25. dezember
Frohe Weihnachten!
I write this late at night, so forgive this first, really random thought.
To end our Christmas night with Maria-Elizabeth and her family, Alina and I got to watch for the first time one of the family’s much loved, much-watched, favorite movies—Hallo Dienstmann, a very old, black and white, Austrian film. What does Dienstmann mean? I believe it means butler or man-servant. What happened in the film? I could describe to you the scenes and the costumes, and that it was a musical, because sometimes Maria-Elizabeth, and then the whole family, would start singing along with the movie…but that is about it. What was the story about? I have no idea. …but I made up a pretty good story in my head.
When you are used to watching Technicolor movies flash real-to-life images before your eyes as you passively sit back and watch, it is interesting to experience black and white movies bring your imagination out of hibernation and force your creativity to infuse color into the limbs of trees, tiers of ruffles on ball gowns, reflections in lakes, and iris’ of eyes. When you are used to English speaking movies (or foreign movies with subtitles), a movie filmed in another language way before the time of subtitles invites your imagination out of repose to the work of creating a movie all your own. Its like back when you couldn’t read, but you insisted on reading your parents a bedtime story, so you flipped through the pages, looked at the pictures, and made up a story all your own. You could read the same physical book a hundred times in a row and never read the same story.
I have experienced 20 really great Christmases (well I assume the ones I can’t remember were as great as the ones I do). Christmas is always the same in one way or another—this is one of the beauties of the holiday. Part of the treasure of Christmas is its return year after year as if you just had to pop in your favorite movie—before each scene dances before you, you know each will entail: you already know what traditions will be kept, you can already feel the cold of the pew at Church in the morning, you already know the smell of the tree and the food that will be served, you know what sweater your aunt will arrive wearing as always and of course that line your uncle will invariably say after having one too many glasses of wine, and before the first note is played, you know what songs will be sung, and before it is all over, you know how tired you will be at the end, but how good it will feel to have experience it all once again...reveling in all that you know and love, even though you know it so well you could do it in your sleep if you had to. Of course, some surprises come your way every year, but all in all, the plotline remains the same.
If Christmas is like that favorite movie from which you have memorized every line, and every scene, and still yearn to watch it again and again, this year, my 21st Weihnachten was that same movie I’ve watched hundreds of times, but this time in black and white. in a foreign language. without subtitles. Yes, Weihnachten means Christmas, but this is only the name of the movie. What happened in this movie? I can describe it to you…there were children and trees, candles and churches, snow and cookies, presents and singing. Each scene I recognized things I had seen before; semblances remained despite the other differences. What was the actual story of Weihnachten, the meaning of all that I experienced take place in this black and white, foreign film? Unlike with a movie, it was not my imagination that was stirred to paint color into the picture and to weave a storyline of my own. The experiences, people, places, sounds stirred out of repose a Vision other than my own imagination, not to assign color and meaning, but to reveal the truth that lay deeper than hue or tongue or parlance. What was this Weihnachten about? As of yet, I am not fluent in deutsch, or the works of the Lord, so I’ve only managed translate a few important things...like the difference between poverty and wealth, foreigners and family, Christmas holiday and Christ…and how different words can really be translated to mean the same thing...it just depends on who's vision is guiding the story.
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