The Fantastical Life of the Child
It’s a cozy Christmas Eve at the Stahlbaum’s house which is decorated with Christmas ornaments, wreaths, stockings, mistletoe and in the center of it all, a majestic Christmas tree. As the family prepares for their annual Christmas party, their children, Fritz and Clara, wait anxiously. When the guests appear, the party picks up with dancing and celebration. The toymaker arrives with an air of mystery and gives presents to the children.
Fritz is given a beautiful drum, but Clara is given the best gift of all, the Nutcracker. Fritz grows jealous, snatches the Nutcracker from Clara and plays a game of toss with the other boys. It isn't long until the Nutcracker breaks. Clara is upset, but the toy is fixed and a guest makes a small bed under the Christmas tree for her injured Nutcracker.
The party ends. As Clara’s family retires to bed, she checks on her toy one last time and falls asleep under the Christmas tree with the Nutcracker in her arms.
At the stroke of midnight Clara wakes up to a frightening scene. The house, the tree and the toys seem to be getting larger. Out of nowhere large mice dressed in army uniforms, led by the Mouse King, begin to circle the room while the toys and Christmas tree come to life. Clara’s Nutcracker groups the soldier toys into battle formation and fights the mouse army. The Mouse King traps the Nutcracker in the corner, and the Nutcracker can’t overcome the Mouse King’s strength. Clara makes a desperate move to save her Nutcracker by hitting the Mouse King in the head with her shoe. The Nutcracker takes advantage of the stunned Mouse King and claims victory. The mice army carries away their King.
Clara and the Nutcracker fall back into the bed as angels hover over their heads. The bed turns into a magical floating sleigh. The Nutcracker is transformed into a human prince. He gets on and he and Clara sleigh through a snowy forest where the snowflakes turn into dancing maidens.
After their magical journey through the snow forest, they come to the Land of Sweets. Clara can’t believe her eyes; ladyfinger mountains topped with whipped cream, sweetly glazed flowers and buttercream frosting everywhere she looks. Upon their arrival, they are greeted by the Sugar Plum Fairy. As they reenact the night’s events, the Sugar Plum Fairy becomes impressed with Clara’s bravery and the Nutcracker’s heroism. In their honor, the Sugar Plum Fairy takes them inside the Candy Castle and throws a lavish festival. They are treated like royalty and presented with every imaginable dessert. And then, the dancing begins.
Hot coco dances to trumpets and castanets. A giant gingerbread house, opens her skirt and eight little gingerbread children circle around her. Flowers enter to the tune of the harp dancing in mesmerizing patterns as a single Dewdrop floats above them. The Sugar Plum Fairy then enters the room, lighter than air to complete the evening. Everyone bids Clara and the Nutcracker Prince farewell as she wishes the adventure would never end. He tells her it won’t, as long as she has eyes to see it. Clara wakes up the next morning under the Christmas tree with her Nutcracker still in her arms.
The Nutcracker Suite is a fantasy. A famous fantasy. A fantasy depicted as if from the mind of a child, but written by an adult and every year at this time, thousands of us revisit it. Large dance companies report as much as 40% of their income each year is generated from this story alone. Interpreted in hundreds of ways in countless venues, it’s a perfect window into the charm of the Christmas season. It’s about children who enter a fantastical world with dancing and gifts and magic, accompanied by music that removes us from the ordinary and re-places us in the extraordinary, a world people around the globe can and do return to year after year.
Fantasy is why Christmas is so popular as a holiday. The Christmas season has many iconic stories, each pointing to something magical, something outside the ordinary. In It’s a Wonderful Life, a man is allowed to experience an alternative time line in which he was never born, and discovers that he is necessary in the world, that his work has been transformative for an entire town. We’re entranced in A Miracle on 34th Street when a single mother, her utilitarian daughter and a lawyer take in a man who claims to be Santa. The relationship turns into a visitation worthy of Scripture as this stranger enchants them, opening them to the possibility of a truth greater than what we can see. In Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by a ghost and three spirits who fly him through time and space giving him a chance to reflect on who he was, who he has become and the direction his life is headed, all of which inspire him to recommit to his earlier values becoming the best version of himself.
And, of course, at the center of the Christmas season is the story of Santa Claus, that jolly old man who delivers gifts to every child on the planet over the course of one night with the aid of flying reindeer, a story told famously in the early 19th century classic ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and retold again and again in millions of households each December. ‘Tis the season for a little magic.
