Listen Up! Celebrating the true spirit of Christmas in Huntsville

Hugh Mackenzie
Huntsville Doppler

The True Spirit of Christmas

No more Bah Humbug for me! I have been bitten by the Christmas Spirit. Christmas of course is a religious holiday for those who celebrate the birth of Christ. For others, it is simply a season of joy and a time to reach out and help others. And what a great job we do of that in Huntsville! Hardly a day has gone by this month when someone, in some way, has not reached out to share in the joy of the Christmas season. Here are just a few examples:

• Recently, the Huntsville/ Lake of Bays Fire Department swooped through local neighbourhoods, sirens blaring, and collected an amazing 28 tons of food for those who might otherwise do without this Christmas.
• Family Place Restaurant and Spencer’s Tall Trees restaurant held well attended lunches where the only cost was a donation to the Salvation Army’s Toy and Food Drive.
• The Algonquin Café, a relatively new enterprise in Huntsville, is offering a pay-what-you-can Christmas dinner with all the trimmings to anyone who is alone on December 25.
• There is a group of businesses under the umbrella of the ‘Bay Food Crew’, including Bullock’s Independent Grocers, Hunter’s Bay Radio. Dairy Lane Dental, Bickley Ford and Dreams Becoming Reality Marketing who have delivered a thousand Christmas dinners to people in need in our extended community.

There are hundreds of other businesses, organizations and individuals out there who give generously of their time and resources to help those in need or those who are lonely or missing loved ones. One Doppler reader, who lives in southern Ontario, wrote to me recently saying, “I often get teary eyed reading about all the wonderful things people are doing to help each other out in Huntsville.” At least in part, that exemplifies the true Christmas spirit. And it is a spirit that goes well beyond Christmas. Indeed, it is spread throughout the year as literally thousands of volunteers working in sports, cultural activities, with seniors and with those in need, give generously of their time and talents. One organization, Hospice Huntsville, notes that they were blessed with 13,640 volunteer hours in 2017! They are not alone. There are countless organizations in our community that depend on the generosity and expertise of volunteers.

And so, I believe there is a true spirit of Christmas in Huntsville, one that lasts throughout the year. Those of us who live here are fortunate indeed! Santa might have the odd lump of coal for a few people along the way, but generally he should be pretty happy to visit us this year. And yes, in one form or another, there is a Santa Claus.

For a number of years during the time the Rice family owned the Huntsville Forester, their annual Christmas editorial would be a reprint of a piece originally published in the New York Sun in 1897. It was written in response to an eight year old girl, who asked if there really is a Santa Claus. Here it is, in part, again.

YES VIRGINIA, THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Also, how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus? It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are, unseen and unseeable in the world. You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world, which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it real? Ah VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

From all of us at Huntsville Doppler, please enjoy the real spirit of Christmas and have a happy holiday!

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