I need to say something.
I honestly don’t know how I want to word
this. I spent hours trying to compose
this message exactly the way that I wanted it to come across, but sometimes it’s
sometimes better to just write what comes out of my brain in the heat of the
moment, unedited and possibly even uncensored.
I’m heartsick over recent events...and I really need
to use this space to talk about how I am feeling.
On the morning of December 14, 2012, an
unprecedented tragedy took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in the
small town of Newtown, Connecticut. An
armed man barged into the school and opened fire on a group of innocent
schoolchildren. By the end of the
carnage, twenty-six people were declared dead...among them, twenty children between
the ages of five and ten, several teachers (one of whom was the shooter’s own
mother), and the school principal. The
shooter inevitably took his own life.
You know, just watching the images unfolding on
television, and seeing all of the witness accounts, it almost made all of us
feel like we were all there, sympathizing with those parents who were anxiously
waiting to hear word on whether their children were safe and sound, and
grieving alongside those parents who heard the worst possible news imaginable.
When I first heard the news, I was in complete
shock. Even though we have bore witness
to other school shootings (Ecole Polytechnique in 1989, Columbine High School
in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007), this one really delivered a sucker punch to almost everyone in the
world, just based on the age of the victims.
The majority of the victims in yesterday’s shooting were children who
died way too soon at a time which is supposed to be all about happiness and joy.
Life sometimes just isn’t fair. L
Although Connecticut is fairly far away from where
I am currently living, this tragedy has been one that has shocked and saddened
me, and I share the feelings of despair and helplessness that the community of
Newtown, Connecticut were feeling that day, as did most of the globe. I suppose one would have to lack a heart not
to feel something, anything.
I feel sad that so many people had to die. I feel disgusted that a situation like this
had to happen in the first place. Most
of all, I feel so incredibly sorry for those people who did lose a loved one
yesterday. I just want the community of
Newtown, Connecticut, and the student body and staff of Sandy Hook Elementary
School to know that the heart of this blogger, and the hearts of millions of
people all over the world are as broken as yours are right now. We are grieving your loss right alongside
you.
I would like to offer up a moment of silence in
memory of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings before I
continue. I did not create this video, but I think it says it all.
I thought a long time about continuing on with the
feature that I had going on all this month.
When I first heard about the news, I contemplated cancelling the blog
topic for today, just because I wasn’t sure if I had the heart to talk about
the Christmas season and holiday favourites when something so terrible
happened. I just didn’t feel like talking
about a happy feature on the day after so much sadness happened, and I even
considered not even doing a feature at all today.
But when I looked at what my initial topic was for
today, and thought long and hard about it, I thought that maybe there was a way
that I could take the topic and use it as a way to talk some more about how
some of us might be feeling right now during this time. And how at the end of the day, maybe there’s
something that can come out of tragedy...something that we can all hold onto
when the times get excruciatingly tough.
So with that, I welcome you all to partake in the
fifteenth day of “The Pop Culture Addict’s
Advent Calendar”. I’m going to do
my best to try and make this section not too long...just an introductory
paragraph and a brief plot description.
Initially, I was going to give this topic a bit of a scathing review
with biting, sarcastic wit...but I’m looking at it through different eyes, and
am changing my whole perspective on it in the wake of yesterday’s tragedy.
Today’s subject is going to feature a Christmas
special that many people might not remember.
I’ll be the first one to admit that had it not been for YouTube, I would
never have even set eyes on it. It’s not
exactly a show that gets a lot of airplay.
I’m not exactly sure why that is the case now, but I had a bit of a
hypothesis as to why this could have been the case when it first debuted in
1977.
My sister will probably want to tear a strip off
of me for admitting this now, but when the show first debuted, she was five
years old (and I hadn’t even been born yet), and at first she was really
excited to watch it...but midway through she ended up becoming so emotionally
distraught over it that my poor mother had to change the channel midway
through. But why would a television
special elicit such a strong reaction out of my then-five year old sister?
I’m sure those of you who are my sister’s age or
older might understand when I say the following words. Nestor
the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey.
By all accounts, the television special should
have worked. It was produced by
Rankin-Bass, the creative team behind “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty
the Snowman”. And much like Rudolph, the
entire special was done entirely in stop-motion animation.
The story is set in the days of the Roman Empire,
and in a stable lived a little donkey named Nestor. Nestor was just like all the other donkeys in
the stable with one glaring exception.
His ears were considerably longer than all the other donkeys. They were so long, they dragged on the
ground. Now, you know how some kids
could be cruel to other kids who may look or act differently than they do? Well, all of the other donkeys used to laugh
and call Nestor names, and Nestor didn’t like this one bit. Thankfully, Nestor’s mother was entirely
devoted to her son, and she was his rock during the early minutes of the
special. Nestor’s mother even gave her
son some woolen socks to keep his ears warm during the cold winter months as a
Winter Solstice present.
