We all inhabit multiple time zones. We have the world of our daily present, which usually claims most of our attention, but we are also wrapped in shadowy bands of the past.
Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies
This observation by Sven Birkerts may be especially true at Christmastime. Ebenezer Scrooge is not the only one haunted by Christmas Past. This haunting may for most of us be a good thing, as we are flooded with memories of Christmas mornings spent with parents and siblings, Christmas meals shared with our extended family and Christmas parties enjoyed with friends and co-workers. The older we get the more Christmas Past dwells on our minds, even as Christmas Present demands our full attention.
Birkerts makes the point in The Gutenberg Elegies, as I have often thought myself, that each of us is not just the age we happen to be, but every age we have ever been. We can be a helpless baby, a pouting child, an awkward teenager, a responsible adult and, if old enough, a fretful senior citizen, all in the span of a single day
Our memories enable us to dwell in the now, while at the same time being an excited child discovering an array of gifts under a brightly lit tree, a young lover thrilled at spending our first Christmas with the one we love, a parent giving joyful memories to our own children just as our own parents did for us and a grandparent doing it all again with grandchildren. Not everyone's memories are that pleasant, but in any case we can return in our minds to the person we once were, experiencing again how we felt, what we thought and what we did.
This is all true every day of the year, but perhaps especially true at Christmas.
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