The most memorable Christmas I ever had was during the time I was quite a young kid on Christmas eve, just out of the theatre where the movie Superman I was running. It was a breathtaking experience and I remember quite well that it took a long time to get over it. The basic idea of flying was the most significant part of it all. Of course the acts of heroism were always there but to me the one element that set the movie apart was the element of flying. It could be a logical conclusion that flight has been a long obsession of the human mind. It could be remembered that most of the works by Richard Bach are related to flying. I was no different but that lead to a near disaster soon enough on that very evening but it made the most memorable Christmas of my childhood days.
Once I reached home the scientist in me was struggling to break free and that freedom came in form of an umbrella of disaster or my accident. The flight stimulator within my pituitary gland was constantly sending in electric pulses. The pulses guided me to our roof. I moved towards the edge of the roof. It was on the third floor. Opened the umbrella and jumped. Soon I found myself lying in a nursing home bed with a hairline crack on my left ankle. More than the mortal injury I was ashamed of damaging the entire Christmas party that my parents had planned all month.
This incident of that Christmas is vividly stored in my memory because of the gift I received the day after on Christmas. Though the accident is a bad memory, and bad memory hardly stays, (Anand, 12) I remember it as I saw the painful of it and it was more of an adventure. Thrilling memories are there to stay (Lamb, 245) but this was quite that. As Banerjee pointed out that we only remember those aspects that we want to remember. (Banerjee, 18) But it became really memorable soon after. The next day, on Christmas, when my father came to visit me at the hospital I found that he has bought for me as a Christmas present a VCR and a Superman cassette. These things were not cheap in those days and still my father went out of his way to buy these particular Christmas presents to encourage me. This was his love and his caring heart.
This gift served as a prop for the expression of my father’s care and love for me. It is not only a ‘literal gift’ but becomes a mere object of speculation for the speaker. The pan and tension, the presence of some activity underneath the surface of my skin was great but this gift brought me encouragement from my father like metaphors, irony, double meaning loaded sentences. I understood that it was not the VCR or the Superman cassette that brought me joy. It was the love of my father and the care for me. This joy was the fatherly love on Christmas that made it so memorable.
It could be ascertained that this love and care of Christmas should be composed and restored as an element of individual justification of human dignity that makes a Christmas special. This means that one should be justified in terms of love and care to oneself. The human dignity is to be taken into consideration in relation to love and care. One must always love, care and always be clarified and justified to the personal self like my father. This is the importance of love and care and the value of Christmas and the rest depends on the survival strategies in the modern world. Thus, on Christmas these two human elements remain in its position and thus this Christmas became so special and memorable to me when I found my father to be a greater hero than Superman.
Works cited
Anand, Vijay. The Process of Thought and Perception. Auckland: HDT Ltd, 2006.
Banerjee, Dibakar. Details from Medical Journals of AIIMS. New Delhi: AIIMS, 2001.
Lamb, Davis. Cult to Culture: The Development of Civilization. Wellington: National Book Trust, 2004.