A Christmas Carol

Yesterday I took my parents and Alex to go see a local community production of A Christmas Carol. After being cooped up for the past 2 weeks taking finals, I was ready to fully immerse myself into the holiday season and I thought this would be a nice way of doing it. I'm now a huge proponent of community theater. It's a relatively inexpensive form of entertainment, the productions usually have whole families involved- including really cute and talented little kids, people don't take themselves as serious as profession productions but its still good, and I like the feeling of community togetherness in the day and age where that bond is often lacking.

As I was watching the performance, I reminisced about doing this production in 5th grade. I remembered many of the lines and the scenes perfectly, but I wondered if anyone doing that production in elementary school really got the message.

It seems like one of the most frequent themes in novels, plays, and movies is the story of the person who is caught up in money and his work, but then has a change of heart and realizes that there's so much more to life than that. Whether it is Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol that's been around forever or Mighty Ducks (I can relate almost anything to this movie- remember how Coach Bombay had a license plate that said "just win" and he changed after coaching pewee hockey team), all these works of art have this message about life, but I wonder how many of us actually take it to heart? I guess its true when they say everything you need to know for life you learn when you're young, but there is a difference of learning something and actually practicing it.