| December 2009
A Christmas Wish for the New Year…
Things slow down a bit between Christmas and New Year’s. There’s something wonderful about it and it’s got to do with thereal meaning of Christmas. My two favorite Christmas movies capture this about as well as anything.
By the end of “Scrooge” based on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” the miraculous ghosts of Christmas past, present and future show Scrooge how to see and hear things as they really are again. The old miser’s awakened heart cuts through the moldy crust of greed and selfishness that steadily covered him over the years. He finds the Truth again and it sets him free.
In “It’s A Wonderful Life,” George Bailey’s guardian angel saves him from the depths of a black despair by showing George how weary the world would have been without him. If you haven’t caught your share of the Christmas spirit yet, watching these two great films should do the trick. There’s still time.
While not miraculous, two of my sons filled in as the ghosts of Christmas past and present this year. Christmas Past was a clear, crisp memory of that moment when the nurse midwife who assisted my wife and me called one of our sons “bright eyes.” Instead of crying, he had opened his eyes wide as can be as he saw his first light — a pure, innocent look of wonder.
The week before Christmas, another son — no longer a boy — became genuinely excited that we would be having a real White Christmas this year. I would have missed the special joy of this (White) Christmas Present if it weren’t for him.
I haven’t seen the ghost of Christmas Future yet, but I’ve got an idea what he might say to me. I think he’ll suggest that I start seeing the world fresh again, without all those labels that typically cover us all: young, old, conservative, liberal, black, white — you know what I mean. His other suggestion will be that I stop filtering the world so much through all the electronic devices to which I’ve grown so attached.
All those labels and gadgets stand between us and the world God created — that wonderful world we first saw in our mother’s eyes; the same world that’s out there right now waiting to be discovered again.
My final thought for this year of 2009 comes from these lyrics in one of my favorite Christmas carols, “O Holy Night”:
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices;
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
May the New Year bring you that new and glorious morn.
Richard S. Esposito, ChFC
Lighthouse Wealth Management LLC
405 Lexington Avenue, 26th Floor
New York, NY 10174
Tel: 212-907-6583/Fax: 866-924-1952
Email: resposito@lighthousewm.com
|
