Gifts We Give Each Other

The tree lighting in the Ram Pasture Friday evening will serve as a kind of fuse-lighting for those of us who stumble into the holiday season with world weariness and nagging questions about the merits of running ourselves ragged each year chasing down the sometimes-elusive spirit of this season. Show up at 6:30 pm (allow a little time to park), and by the time the tree lights are switched on at 7, you will once again understand what it’s all about.

Somewhere between the squinting in the darkness to make out the faces of friends and neighbors, and the ceremonial piercing of that darkness by the illuminated tree, we find our place in the crowd, we find our voice (if not our pitch) in familiar carols, and we find our hearts opening for the advent of something important. This weekend we may fulfill some of that expectation of great things to come with a full slate of holiday activities, from the Christmas Boutique in the St Rose Parish Hall starting Friday evening, and a breakfast with Santa Claus (or Rotarians, if you prefer) Saturday morning, to another tree lighting in the center of Sandy Hook at dusk Saturday and a choral concert in the Meeting House on Sunday afternoon. Evening performances of A Christmas Carol will be staged in The Little Theatre on Orchard Hill Road.

The Holiday Festival benefiting Newtown Youth & Family Services on Sunday will embrace the center of town and cater to every festive impulse we might have at this time of year with arts and crafts, a Victorian tea, dancing sugar plum fairies, gingerbread houses, decorated trees and even more elaborately decorated homes, and, of course, a famous red elf.

This holiday weekend in Newtown never fails to warm and invigorate us when so much of the natural world is once again beaten down by the cold and the dark of December. Despite all the yuletide claptrap that is visited upon us by media and marketers, who unabashedly wrap every conceivable product, from slippers to SUVs, in phony seasonal sentiment, we can still find something authentic in Newtown’s holiday celebrations. And it is not something packaged and presented to us. It something that grows out of us: people meeting other people on the streets, in homes and churches, and even in an ancient livestock pasture, to sing to each other, to feed each other, to entertain each other, not for our own benefit but for the benefit of others.

We hear it may snow this weekend. What a perfect wrapping for these gifts we give each other.