My wife just called from the candy shop in town. She’s buying chocolates for friends and family and thought she might buy candy canes to accompany the place settings for Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner. The shop has fabulous chocolate and people come from miles around to buy their chocolate creations, especially during the Christmas season. But they also make great candy canes and they demonstrate those skills every year during the town’s Christmas festival. I’ve watched them make candy canes and tasted the samples while they were still warm. It was an experience that still brings a warm glow and a smile even on the coldest winter nights.
Last year I watched a show on the Discovery channel about a place that specialized in making everything from elaborate baskets to fairy tale castles out of the red and white peppermint candy we usually only see shaped into candy canes. Each creation was more fantastic than the one before and the joy the workers took in crafting these confectionary arts was both obvious and contagious. But it was nothing compared to the delight of the children and parents who gazed upon these wonders in wide-eyed amazement. It made me feel good just to watch.
This time of year is a feast for the senses. It is a time when imagination and creativity take precedence in our lives and we see, if only briefly, the world as it could be if we give in to our better selves. We are reminded of our tremendous ability to inspire and delight by beautiful Christmas displays, elaborate candy creations, clever toys, tantalizing desserts in bakery cases, animated displays in store windows, and acts of human kindness we see everywhere. We ask ourselves why can’t the world be like this all of the time. Why do people suffer needlessly? Why do some people live in want and squalor while others have far more than they need? Why do we pervert our talents to inflict pain and suffering when we have such capacity for compassion and understanding? Why do we do so many terrible things when we can do so much good instead?
We get no real answers to those questions. The world is what it is. We yearn for change but all we get are occasional, brief glimpses of the world we long for. The world remains as it has for centuries despite our best efforts.
If we expect the world to change, I’m afraid we will always be bitterly disappointed because there are a great many obstacles to change, human nature perhaps being chief among them. We may not be able to change the world, but we can change ourselves. And that change may bring about other positive changes. The world did not change in Dickens’ Christmas tale, but Ebenezer Scrooge did after listening to his ghostly visitors, and that was enough to change the lives of those around him for the better. So too may it may be with us.
We can be more patient and understanding. We can avoid becoming angry. We can be more charitable. We can support and encourage those trying to make the world a better place. We can become better human beings and in doing so better our lives and the lives of those around us. Then our dreams of a better world, our visions of sugar plums, may come closer to reality than any promise of change from without.
My pooties insist that I abandon this silliness now and feed them or they will bring about a few changes that may not be so pleasant. I wish you all peace and joy and may your visions of sugar plums, whatever they may be, come to pass.