Home for the Holidays

But in this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is most like that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven.

- C. S. Lewis

Mr. Lewis famously laments, as I hope I have captured as much by the quote above, and I am paraphrasing Mr. Lewis very poorly, that the trouble with our world, if we are feeling it properly, is that we feel guilty when we take a moment to enjoy it. He then asserts that the glory of Heaven is that we enjoy good things, every good thing, things brought on only with melancholy by our human holidays, for all eternity and rightly. And I think he is on spot with that attitude.

We feel pain at the holidays (especially as they end) because there is a happiness about them which does not really belong here. We were pretending that all is well when all was not. Not all of our friends are here; not all of our family; not all of our happiness. Yet we pretend.

We are in Plato's cave facing the far wall and not the projector. We have a mere glimpse of how things should be. Yet that gives us a glimpse of how things will be.

So I find happiness in this fading holiday season. If it is but a glimpse of what is to come, then what is to come is splendid.