Happy Thursday Keenan Knights!
I hope your final exam preparations are going well! Regardless of where you are in such preparations, the prospect of your exam performance likely includes some element of hope. Hope that you’re a good guesser, that the one unit you didn’t study for is missing from the test, or that your professor has a little extra Christmas spirit to share in the form of extra credit.
Although it is not necessarily the same type of hope, I believe Christmas is the most hopeful time of the year. This hope grants us a feeling of serenity, that everything eventually will work itself out should one simply trust in God’s plan. With the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, the idea that better days are ahead is hard to ignore.
I had a difficult time grasping this specific concept of hope until several years ago. My father showed me an old op-ed in The Sun, a New York newspaper, from 1897 now famously known as “Yes, Virginia”. In it, an 8 year old named Virginia writes to the editor asking about the existence of Santa Claus. The author responds with a resounding affirmation of his existence. He states that “There would be no childlike faith then [if Santa Claus did not exist]. . . The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished”. Despite the obvious differences between Santa Claus and God, I believe our attitude towards hope is fairly similar. Children see the arrival of Santa Claus as something to smile about and to look forward to, just as how God’s love for each one of us is something to take comfort in.
Let us, in times of struggle, remember to channel the childlike hope and wonder from Christmas morning into hope towards God, that our seemingly massive problems pale in comparison to His plan. To quote one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies”.
Merry Christmas, and Go Irish!
Christopher Fountain
University of Notre Dame Class of 2025
Here is the link to the full version of “Yes, Virginia”: https://www.newseum.org/exhibits/online/yes-virginia-there-is-a-santa-claus/