Christmas of ’73? Â Sure, I remember it, but not very well. Â That’s about 50 years ago and I don’t recall too much too well. Â But I remember that Christmas because it was our first dark one.
Maybe I recall it at all because I remember better how Christmas was before ’73. Â Those were some Christmases, let me tell you.
Those were the days when people observed Christmas as the birth date of Christ Jesus, but they observed it in some mighty fancy ways.
It was a common practice those days to give gifts to each other in bright packages and to send colorful Christmas cards to each other. Â They had a good purpose, too. Â You wished each other happiness and best wishes and the cards sort of carried some feeling, even though most of them were pretty much alike and you printed your name in them and some people got cards, glanced at the name, put the card in a display in their homes, and checked off the name on their card list.
And gifts were big business and the shops were all lit up with bright lights in all colors and the shop people did what they called a landslide business.
And Santa Clauses, who were big fat characters in beards and red clothes and who they said brought gifts to people, came to the shops in their own helicopters and they had children sit on their laps so Moms and Dads could take pictures of their kids sitting on Santa’s lap.
And the kids told Santa what they wanted for Christmas and Santa told the parents. Â It was a system and you thought you might be kidding the kids, but you weren’t.
The kids knew the system and they knew it was working, but they didn’t let on. Â Kids were awfully smart.
That kind of Christmas, with the gifts and Santa and all, made lots of people happy, but ’73 was the first dark Christmas. Â That’s a funny thing to call it, but there was a lot of funny things going on.
Y’see, that was the dark Christmas because the President said we were running low on a black stuff called oil and we had to save it, so please don’t use electricity too much and don’t go places too much on your automobiles. Â One thing we could do was to cut back on lights for Christmas decorations in our shops, our houses and on our trees. Â All because of oil.
Y’see, that was when most of the machines ran on oil and without it, machines couldn’t operate, homes couldn’t be made hot or cool, the automobiles couldn’t run—just everything stopped.
And some funny guys who wore a lot of long clothes in a hot desert had most of the oil in their ground, but they were fighting with some other people who knew how to make the desert a beautiful place but didn’t have oil in their ground.  But they weren’t fighting over oil; they were fighting over land, and that land was where this Christ Jesus was born and lived.  But that wasn’t why they were fighting over that piece of land.  Neither of them believed in Christ Jesus anyway.  It’s sure hard to explain.  But that’s how wars were, let me tell you—hard to explain.
Y’see, it was some other people who used so much oil and needed it that got involved, people in places called Europe and Russia and America and Japan. Â They needed oil bad, but those desert people who had it said you can’t have it. Â So what happened? Â Some of the people fought for the ones who had the oil and the others fought against them and there was a real war. Â And Christmases were never bright again.
Heck, we just about forgot what Christmas was like and we just about forgot altogether what Christmas was all about in the first place.
Gosh, it’s gettin’ dark and I gotta get home. Â It’s hard to find my way ’cause I might fall into one of those dark pools all around between here and my cave.
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“It was the best of times, it was the best of times…”
Mr. Executive flew home from New York in five hours. Â Mr. Worker, across town, rove home from work in his 250-HP sedan. Â They both turned on their TV sets and watched three men land on the moon. Â But in their living room their Christmas trees were dark. Â The President had requested, in light of the energy crunch, that we restrict our use of electricity and fuel…
Mr. Executive had gone on a two-day business trip to New York. Â He jetted home in a DC-10, spanning 3000 miles of our continent at 500 miles an hour, 36,000 feet above the earth. Â It took five hours.
He drove his Mercedes home from LAX, drove right into the garage whose doors opened automatically, and walked into his master bedroom to take a hot shower.
He settled in his recliner and watched the Monday night football game even though this was Wednesday.  He saw it on VTR—his videotape recorder. The Rams won this one and he smiled.
