At holidays, let children be children
We are approaching the anniversary of the most horrific gun massacre in the history of the United States. It was not the largest in terms of casualties, but it was the one that separated our understanding of what really constitutes evil into “before” and “after.”
Before Newtown, we had Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma City, and 9/11. After Newtown, we had children assassinated on the eve of the Christmas holidays. Before Newtown we were able to process that human beings were capable of mortal sins and capital crimes. After Newtown, we realized that human beings could also be the incarnation of an evil immune to forgiveness and redemption, an evil that is barely comprehensible to minds attuned to lesser forms of hatred.
At this time of year, I am overwhelmed with the memory of those little boys and girls who will never become teenagers, young adults, mothers and fathers, and grandparents who themselves cherish the little boys and girls surrounding them.
I write all of this to give some context to what comes next.
The other day, my insanity detector was working at optimum levels.
A little boy in Illinois went to the mall, which in and of itself is a joyous and miraculous thing in these pandemic days, to see Santa. He was 4 years old, and he was excited to talk to the man who would make his little boy dreams come true. And unlike some people who have very high thresholds for satisfaction, his wish was relatively modest. This little boy wanted a Nerf Gun. He sat across the table, socially distanced from the man in the red suit and the white beard, leaning forward from his mother’s lap. He asked for the gun. And Santa said “No. No guns.”
The little boy’s mother thought Santa hadn’t heard correctly and clarified by insisting “He wants a Nerf gun.” And Santa held the line. No guns.
My favorite Christmas movie of the last few decades is “A Christmas Story,” based on the Jean Shepherd memoir. The central character, Ralphie, wants a Red Ryder rifle under the tree. It’s all he wants. And although it seems as if his parents and his teachers and every adult in his town is lined up against him, he eventually gets that gun. This opposition to guns is not a new thing. Ralphie’s story takes place many years ago, in a simpler America.
But, and this is a big but: There were no moral trappings to the opposition to a gun. The reason most parents might have been hesitant to get a weapon for their yearning child was because, as in Ralphie’s case, they were afraid they’d shoot their eyes out, or of some other non-life threatening catastrophe. There was not this sense that giving a toy gun to a child was grooming him to become a sniper.
Today, though, there are a lot of people out there who are unable to separate the very real dangers posed by actual guns and actual felons from the normal hazards of a wayward sponge pellet flying through the air. But the idea that we should deny little boys, and for that matter little girls the joy of playing with the toys that they want to play with because we are moralizing preachers of some secular gospel of safety, is anathema. It is wrong to make children feel the weight of our anger against actual catastrophe and to make them mourn, by proxy, with us.
A little boy who wants a gun will not turn into Lee Harvey Oswald. He will not enter a classroom and start shooting at innocents. He will not become a wild-eyed killer, a hardened criminal, someone who has no moral North Star. He is just a little boy who has a list of dreams, and wants to have as many of them fulfilled as possible.
For any adult, let alone the most important adult in a child’s December universe to say “No!” because he wants to make sure we all know that guns are evil, is a cruelty that reduces little boys to tears, and mothers to raging on social media.
Fortunately, the little boy in Illinois did get his Nerf gun, delivered by a much kinder Santa after the moralizing Mall Santa was forced to resign.
And that, my friends, is an example of the magic of Christmas, common sense and the underestimated power of decency.