comparison. Their mind has to focus more on the present. They do much better than adults, therefore, at simply receiving and responding to what comes.
Brain development and increased reflectiveness is not a curse, but it comes with a stronger shadow of self-absorption we must fight off. Disillusionment comes from an over-focus on your self and your own feelings, rather than simply engaging with the moment in front of you. Disillusionment is a running dialogue with your inner spoiled brat. The more you look at that self, talk to it, pamper it, cater to it, always ask, “Are you happy? Are you happy? Are you happy?”, the more obstinately it will refuse to ever be satisfied.
Disillusionment is a particularly American affliction because it goes hand in hand with the myth of a self-created reality. We “mature” into believing that if I take the right approach, use the right strategies, and employ enough resources, I can construct happiness rather than receive it as a gift. This means the only remedies we can often think of when it comes to unhappiness are to “do more,” and “try harder.”
The gospel solution to disillusionment is self-forgetfulness. If you turn your mind outward to the relationships you receive with Jesus and the people and things around you, you will start receiving other things as well—purpose, joy, gratitude, and significance. You will find the wonder start to return.