His home was antiseptically clean, all systems were go, his dinner came out of the microwave oven in a matter of minutes, the temperature and humidity of the house were just right, and his children were in their part of the house, doing much as he was doing, except their cocktails were sneaked out of his bar.
But the Christmas tree in the living room, designed at great expense by an interior decorator and put together at more expense by a decorating firm, stood dark.
Mr. Worker’s trip home was but three miles, not 3000, and he made it in his seven year old Chevy. Â He opened his own garage door but he had hot running water for his bath. Â And his beer was cold, straight from his refrigerator, and the color on his TV was only a little too bright. Â And his kids watched the same set in the living room, but they had it to watch. Â The Worker home had its 21st century devices, too.
But their Christmas tree, which always sparkled with the twinkling lights they always enjoyed putting up, stood in the corner of the living room. Â Dark.
The overall setting is America, Christmas, 1973. Â It is a land of illusions come true, where fancy and fact become confused because fantasy so often becomes fact. Â It’s Disneyland in a department store and for $4.95 you can take Disneyland home with you.
It’s the land where the son of a grocer in Yorba Linda can become No. 1 in the White House and one of America’s newest millionaires.
It’s where the foreign-born son of a German-Jewish immigrant-refugee can become a Harvard professor, a middle-aged swinger and a secretary of state whose field of operations is the world.
It’s where a young boy who sped the sidewalks of his neighborhood in a “Silver Streak” tricycle can grow up and streak to the Moon, walk on it and come back to tell about it.
It’s where a boy from the black ghetto, if he can survive the neighborhood, can someday draw $100,000 a year for putting a round leather ball through a steel hoop on a glass blackboard.
It’s where a pig-tailed girl who played “Tag” in the street of a Los Angeles suburb can whack a furry ball with a tennis racket before 30,000 people in an air conditioned domed stadium for a pot upwards of $100,000.
It’s where a secretary to a porno filmmaker can step in front of the camera, do her thing and become the talk of a nation.
It’s where a corporation starts buying other corporations and grows to multinational proportions so great that it can thumb its nose at governments.
It’s where the best of times can be the best of things, but the worst of times lives next door.
And this year the Christmas tree in corporation offices, grand hotels, Disneylandish department stores, the White House, a black ghetto living—bedroom—kitchen is dark.  And we wonder why.
In our endless pursuit of factual fantasies we rape the earth and burn up its God-given resources. Â We play games with the lives of people and animals and birds and worms. Â Those in our way we suddenly and easily destroy.
We play on the fantasies, the yearnings and the needs of human lives and, without so much as a missed breath, we ignore them. Â We program human lives with sometimes subliminal, sometimes outright and outrageous influences and create ideas, attitudes and drives in people, then just as blatantly frustrate them and wonder why people behave as they do.
So this year, on a Presidential request, we cut back on our use of fuel and energy.  Perhaps the Presidential request covers the morass of indistinguishable sins—of international political and military games, of the reckless use and waste of resources without foresight, of the use of things that deteriorate and must be replaced again and again, of the rejection of nature and human life as they are.
But the cutback on our use of fuel and energy which darkens our Christmas trees may brighten our lives. Â For we may have to fall back on our resources and our realistic acceptance of what’s really important in our lives.
We may have to resort to our own imagination to make up for that lightless Christmas tree.
We may have to see that simplicity has a beauty that no manner of man’s genius for ornamentation may surpass.
Perhaps the star at the top of the tree may shine all by itself because its meaning is left after the illumination is gone.
And perhaps the real meaning of Christmas will shine brighter.
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AFTERWARD:  This Christmas we shall look to the sky and see a bright celestial sphere streak across, leaving a trail millions of miles long.  The Comet Kohoutek is said to come across our sky but once in 10,000 years.  We shall see a sight that we have no control over, that we  can obliterate only with air pollution, that we cannot commercialize.  And the rarity of this visit, the tremendous distances involved in its very existence, and the mystery of its coming and going are beyond our comprehension.
And we shall marvel at it.
Hooray for marvels.