There are many things that are associated with Christmas that really don’t belong to it. St. Nicholas got transferred from his special day on December 6th to be part of the Christmas celebration. Really the songs Baby it’s Cold Outside, Winter Wonderland and Sleigh Ride don’t even mention Christmas, but they have become part of its celebration. We pack those songs up with our decorations every year. Which is a shame as it would be great to hear them during the snow storms we get in January February and March.
Today we are going to talk about a great English Tradition and a great American song that have gotten tangled up with Christmas but don’t specifically belong to it. In my mind they are also bound together. The great English Tradition is a live production of Peter Pan being done every year during the Holidays in London and the song is My Favorite Things.
It is 1904 and the curtain rises for the first time and we see the nursery of Wendy John and Michael Darling. We hear for the first time of the boy Peter Pan, and by the end of the first act Peter has come and led the three children to the Never land. How does he do this? They fly of course. When Wendy asks Peter what is address is he doesn’t really have one, but he know how to get home. He tells her “second star to the right and straight on till morning.”
When JM Barrie first wrote his play there was only one thing that was needed to fly. You had to think happy thoughts? This caused a problem for the children who saw the play as they left the theater thinking that was all they had to do to fly, and what child doesn’t want to fly? So many of them thought happy thoughts and jumped off the highest places they could find. Barrie heard of the problem and wrote in the need for pixie dust also.
Peter is described as the boy who never grows up. I am not so sure that this is true. In some ways he has grown up better than most of us do. He helps his friends; he rescues Wendy from the pirates and understands the need for Wendy to grow up and takes her home. Peter learns how to let go. When Peter faces death in the play, he doesn’t fear it, he faces it and says, “Death will be an awfully big adventure.” How many adults see death as the next exciting thing to happen in their lives?
Peter begins every day by thinking good thoughts he can fly because of the way he has trained his mind to work. He knows the only way to fly is to think of everything that is good. And do you know what? It’s the only way for us to fly too.
In the musical The Sound Of Music, Maria the young novice that has come to the Von Trapp family to be a governess, teaches the children how to face their fears, she tells them to remember their “favorite things.” And in this song she tells them about all the things that delight her.
Rain drops on roses
And whiskers on Kittens
Bright copper kettles
And warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied with string
These are a few of my favorite things.
In singing these words to the children she calms their fears and gives them a tool for life. Saint Paul in his letter to the Philippians reminds us to do the same. He tells us to concentrate on beautiful, noble and good things. And in doing this we will help ourselves. So these two things, that never really belonged to Christmas but are now a part of it, both teach the same lesson that when we make our thoughts good, we can do wonderful things. At Christmas, we are reminded that God came to Earth as a man, Jesus, and he saved us from our sins, by dying on the cross and rising from the dead. Now there is a thought that should make us fly, there is an event that can be called one of my favorite things
