“The red light on my portaphone blinked not quite in time with the few Christmas lights I’d strung to decorate my spare apartment.”
This is how Jeff Kooistra’s story – “Easter Egg Hunt: A Christmas Story” (ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION & FACT, December 1997) begins. I’ve read this story at least 20 times since it was first published because, for some strange reason, it evokes in me the “true meaning” of Christmas.
No – not a wimpy secular attempt to re-write the meaning of God sending his only Son to Earth to redeem Humans from their sins. [(WARNING: Possibly Irritating (brief) Essay: I’m weary of repeated attempts to accuse Christianity of stealing various and sundry holy days, celebrations, symbols, and traditions. Humans constantly co-opt and adopt concepts from other cultures. Simple example is that hamburgers, a quintessential American food, originated in Germany. Macaroni and cheese was born here, in the US. We’ve coopted fajitas from the Mexican cattle ranges. The California Roll was adapted from sushi rolls in a Japanese restaurant in LA; fortune cookies as well. Most of the people in my part of the US don’t speak Spanish – but have no problem talking about their favorite taco, burrito, and tequila. A personal favorite of this family is popcorn – how much more American can you get than that? Probably not much more, though the land didn’t have that name when the Cochise tribe – or possibly the Aztecs – were using it regularly. We like to steal stuff. All of us. Atheists love to think that atheism is an outgrowth of Modern Scientific Thought, but it’s not. Even Wikipedia confirms its ancient (aka as “dumb savage”) origins…]
The true meaning it evokes is sacrifice – the main character, while he doesn’t make a sacrifice until the end of the story, eventually gives up the grim past he’s held onto since childhood. The anger and apathy has protected the yearning heart, which finally leads him to go out into a blizzard to save a place he originally had a very low opinion of.
A movie version of “A Christmas Carol” [(David Hugh Jones (as David Jones) David Hugh Jones (as David Jones); Writers: Peter Barnes (written for television by), Charles Dickens (novel)] is a classic story of an old man who has…um…walled his heart off with anger and apathy – in his case directed at Christmas. In the end, he…um sacrifices the packed anger because he realizes that it will lead only one place. But even more, his pain and anger and rejection of the sacrifice the Christ made at Christmas would lead not only to his own literal, grim, and friendless death; but to the death of a child. The child wouldn’t have the chance to even MAKE a choice to reject the true meaning of Christmas.
The second…well, the connection may seem tenuous at best until I tell you something about it…The actor who portrays Ebenezer Scrooge is Sir Patrick Stewart, known to science fiction fans the world over as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise D from STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION.
So Ebenezer Scrooge [does anyone out there know what the word “Ebenezer” means? “The place Eben-Ezer, being the name of a stone raised by Samuel to commemorate a victory over the Philistines at Mizpeh (1 Sam. 7:12), from Hebrew eḇen ezar, "stone of help," from eḇen "stone" + ezer "help"...” There are lots of theories about where Ebenezer’s last name came from, but suffice it to say that in the English language, it has become synonymous with “miser” and “mean”], after conversations with time traveling specters, chooses a future more in line a man he once was.
His affliction was an ancient one that the Bible warns against: “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (I Timothy 6:10). Unlike the rest of us, he gets a second chance to alter one of the futures we saw.
He sacrificed; as Jake Morgan in “Easter Egg Hunt…” sacrificed – both men sacrificed their anger (which, I can tell you, is a comfortingly solid thing to hold onto) in order to make a positive change in their world. Ebenezer to save both himself and the life of an innocent; Jake to save both himself and the lives of many innocents. Ultimately, Jesus came to Earth to offer himself as a ransom; to save the lives of all Humanity.
And THAT is both a Christmas and an Easter message for this holiday season.
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