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This week, Google revealed the top 10 search terms of 2014, and it’s a poignant reminder that it’s been a tough year. They are, from most searched to least: Robin Williams, World Cup, Ebola, Malaysia Airlines, Flappy Bird, ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, ISIS, Ferguson, “Frozen,” and Ukraine.
Six of the 10 top search terms have to do with, for lack of a better way of saying it, bad stuff. Of the other four, one is a kids movie, a game for your phones that is no longer available, a sporting event, and a gone-viral charity stunt. Looking at this 60-40 split, I guess you could say it’s been a tough year.
Yet, no top 10 list like this can accurately tell the stories of the struggles and challenges we’ve faced this year not only here in our community, but even in our personal lives. I can’t help but wonder, though, if there is one point of similarity: our lives can so often feel like a 60-40 split, where the bad seems to outweigh the good.
Into this struggle, this (dare I say it?) hopelessness, Christmas breaks in, and our radios blare songs of beauty and peace and joy. Even as our country and our community struggles with so much even in this moment, Christmas stands as a monument of hope in a 60-40 world, reminding us that newness has broken into our lives that are worn at the edges.
Regardless of your faith tradition, the season of Christmas, and more notably Advent, is a helpful tool as we learn to watch and wait for newness and life in the midst of an ever-darker world. Advent traditions are closely tied to lighting candles because in accumulating the brightness, we remind ourselves to look for light, even as the days grow shorter and the nights longer.
In reality, Advent and Christmas are seasons of rebellion of declaring that Hope exists even in the midst of our darkest moments. As the days get shorter and the nights longer, we light candles to declare that we are not alone.
I’ve been told, not a few times, that I’m naive, that I wear rose-colored glasses as I write these columns. I would reply I am neither naive nor wearing pinkish spectacles; I am, in fact, a rebel, who refuses to only see the bad and neglect all that is good.
So as I look at a list that has more in the “bad” column than the “good” column, I can’t help but see this: a man who, though he is gone, lives on as he makes us laugh until we cry, a sporting event that gathers the world in unity, and a funny competition that not only made us laugh, but raised loads of money for a worthy cause.
Perhaps, most importantly, Christmas invites us back into our childhoods, to remember the wonder, the joy, and the optimism we had as kids. Christmas invites us to rid ourselves of our cynicism, if only for a moment, as the “Frozen” movie has taught us, to “let it go.”
May this Christmas be, for you and yours, one of watchfulness of seeing the good in the bad, and celebrating the joy that is ours even in the midst of darkness.
Kyle Tennant is a Tribune Chronicle community columnist. He can be reached at columns@tribtoday.com.