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Christmastime in the Best of All Possible Worlds
The man who needs to find hope is strolling the avenues of the city as Christmas Eve encroaches. Hands in pockets, he tries to break his habit of taking the same route each day. Today will be different, today, he may find hope.
He is walking north on 20th Street, gazing at facades and into windows to see what he never takes the time to see, inertia having jostled him along at a blinding pace for so many years.
He stops before this big show window and blinks hard, trying to figure out why he’s suddenly in another time and place. What he sees on the other side of the glass is a winter wonderland of electric trains, small villages, city streets, all bedecked and animated as if Christmas has never ended.
This can’t be, he opines. Fifty years ago and more, the city’s streets were lined with scenes such as this, filled with small wonders and pleasant surprises and best wishes. Back then, people would do something called window-shopping. Each merchant and street-level business would decorate in order to attract a sidewalk parade of delighted season-lovers.
He remembers how all that changed over the years, how a committee of tight-lipped judges began to forbid owners to place images and “distractions” in windows and doorways, as if they had forgotten what joy window-shopping brought to the city, what commerce the displays induced, what fond memories remained.
At the moment, the man who needs to find hope shakes off the negative memory and more carefully examines the snowy humor and goodwill in this special street-side window display. He has the notion that the long-ago idea of decorative, playful display on cold city streets has somehow thrived, somehow holds out against the dark forces that would dictate drab identical facades bereft of all personality and sharing.
After having his fill of time spent in another place, the man strolls on, hoping that, here and there, he will see other signs of life and joy proffered by establishments who ignore cold rules and just want to hand passersby a friendly gesture. And, much to his surprise, he begins to see other show windows with verve and personality laid out, this time on Third Avenue. There’s a shop with an enormous Piggly Wiggly mascot grinning perpetually at the gray day. There’s a place with nostalgic old street signs lighted up and receiving their proper respect. Here’s an import gift shop with wondrous one-of-a-kind items to dispense, there is even one window filled to the brim with poinsettias bursting with color…and here and there, the wonderful historic buildings and signs of yore smile down upon him and warm his chest.
The man in the process of finding hope finishes his stroll for today, knowing now that tomorrow he can take another avenue and perhaps find even more evidence that the spirit of the city is still alive and thriving under the radar, just for you and me to discover.
This may not be the best of all possible worlds, he thinks. But it’s the world I’ve got. So I’d best redouble the effort to experience it. Before the colors fade.
Time’s a-wastin’
© Jim Reed 2014 A.D.