It is during this most holy of seasons that I stop and ask myself, “Am a Clark or a cousin Eddie?” If you don’t know who I am talking about then you have been deprived of the pure pixel pleasure of watching a true Christmas holiday classic. A movie that depicts all of our own family dynamics taken to an extreme Seinfeld could only envy: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
Clark appears to have it all: good job, loving wife, two kids, and a nice home. Contrast that with Eddie who has a loving wife and four children, but no job and lives in a rusted out tenement on wheels. Oh yeah, he is still the proud owner of a thriving worm farm however. I have always pictured myself as a Clark, but this year I realize that I might just be a cousin Eddie. A man whose heart is bigger than his brain.
At first I was appalled at this revelation, then it dawned on me……which of these characters is more in the spirit of Advent? Clark, who is uptight whether his annual bonus will cover the $7000 he needs for the pool he is giving his family for Christmas. Or cousin Eddie, who can’t even afford to buy his own children gifts, but delivers to Clark the perfect gift. Who gave more of himself? And whose gift came more from the heart?
Maybe, just maybe, being a cousin Eddie isn’t such a bad thing.
Mele Kalikimaka, RT
R.T. searcher, seeker, sojourner. Not all who wander are lost, maybe temporarily disoriented, but not lost.
