In Search of the Christmas Spirit

That's my theme for this December. I'm looking for it, wherever it may be. I'm in Utah currently and have had several conversations with friends about this topic, resulting in several leads:

• Using "Merry Christmas" as a greeting or a goodbye or a thank you.
• uh, Sharing—no, Remembering...no, ummmm

Okay, so I only have one lead that actually begins in a gerund, but that doesn't mean good ideas haven't been shared. E-style pointed out that the Christmas Spirit is really the Spirit, so I guess having one is having the other. And T-sauce and I had a great conversation about the difficulty of pushing the entry-level Christmas sentiment beyond the cookies and snow to giving and goodwill and on through to a recognition and celebration of Christ. I still have questions concerning hypocrisy and growing bored with Christmas songs and the value of quality over quantity, but fear not: I am hot on the trail.

Tonight, Amanda and I made progress by attending the library's viewing of It's a Wonderful Life starring James Stewart and Donna Reed. But this wasn't just any viewing—not just a DVD copy thrown on a white wall. It was on film, projected by a projectionist, complete with cracks and pops and scratches and all that. It was Jimmy Stewart's personal copy of the film, the one he donated along with all his papers to the library back in 1983. So cool.


The film was preceded by a short, made around the same time, called "A Star in the Night." It was a cute recasting of the nativity in the California desert, complete with cowboys for wise men, a grumpy Italian innkeeper, a dude named Jose Santos and his wife Maria, and a huge light-up star bought second-hand from an old theatre.