Christmas is over.
All the necessary boxes have been checked: opening presents,
check; lunch or dinner with family, check; Doctor Who Christmas special, check.
And now it is the day after.
In less than a week, a new year will begin.
So now what?
As stressful as the holidays can sometimes seem, they at
least give us a goal. They give us
something to do, whether it be shopping or cooking or otherwise preparing for
the day. In the months leading up to
Christmas there is always something to do.
Watch long marathons of Christmas movies on Lifetime or Hallmark. Make Christmas cookies, decorate the tree,
entertain the children with that creepy little Elf on a Shelf doll.
But after Christmas?
It’s time to reboot. It’s time to
reset and focus on something else.
Yesterday, one of my presents (as per a tradition my dad and
I have), was the latest in the Fantagraphics line of Peanuts books. Twice a year, Fantagraphics publishes two
Peanuts books, each with two years of comic strips. We’re up to 1985 and 1986 most
currently. The publisher’s goal is to
print every Peanuts comic strip ever produced.
So yesterday morning, I took some time to read through the
latest book. In a continuing storyline,
Linus begins building a rock wall.
Why? My guess is he grew up in
the same small town I did where once in third grade, my best friend and I spent
an afternoon smoothing out and polishing rocks we found in the playground on a
larger rock in the playground, all because we had learned about erosion that
week in school.
But as Linus continues to work on his rock wall, he
discovers that it’s providing him therapy, so much so that he comments he might
not even need his security blanket anymore.
His sister, Lucy, says that’s a good thing, because she has cemented his
blanket in the wall.
Linus freaks out.
Charlie Brown tries to offer comfort, by explaining what Linus, himself,
already knows that building the wall is all the therapy he needs, that if he
just adds a rock to the wall every time he feels stressed, he’ll ultimately
feel much better.
Linus’s response? “There aren’t that many rocks in the
world!”
I marked the page.
How often do we feel like Linus?
How many times do we feel (in a completely non-paranoid way) that the
world is conspiring against us? That
even when we find something worthwhile to do, it will never be enough to ease
the stress and sadness and worry in our lives.
As I was driving home from my grandmother’s yesterday
afternoon, I saw a cop car up ahead on a side street with his lights
flashing. The car in front of me and I
slowed to a stop to let him pull out, but he didn’t move, so we wound up
driving on through. But when I looked in
my rearview mirror a moment later, I saw that the deputy had pulled out and was
now behind me, at a distance, but closing fast with his lights still flashing.
So I eased the car onto the shoulder and waited for him to
pass me.
Much to my shock, he pulled in right behind me. I quickly put my own car into park. Normally, my heart would stop at seemingly
being pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy, but I was so confused, all I could do
was watch in my mirror and wait. I hadn’t
been speeding. I hadn’t run a stoplight
or stop sign.
It was only seconds, but it felt like an eternity. I watched as the deputy turned off his lights
and a second later drove away.
I spent the rest of the day (and obviously this morning)
trying to figure it out. Was it some
sort of Christmas prank? My mom said he
was probably running my plate. But he
wasn’t behind me long enough to do that.
It was crazy.
If I were Linus, I’d add another rock to the wall and
another for the disability company that still hasn’t paid me and another for
the ennui that follows Christmas and another for the cloudy skies and too much
wind.
And if I kept doing this, I’d probably find, like Linus,
that there aren’t enough rocks in the world.
So instead, I need to take the Peppermint Patty approach.
Perpetual D- student Peppermint Patty writes this for her
homework: “What I did on my Christmas
Vacation. I went outside and looked at
the clouds. They formed beautiful
patterns and beautiful colors. I looked
at them every morning and every evening.
Which is all I did on my Christmas Vacation. And what’s wrong with that?”
Patton Oswalt, in his introduction to this latest Peanuts
book, writes, “Charles Schulz wrote a fifty year-long psychological
autobiography starring a bald kid and a sentient dog.”
If we look at all the Peanuts characters, we can find
aspects of Schulz’s personality, but also all aspects of our own. There’s Lucy, the crab, Linus, the
philosopher, Peppermint Patty, the optimist, Charlie Brown, the worrier and
Snoopy, the dreamer.
As I look to my own future, I must recognize these traits in
myself and use them in the best possible ways.
There are times for worrying and building rock walls and there are times
for dreaming and staring at the clouds.
There is a season for each.
Christmas Day is over, but the season is not. Now is not the time to add rocks to our
wall. Now is the time to remember that
this is a season of hope (and I’m reminded in Pastor Debbie’s Christmas Eve
sermon) and also faith and love.
So maybe I’ll take a minute to stare at the clouds today and
remember that in a world where there will never be enough rocks, there is a God
who loves us.
