OPINION: Let there be light!

Gee, and isn’t that the whole point of Christmas? Not to mention Christmas movies! Ebenezer Scrooge is haunted by spirits and dragged back through all the pain of his past (and all the horror of the future he’s hurtling toward, if he doesn’t mend his penurious ways) in a harrowing Christmas Eve experience that lasts all night, but finally gets him to “see the light” and change his life. George Bailey, the Jimmy Stewart character in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” has concluded that he’s worth more dead than alive, and is seriously contemplating suicide before he too gets a life review, in this case provided by an unlikely angel, and experiences the same burst of astonishment and gratitude that Scrooge evinces. The best Christmas present, the real Christmas present, it turns out, is – the present. And the eyes, the perspective, with which to see it.

I am acutely aware of darkness this Christmas, for some reason, and of the epic battle, through all of human history, between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. I can relish all the British-ness of “Downton Abbey” like the true Anglophile I am, but under that enjoyment, all along, runs an awareness that the British landed gentry afforded their 50-bedroom palaces by colonializing much of the rest of the world and putting the inhabitants of those colonies in what amounted to indentured servitude.

I watch the posturing of politicians on “Meet the Press,” and listen to all the talk about dropping over the fiscal cliff, and about millions of people being cut from the Medicaid rolls, and I wonder: which millions? What people? I think of my cousin, orphaned many years ago, institutionalized several times during his 40-year struggle with mental illness, and now afflicted with severe heart disease. Where would he be without Medicaid? Who makes these decisions, anyway?

I’m morbidly fascinated by the folks who say they propose to cut out all tax deductions for things like charities, and churches. What would happen to all of George H.W. Bush’s “thousand points of light?” Are these people even serious?

Well, no. They’re supposedly negotiating, but I’m not sure about that, either. The positions have hardened. The battle lines are drawn. No one wants to be remembered as the guy who blinked. So are they willing, as it seems, to go over the cliff and take the rest of us with them? It’s a pattern as old as history.

Yet into this weary old world, long ago, came a most unusual gift: a baby. He would prove to have the solution to all our problems: the way, the truth, and yes: the light. What a present! Something we can really use, every day.

Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers with the Commerce Public Library and the Jackson County Literacy Program.