Laurie's response to this prompt helped open my mind to something besides typical holiday style traditions. With that in mind, I take you back to a time when gratification was delayed, and the joy that followed held its own magic.
"Oh joy! Oh rapture." (The Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz)
A lot of what I am going to write here is putting together a memory in what I think was the most likely chain of events.
It's about a time when there would be a yearly television event in the spring: a television broadcast of the film The Wizard of Oz. It was always on a Sunday evening. It always involved popcorn and staying up way past our bedtime. It involved a story so dear to my heart, I can barely separate it from myself.
I think it probably started when I was in third grade. My mother told me about one of her favorite films, and said that it would be on television. I was going to be allowed to stay up and watch it. My typical bedtime was at 8:00 p.m., and I am guessing the movie would start around 7:30. Those days, there was a thing called "family hour" when child friendly fare would be offered to the masses.
Immediately I fell in love with Dorothy, the Scarecrow (my favorite), the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. I'd laugh at the antics of the Munchkins. I was terrified by the witch and the flying monkeys. I loved the journey down the Yellow Brick Road, the field of poppies, the Emerald City, the fraud of the wizard. It enthralled me once a year, year after year.
Let me make this clear: this was despite the fact that we only had a black and white television. My mother, who had seen the film in the theater when she was a kid, told us when the world would turn into color. We would imagine the yellows and greens and blues and pinks in our minds eye. We had no choice. I've come to believe black and white viewing is a certain kind of literacy, and for those of us raised in that world, we are adept in vision.
Then came the year my grandmother purchased a color television. I am thinking it was when I was in 6th grade. We went to her house to watch it from start to finish, so we could experience the color change. The magic was multiplied a hundredfold.
I know that I participated in this yearly ritual with my family up through my senior year in high school. (By then we had our own color TV.) I have documentation in my scrapbook that my friends and I took to creating surveys to find out who watched the show the night it was on, and asked them to identify their favorite characters and scenes. My favorite character by far is the Scarecrow. When he gets his brain and says, Oh joy! Oh rapture! it is such a happy moment! And still, to this day, when Dorothy has to say goodbye to him and says, "I think I'll miss you most of all..." Tears! The most heartbreaking movie scene ever. I often find myself saying these two phrases at poignant moments in my own life. The Scarecrow lives in me as a muse and kindred soul.
There is another aspect to this, however.With the invention of the VCR, I happily requested a VHS copy of a special 50th year edition of The Wizard of Oz for my very own, with the thought I would continue my own yearly ritual. I chose the day after Christmas, and did watch it the first time. But somehow that was not to be something I did consistently. Once I had possession of the film to watch any time I wanted, it lost a bit of the specialness. I think that I've only watched it 3-4 times in the thirty years since.
For me, The Wizard of Oz was about right-of-passage, family time, enjoying something my mother loved, experiencing new technologies in the world, and even the promise of springtime. Until this prompt came along, I've felt vaguely uneasy about my loss of desire to watch the film on a regular basis. I've almost felt guilty. But once I put this all together, well, it makes perfect sense. It's something I had to learn for myself: nothing lasts forever, but your home and memories are always within you.
The moment in time I lived in had a way of making us wait. In the waiting, we learned to appreciate more deeply. Still most of the time, I have no desire to return to those times. I like having everything (literally) at my fingertips.
But...it would be kind of nice if there was a way to feel the specialness again.
The anticipation.
The joy.
The coming home.
