Last night, at my son's request, my family and I watched Chuck Jones' masterpiece of a cartoon -- yes, I know it is Dr. Suess' story, but I think Jones was the greater genius; anybody who can make Elmer Fudd into Siegfried, singing to a bunny rabbit, "O Bwoonhiwda, you'we so wovewy," is a man to be reckoned with -- about a big-bottomed green furred grouch who hates Christmas, hates celebrations, hates roast beast, and hates the aptly named Whos down in Whoville.
The tale works, I think, because it is archetypal, touching something deep in the shabbier corners of the human soul. It is Grendel on the moor, looking at the firelights from Heorot and hearing from afar the sway of the harp, as the songmaker sings of creation; and hating the joys he does not or cannot share. It is the seething envy of the unredeemed Scrooge, who has chosen to devote his life to the respectable pursuit of money, and who therefore cannot abide the son of his only sister, who married for love. It is a peculiarly academic vice, as men and women of appreciable intelligence, little obvious wisdom in the ways of the world, and few marketable talents, set their wits to undermine those things that give meaning to the lives of the young people in their charge. It is the sin of Satan, according to the Book of Wisdom, who envied the innocence he had lost.
I have been reading Crossing the Threshold of Hope, a series of essays by Pope John Paul II in response to some trenchant questions asked of him by the fine papal journalist Vittorio Messori. Again and again the greathearted courage of the pope shines forth (courage one wishes he had seen fit to use in punishing evil or apostate bishops and priests, but that, alas, is another story, and not relevant here), in his love of youth, in his confidence in all that is truly human, in his embrace of those "seeds of the word" that God has sown even in lands whose people have hardly heard of Christ, and in his emphasis upon the words of Jesus, "Be not afraid! I have overcome the world." Like all Christian missionaries who understand what they are about, John Paul preached that genuinely good news, that man is not alone, that Emmanuel, or "God is with us," that Jeshua, or "The Lord saves," and that, to borrow an idea that is central to the thought of the current pope, love also is a fundamental principle of reality.
All of that is to be seen in the cave at Bethlehem, and gives us cause for great rejoicing. Which makes me ask, what must one be, after all, to wish it were not so? Not to believe it is not so, but to be pleased about one's supposedly superior intelligence, smugly going about the business of spoiling the celebration for others, from the heights of Harvard, or Washington, or Mount Crumpet? Nor let us have any nonsense about the alleged humanitarianism of people who believe that Hoboken or Perth Amboy are all there is. The straight historical record is enough to show the misery caused by this-worldly utopians (even of the self-styled Christian sort), and the transformative acts of love performed by those who remember the babe in the manger. Aim for heaven, and receive Whoville into the bargain.
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