Even the Birth of Jesus story has a fantastical element to it. A single woman impregnated by god delivers a baby in a barn and three wise men follow the north star to bring gifts for this light brought into the world. An event that happened in the spring is celebrated in the dark of winter because that’s the setting for a dream. I’d like to suggest it’s the magic of this story that has sparked so many other fantastical stories, each one equally delightful and enchanting.
I grew up in an inter-faith home. My Jewish mother got cranky every year when we’d put up the Christmas tree and she stayed in the kitchen or would get in our way with a broom or vacuum trying to keep the living room neat while we’d tear through boxes of ornaments or toss tinsel on the tree and the each other. As a very little kid, I didn’t notice her bad mood because my father’s joy was too bright to be dimmed by her anxiety. As a teenager, though, I really tuned into her dissatisfaction on what was otherwise a joyous family tradition of tree trimming. (I’m sure I greeted her with a few “Come on mom, you’re ruining everything” statements.) But as an adult, I discovered something deeper. My mother loved Christmas. She was annoyed at herself for enjoying it so much, for humming those carols to herself while hiding away in the kitchen. And then I noticed, she wasn’t hiding as much as she was making us snacks to share while we worked and dinner for the family afterwards. In fact, once my sister and I started our own families, my father suggested they don’t need to do a big tree every year and it was my mother who insisted it wasn’t Christmas without it. And after he was too sick to help, she got out that old tree and decorated it herself.
My Jewish mother taught me that Christmas isn’t about being Christian. It’s about embracing a life of fantasy for just a few weeks. Those folks who are imploring us to put Christ back in Christmas might be onto something when it comes to commercialism and the increased materialism being encouraged, but I think they’ve missed what’s really going on here. They’ve missed the magic this season inspires. Rather than focusing on one story, this season is about embracing great hope, about living as if anything is possible. Every year we wish each other a happy season, we sing Joy to the World and we tell stories of a jolly man who will deliver gifts and good cheer the world over. Our generosity buttons are pushed and we buy toys for tots and food for banks and cover trees in mittens. We live as if the world could be a marvelous, safe, magical place where peace on earth is a real possibility just a step or two away. And we revisit this fantasy every year.
I have a son at home. As a younger child, like other children, he didn’t know the difference between fantasy and reality at Christmas or any other time. At 3 or 4, my son told me stories every morning on the way to school, shifting between things that happened and things he’s imagining. He’d begin with the mundane and move into something other-worldly. We have a lot of birthdays in my family in December and I distinctly remember him at about that age talking about the birthday dinner we had for grandma the night before. He described it in detail, but he added a friendly dragon who came to visit. A dragon who, as it happens, could breathe fire, making hot tea an easy choice with our birthday cake. He also loved when he found bugs in the house. Millepedes he named Mille, recounting how they’d become great friends, playing together every evening after bedtime. Ants were Anty, and we talked often of a frog we called Florence. For a time, I was afraid he was becoming a liar, that he’d tell story after story of things that didn’t happen. I insisted he started stories that weren’t true with the disclaimer” Once Upon a Time” until he started annoyingly interrupting my story-telling with the question “Is this a Once Upon a Time story?” But, children that young don’t make those same distinctions between truth and fantasy. Real, they understand fully, is a matter of opinion. Buckingham Palace was no more real to my 3 year old than Santa’s home in the North Pole. My adult desire to classify is an unnecessary intrusion in his creative process and we’re all best off if I leave my left brain out it.
Adults rely on children to bring us into the fantasy world. We can’t help but remember that a toy for a poor or orphaned child doesn’t fix the economic disparities of human life. So we look to the children who stare wide-eyed at Christmas trees and sing carols at the top of their lungs and put cookies and milk out for Santa. We know that if we are going to revisit the Sugar Plum Fairy, we’re going to need them to tell us how to find her, how to get to the Land of Sweets where evil Mouse Kings are defeated by Toy Soldiers and Snow Queens and Nutcracker Princes dance with snowflakes.
This season presents us with the opportunity to live in a fantasy, which we need most years, but this one for sure. On our own streets, with the execution of a wealthy CEO, violence became a source of hope, which isn’t a good sign for what’s to come.
But for now, also here on our own city streets, sidewalks and store windows are dressed up and reminding us of joy and good cheer. Lights twinkle all around us every evening creating a sense of something outside ordinary time, outside the mundane, reminding us of mystery, of the miraculous. And the stories and holiday parties and Christmas music conspire to remove us from the ordinary and re-place us in the extraordinary, a time of magic and fantasy we return to year after year.
