Even after all this time, the Sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me."
Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky.
-Hafiz
"Life is like a roll of toilet paper," goes the bathroom wisdom, "the closer you get to the end, the faster it seems to go." True. When you are 10 years old, 1 year is 1/10 of your life. When you are 50 years old, 1 year is 1/50 of your life. So, when you're fifty, the year seems to go by 5 times faster than when you were ten.
We all know that, sometimes, when you lie out under the stars or get "lost" in a book, a concert, a meal or a session of love-making, time can scoot by at the speed of light. Likewise, when you're waiting for the end of boring class or the end of a dull workday or the end of a tedious conversation, time gets real lazy and can stretch out until a moment feels like a month.
Some call it, "time distortion." Some call it evidence that time is consciously malleable. Some say, "No more brownies." Whatever you call it, the holidays kick it in high gear. The stories of Mary & Joseph, the stories of the Jews, the Maccabees and the oil lamp, the tales of dark spirits on the longest night are told and retold as if they had never been told before.
To anyone who is intent on celebrating the holidays, the ancient tales become far more than old yarns and legends. When we re-enact the nativity scene or light the menorah or bring evergreens into the house, it's as if these old stories are happening again right here in our presence. Which is part of the magic of the holiday season. 2000 years of time get squished into a mystical momentary morsel. Of course, when the family descends on you like locusts, the holidays can feel like they last at least 2000 years.
All in all, these holiday celebrations seem to point to one unavoidable and inescapable principle: There's far more going on than time and space. Or, as one frog said to another, "Time's fun when you're having flies."