The Holiday Season

The tree is up in the dining hall. The menorah is ready to be lit next week. You know it’s the holiday season, but something is off. You can’t pinpoint it. The students all seem excited, running toy drives, collecting donations for the Food Pantry, and talking about seeing their families very soon. They’re living the holiday spirit and displaying the genuine care and selflessness you always hope to see and that always makes you proud. The campus is energized, but somehow your mood isn’t where it usually is this time of year.

You start to wonder, is there something wrong? Are you turning into a modern day version of Dickens’ Ebenezer? You think, maybe it’s because today is December 12th and you’ve yet to watch Christmas Vacation? By this time last year you’d welcomed Clark, Ellen, Aunt Bethany and Cousin Eddie into your home on at least 12 occasions. Maybe that’s it? Yet, you’re not that excited by the annual prospect of 24 straight hours of A Christmas Story on TNT either. No Red Rider BB Guns, no Ovaltine, no Bumpus’s. Nothing seems to do it.

Then, a student asks you to open the music shed. This is not uncommon, but, after letting him in and calling a duty person down, he asks you to stay and if he can play a tune for you. You oblige, but say, “If you’re going to play me a holiday song, it’d better be something other than the classic, commercialized tunes. Those aren’t going to do it for me today buddy.” He just smiles, as if he had a plan the whole time. Then, as each note deliberately emerges from the guitar and his voice delivers a stripped down, nearly Johnny Cash-like version of Little Drummer Boy, it hits you. You’re in awe – overwhelmed by inspiration that this young student could be so talented and so in tune with exactly who you are and how you are in that moment.

Eagle Hill students are empathetic in a way that enables human connection unique to those of us fortunate to work with them each day. In a single moment they can surprise you, inspire you or even in the most dire of situations draw from you a dormant holiday spirit. I am not sure who imparts this to them, but I imagine it is a legion of family, friends and a few lucky teachers over the years. I sometimes wonder, however, if they get as much from us as we do from them. This holiday season has been no exception.

 

As this will be the last 242 before the New Year, may you all have a special holiday home with your children and may those moments be worth much more than the Mr. Griswold’s Jelly of the Month Club.