Too sappy?

I like holiday shows. I like being in them. I like going to them. I like seeing tiny girls dressed up in velvet dresses and too-big bows hopping up and down because they're SO EXCITED, laughing couples leaping over snow drifts to get to the theater doors, the smell of cold wool and the stomp, stomp, stomp of boots just inside the entrance. And I remember that theater started as part of a civic/religious/cultural celebration. The whole town would get together and eat and drink and dance and sing and watch stories about themselves. Stories they all knew but told in new ways. There were sad stories and scary stories and maudlin stories and ridiculous stories full of bawdy jokes. I don't know exactly why we do this—what socio-evolutionary benefit it brings—but I'm happy that we do. And, as a theater guy, I'm happy that, 2,500 years later, the theater is still the best way to do it. There are holiday movies that I enjoy, but Holiday Inn and It's a Wonderful Life and Rudolf and Die Hard don't need me the way a live performance does. I make cookies my mom made and candies my dad made and put up decorations and sing carols and play games with family and enjoy all of that—until somebody cries—but those are individual joys. There's a different joy that comes from meeting up with a bunch of strangers and shuffling through the aisles of great big room and eventually everybody sits down and gets quiet and the lights go out. And then the music starts and it doesn't matter your age, or job, or health, or income. For an hour or two, you and those strangers and some people in costumes dance with sugarplum fairies or have dinner with the Cratchits or get ready for the ball with Cinderella. And then the story ends and we go back to the world—the terrible, confused, miserable world. But in one little corner of our community we've managed to pretend, for a while at least, that hope and love and warmth are still possible. That’s worth something, isn’t it?