The author of Matthew’s gospel must have believed in magic. Only in Matthew do we find the story of wise men bringing gifts suitable for a king, a martyr, and a god. Were they mystic scholars from Persia, versed in Zoroastrian spell-casting? Or were they Sabaean spice merchants, “kings of Sheba,” in which case Matthew’s sense of direction was pretty messed up? Regardless of who they were, they were on a hunt for something radically new, and Matthew alone chooses to share the magic of that journey.
Growing up, Christmas was a magical season for me. Long after I stopped listening for reindeer hooves on the roof, I still relished every other enchanted part: searching for the colored, blinking bulbs among the steady bulbs on the tree, or peering into the reflections from mirrored ornaments. Somewhere around the age of ten I received a plastic nativity snow globe as a gift, lit with a tiny flashlight bulb. When I shook it, baby Jesus was surrounded by a rare middle-eastern snowstorm. I remember setting it in the center of our bay window and then running across the street to see if it would shine as gloriously for the neighborhood as it did for me.
That snow globe is sitting on my desk as I write this, almost fifty years later, though the water needs to be topped up and the paint is flaking from Joseph’s robe. I realized, looking at it the other day, that at some point I stopped looking for the magic in Christmas. With children grown and gone, and with a job that makes no distinction between workdays and holidays, Christmas has become a series of chores. Put up a tree, buy the gifts, make the things to give away at work. In my own journey, the traditional interpretations of the traditional stories don’t hold much meaning for me anymore. No doubt that will dismay or even offend some people, but it’s where I’m at.
I recently read a definition of magic by Antonio Panaino, which I am paraphrasing: magic is the act of producing a radical modification to a common idea. My error has been to expect the magic of my childhood to somehow suffice. We humans have fierce imaginations. We can imagine living for hundreds or thousands of years, or traveling to distant stars. With that kind of mental power, old ways of experiencing magic in the world eventually lose their potency. I need to find radical way of seeing things again.
So, I have decided that all those childhood forms of magic still exist, but I need to discover an adult way to experience them. There are fairies and magicians, and there are spells and charms, and there is even a supernatural life after death, but not, for me, in the way I imagined them as a child.
I am on the hunt for magic once again. I’ve noticed that the LED lights woven through my tree are in fact fairy lights, and if I look into a silvered ornament, I really do see a different world. And I sense the angel billowing above the tree in her enchanted golden gown is indifferent to whether or not I understand the message she is heralding, but I think I know what it is. I think it is Grace Exists, that gift of God’s which we are free to accept and then obligated to share as widely as we can. Grace is adult magic, and what we do to make the world a better place is how we live after we’re gone.
LHOSAWORLD 