Looking toward Christmas 2008, I recall a story of two friends. (To preserve privacy, let’s call them Nancy and Joanne.) About their relationship, Nancy says “I had the most in common with her of any of my friends.”
They also shared the same house, Joanne as owner and Nancy her tenant. For a long time, that landlord/tenant relationship, though not without some tensions, had worked for them.
Suddenly one day, however, Nancy received a telephone call from her friend announcing that she was selling the house and that Nancy would have to leave promptly. This curt message came as a crushing blow to Nancy who, at the time, had no other place to live.
As Nancy made preparations to move out, she was aware that Joanne remained at her desk upstairs, making no effort to help her friend. Nor did she offer any word of sympathy for the situation she had imposed on someone who considered her almost a family member.
In the following years, Joanne suffered a series of hard blows. First, her parents died and then, sometime later, so did her only sibling. Then Joanne suffered a heart attack from which her recovery was slow and difficult.
Years later, at Christmas time, Nancy suddenly received from her erstwhile friend a letter of apology along with a check for one thousand dollars. The money was to make up for the expenses that Joanne made her friend incur.
Soon afterward, the two friends went out to dinner and Joanne made a fuller apology, regretting what she had done in evicting Nancy from her home. She also explained how she had come to regret her decision and her coldness toward a dear friend.
In explanation of her turn-around, Joanne told her friend that she had watched a television presentation of Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” She had been so moved by the effects of Scrooge’s hardness of heart that she determined to repair the break with her friend.
This story has a very happy ending. The friendship grew stronger than it had been, with the pain of separation even helping to improve it.
This account of two people reconciling in love and forgiveness expresses the spirit of Christmas as I understand it. After all, the Christmas story features the coming together of the divine and the human, heaven and earth, an end to one era and hope in a new one. If ever there was one, this is a time for reconciliation.
The world, of course, is filled with nations and regions at odds with one another. Ongoing enmities between Israelis and Palestinians, Pakistanis and Indians, Georgians and Russians, and numerous other groups continue to poison the lives of millions.
In many of these situations it is impossible to discover ways to bring about peace and harmony. But some places ─ Northern Ireland, for example, and South Africa ─ have shown the world that progress, imperfect but still considerable, can be made.
On a more intimate level, it should be much easier to resolve the enmity that too often estranges family members from one another. However, this kind of break in good relations between siblings, parents and adult children, cousins and others in one’s extended family, may often last for many years.
On the day when I write this, an obituary of a famous movie star appeared in the newspapers. Among the items noted was his continued estrangement from his daughter. This sad fact reminded me of how widespread breaks in family connections really reach.
The painful truth is that this has happened to people I know and love. These situations continue to cause me pain. Especially at Christmastime, I wish those breaks could be repaired.
These enmities cause emotional and perhaps other harm to the people directly involved. But they also affect members of younger generations. These young people are often cut off from other family members because of the actions of their parents.
If there was anything I could do to repair the rifts, I would take action. But others have tried and failed and, instead of succeeding, I would probably make matters worse. Still, my fondest hope is for the unforeseen to happen so as to bring people back together.
Looked at from any distance, the factors dividing people usually seem much less important than those tying them together. The grievances that drive people apart often turn out to be trivial when looked at objectively. Still, the enmity lives on, sometimes for a whole lifetime.
To me, few things are sadder than seeing people in late life stubbornly holding on to grudges that have estranged them from family members.
The situation discussed here is far from being rare. The number of relatives at odds with one another is huge. If your family is free of this plague, you are fortunate indeed.
Let’s join in hoping for this season to bring new reconciliations.
Richard Griffin