Psalm 19:1-4
Last night, I took EA to see Ballet Spartanburg perform The Nutcracker. I am not a ballet person, but I have watched enough episodes of So You Think You Can Dance? with my wife to appreciate the athleticism and artistry of dance. Plus, we got to go on a date so the evening was a win all around.
I had two main takeaways from the performance. The first concerns The Nutcracker's place in the holiday canon. The ballet is considered a beloved Christmas tale. But I realized that The Nutcracker is just as much a Christmas story as Die Hard is a Christmas story. In other words, its "Christmas-ness" comes solely from being set at Christmas. There is nothing in its plot about Christmas. Magic Uncle (the name I gave to Drosselmeyer) could have easily brought Clara's present to her at any time of the year and the heart of the plot would not have changed. But the ballet was set at Christmas and thus it is considered a beloved Christmas story.
The second takeaway concerned storytelling. A few minutes in, I leaned over to EA and said, "There's no narration in this, is there?" She smiled at the poor uncultured chap I am and shook her head. Yet despite there being no words in The Nutcracker I was still able to follow the story. True, there was some assistance from a plot summary in the playbill and Act II pretty much abandons any attempt at a plot. Even still, I could follow what was going on. The ballet told a story without actually telling a story. Rather, it showed a story.
I have heard numerous times that what separates good fiction, television, and screenplay writers from the rest is that they can advance a story by showing rather than telling. It's easy to do an exposition dump in which two characters talk about what is going on. There is an increased richness in demonstrating that process.
Psalm 19 centers on how the natural world attests, without uttering a single word, to the greatness of God. It is an easy jump from there to the quote attributed to St. Francis that we must preach the gospel at all times and, if necessary, use words. This is not to say that words or unnecessary (if they were then I am wasting a whole lot of my time). Yet if we truly want to demonstrate what God has done for us then we should show more than we tell.
Thinking specifically of this time of year, there is a lot of hand wringing over whether people wish others "Merry Christmas." I know some people who put "Christ" in all caps when they write out that greeting (which I have always read as screaming and thus has the opposite effect intended). I fear that fretting over telling people "Merry Christmas" is a compensation for the ways in which we do not show people that we wish them a Merry Christmas. We talk a lot about the love, peace, and joy that the Incarnation brings rather embodying that for others.
Maybe we should show people "Merry Christmas" more than we tell it.