So for a few minutes, Nestor and his mother lived
happily...until some soldiers from the Roman Empire came a knocking on their
front door. The soldiers are looking for
some donkeys to take back with them for a fee, and the group that they end up
choosing include Nestor. But when the
deal causes Nestor to become separated from his mother, Nestor tries to escape
and causes a scene, which makes the soldiers believe that the stable owner has
tried to trick them. By the end of the
scuffle, the soldiers take the remaining donkeys free of charge, and the angry
stable owner who ended up losing money because of Nestor chucks the poor donkey
out of the stable, heartlessly telling him that he didn’t care if he froze to
death.
Nestor isn’t alone for long, as his mother manages
to escape the stables to be with him.
But a terrible winter storm is fast approaching, and with no indoor
shelter to be found, it quickly becomes a dangerous situation. Like any mother would, she used her own body
to keep Nestor warm during the whole storm.
By the end, Nestor was alive...at the cost of his mother’s life.
(This was the point of the show in which my mom
had to change the channel thirty-five years ago.)
Nestor is obviously distraught over losing the
most important figure in his life, and he isn’t sure about how to go on...until
he happens to cross paths with a little cherub who introduces herself as
Tilly. And Tilly has a message for
Nestor. She tells him that he needs to
find a way to get himself to the settlement known as Bethlehem. She says that he should take pride in his
long ears (the same ears that many of the other donkeys made fun of), saying
that the ears were going to be able to do wonderful things. He could use them to guide himself on a
pathway that is true. She also gives
Nestor a prophecy...that he would use his ears to save the life of another in
exactly the same way Nestor’s mother saved him.
But once Nestor ends up making it to Bethlehem, it seems as though
history is doomed to repeat itself, as nobody in town seems interested in a
long-eared donkey.
That is until a man and his very pregnant wife
approach him. Both are down on their
luck without hardly any money to their names.
But the woman saw something kind and gentle in Nestor’s eyes, and they
both decided that he was just the donkey that would help them. Their names?
Mary and Joseph.
The couple then proceed to get caught in a violent
sandstorm, which threatens harm onto the scared young couple. Luckily, Nestor’s long ears makes the perfect
protection for Mary to huddle up in as they make their way through the
storm. The ending for this story becomes
much happier, as they make it to their destination in one piece, and Mary gives
birth to baby Jesus.
And alas, the prophecy came true. Nestor’s ears helped save the lives of Mary,
Joseph, and their newborn baby, who as you know was born on Christmas Day.
I suppose the one thing that we can take away from
Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey is that the special is subject to a lot
of interpretations. Originally, I was
going into it thinking that it was one of the most depressing Christmas
specials ever made, and now I think that there’s a glimmer of opportunity and
hope within it. Yes, Nestor losing his
mother was a horrible thing to have happened, and yes, the scene did make you
cry...but seeing what it lead to at the end of the television special...well,
in a way, it did offer hope to Nestor that there could be beauty at the end of
a dark tunnel. That there could be a day
in which he could feel happy again. That
there was a way to look at something incredibly negative and still manage to
hold onto something that will keep you going.
That something is hope.
I have a feeling that it is going to take a very,
very long time for the community of Newtown, Connecticut to process everything
that happened. For the people who ended
up losing loved ones in the tragedy, the pain will never truly go away.
But one thing that we can take from this is that
broken hearts do eventually heal. They
may not heal over exactly the same way as they did before, and some people will
forever be missing a piece of themselves from this day forward. But I also like to think that those who do
leave us unexpectedly never truly leave us.
They remain within ourselves, and their spirits live and breathe inside
of us as long as we keep remembering them.
In the case of Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, Nestor’s mother
lived on through Tilly, the cherub that foresaw Nestor’s future.
And in Newtown, Connecticut, an entire community
came together to grieve their losses and to support each other. Taking solace in praying for those who were
killed. Holding onto their children a
little tighter. Leaning on one another
to get through the first of many days of wondering ‘why’.
Trying to find some glimmer of hope in the wake of
a tragedy.
All that I can do at this time is continue to
mourn those innocent lives that were taken away from the world way too soon,
and continue to hold on to what seemingly little hope that we all need to have
with us in order to get through what happened as best we can.
This post is dedicated to the victims of the Sandy
Hook Elementary School shooting of December 14, 2012. Our hearts are with you all, and may you rest
in peace as angels watch over you.
On that note, I’m ending this piece for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with Day #16 of this
blog, as I’ll try to continue on with the advent calendar.
Keep on staying strong...and never lose hope or
faith. Just take comfort in each other
during this time, and be kind to one another.
Kindness and love is more powerful than hate and
violence.
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