By DONALD DeMARCO
The child has no interest in politics. This is a great blessing. Nor does he have any interest in public opinion or social conventions. These are also blessings. The child is free to be himself, though this can be a matter of concern for his parents. Using the living-room wall for his crayon mural, or experimenting with food from his highchair, do not meet with parental approval.
Obviously, the child must grow up and take his rightful place in the practical world.
Because the child is innocent of adult conventions, he looks at life solely through his own eyes. A weed is not something to be removed, but a spectacle to be enjoyed. A bug is not to be exterminated, but looked upon as a charming little creature that somehow can move on its own.
Everything in nature is new, fresh, fascinating, and miraculous.
William Wordsworth alludes to the innocence of the child in his classic ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight.
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it has been of yore: Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more!
To the child “the earth and every common sight seemed appareled in celestial light.” This vision, however, is lost as the child matures into adulthood. We may pine for the recovery of this loss, but in vain. The adult realizes, with sadness, that:
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
Christ welcomed the special gifts of the child when He said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these” (Matt. 19:14).
Heaven is a place of restored innocence and the complete absence of worldly pride. Christ was advising His followers not to take themselves too seriously. A child has no interest in fame. Sigmund Freud contended that wealth holds no interest for a child because it does not correspond to an infantile wish.
The occasion was the internment of my father. Family members conformed to the proper demeanor of this moment of solemnity, except for my daughter’s firstborn, a child of three who was named Marion after her maternal grandmother. For her, the cemetery was not a cemetery but an Elysian Field where flowers grow. The occasion was not austere, but merely a family gathering. And the dandelions she plucked were not dandelions, but beautiful flowers worthy of being presented as a precious gift for her grandmother.
And so, my maverick granddaughter, without coaching, presented a bouquet of freshly picked dandelions to her 100-year-old namesake who was sitting in a wheelchair and, because she was not wearing her glasses, mistook them for something more grandiose. The gift and the thanks were real, and that is what counted.
The Eucharist is far more than bread and wine, though some may see them as only that. It is far more grandiose, being the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. When we get too caught up in the price of things and their market value, we can easily lose sight of their real worth.
Allan Bloom, celebrated author of The Closing of the American Mind, said, “I bless a society that tolerates and supports an eternal childhood for some, a childhood whose playfulness can, in turn, be a blessing to society.” It was Bloom’s contention that student pride had closed their minds to the truth of things. Hence, according to Bloom, for most students, everything was relative.
Christmas is the birth of a child. It is also the birth of innocence. In its own, perhaps subtle, way, it urges us to see once again the glory of things, that what appears to the eye as a mere babe, can be infinitely more than that. Christmas urges us to gain a glimpse of Heaven, for that is where the Child will lead us.
Have a Merry Christmas, yes, but, more important, have a Blessed Christmas.
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