CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Life & Faith for the Years of Winter
We
once drove through a town in Iowa that displayed two billboards at the edge of
town. One claimed 927 Happy Residents And
1 Old Grump. The other advertised Grump
Days June 19-21.
At
first I was a little irritated. Only one old grump in the town, but the
festival was named after him. That didn’t seem fair. I was much younger then.
Now that I am an old grump myself, I think it’s neat.
Besides,
every town needs a festival, even the big towns, like Chicago, with its Taste of Chicago. If you have nothing to
celebrate but the presence of a grump, well, go ahead and make a festival out
of his presence. [Come to think of it, the signs did not indicate that the
grump was a man, and old women can be grumpy, too, so both sexes should be able
to claim that festival as their own.]
We
once lived in Arcola, Illinois. Johnny Gruel had been born there, so they had a
Raggedy Ann festival. Almost all the
brooms in the world are made there, too, because the area farmers used to grow
broomcorn, so there was also a Broomcorn
Festival, which humor columnist Dave Barry made famous. Now they have to
import broomcorn from Mexico, but, hey, it’s still an excuse for a festival.
The town liked festivals so much that when there was a bank holdup there,
complete with hostage, people joked that next they would have a Bank Hostage Festival.
You
don’t really need a person or an historical event to initiate a festival,
though. Just look at Toast and Jelly Days
in Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. The main point is to celebrate.
When
I first wrote this, Helen and I were in our fiftieth year of marriage. We
decided that we did not want to have one big blowout when we finally hit the
fifty-year mark. So we celebrated AnniversaryFest all year long, doing
something special every month to remind us of how blessed we are to have had
each other all these years.
It
is important to celebrate, to set time aside to “festival,” for four reasons.
One is just to have a good time. The second is to make money off the suckers
who come from out of town. The third is because Jesus said to: “I’m here; let’s
party!” [John 10:10] The last reason is to remind us that every day is a gift,
a time of celebration, a festival in its own right. It is easy to forget that
if we only take each day as it comes. Each day begins to look a lot like the
day before it. We begin to take them for granted. A festival breaks the
monotony and reminds us that the non-festival days, too, are precious.
Old
age is a great gift. It means that we have been through a lot of festival days.
It is easy to concentrate on the losses of old age—flexibility, hearing,
eyesight, strength, family members, friends. They are real, but old age is not
just the sum of our losses.
This
week, we had coffee with Joe. We’ve known him for almost sixty years. We
laughed and laughed. Yesterday we met Bob and Kathy for lunch. We laughed and
laughed. It’s time to celebrate GeezerFest!
JRMcF
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