Star Wars and Christmas

  I had a sort of epiphany today and here it is, there is a connection between the new Star Wars movie and Christmas.  It is more than just about connecting to galaxies (or cultures) from a long, long time ago, but it is about hype and our response to it.  One needs to be living underneath a rock not to know that there is a new Star Wars movie coming out along with countless toys, collectables, commercials and parodies.  This has been one of the most hyped movies I can remember in quite some time.  Here is where Christmas, Star Wars and hype intersect.  We get hyped up over these two things because they both promise finality/conclusion/explanation, anticipation, the remembering of a more simpler time, and the concept of good vs evil and that good will win. 

I am the first to admit that I am not the biggest Star Wars fan, and the only one I have seen is the last prequel and I slept through most of it.  But one of the talking points that the movie fans are making is that this movie can tie story lines together and explain them.  As people, we tend to crave finality and having everything tied up nice with a bow tie and with no ambiguity.  Why do you think that sitcoms are so popular, especially final seasons/episodes, because it puts things in proper order and we do not have to wonder what if.  Christmas does the same thing, it brings a finality to our year, and it helps us put things in order and bring things to completion.  For some, the last year has been a really hard one, for whatever reason and Christmas allows us to put things into place to put things to an end have some sort of finality. When one has finality on a situation, circumstance or year, it is a whole lot easier to move on.

  The second connection that gets hyped with both things is this idea of anticipation.  For the movie buffs, it is anticipating what the new story lines are going to be, the character development and are there going to be any new characters coming onto the scene or old ones going by the wayside.  Christmas is the same, we anticipate God coming as both fully God and fully man and dwelling among us.  We also anticipate what God is doing in our midst right now and how He is going to show up.  We even are anticipating His return to set things right.  With anticipation, there is a sense of hope, encouragement and that things will be set right.  It is that hope that wrongs will be righted and that we have the presence of God walking with us now and in the future we will be face to face.

The third area where both things get over hyped is a remember of simpler times.  We all like to remember those times when we didn't have to worry about a presidential candidate wanting to shut down the borders, religion phobia/extremism, to the more every day life of paying bills, relational conflicts, having a job and raising kits, because it takes us back to a time to where we either didn't have much responsibility or our responsibility looked totally different.  Both Star Wars and Christmas gives us a small break from the toils of the every day struggle.
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  The fourth hype is the idea of good versus evil.  In Star Wars this battle is found in Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.  For Christmas it is Jesus coming to be the sacrifice so that sin may no long reign.  I think people in general, but especially Americans love a good story where there good is pitted against evil.  We all cheer for the good guys to win because the good guys (or girls) embody what we want to and desire to be.  We also want the bad characters to get what they deserve, because often we often think that the bad people don't get what they truly deserve in this life or it takes way to long to show up. In essence, we want things to be set right and for everyone one to get what they truly deserve somewhere, sometime, because it doesn't happen a lot in this life. 

  To close out, there are three things that hype can lead to.  The first one is that, it leads to a major let down.  We build something up so big and it does not meet expectations, so how do we manage our expectations? The second issue with hype, we tend to think that something is better that what it really is, so how do we take a look at something without rose colored glasses? The third idea is that hype is more about flash than substances, so how do we become people who look for and become people of substance, and character instead of looks and trickery?