Column: The significance of being insignificant

Two years ago at Christmas time, I made my way across the Capitol Plaza to cover bench dedications in downtown Carson City.

But something caught my eye when I reached the Nevada Slain Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, causing me to pause.

Placed next to the statues on the memorial was a humble little Christmas decoration, a snowman holding a red planter with an evergreen seedling inside.

The dark contrast of the memorial to the colorful, diminutive decoration was too good to pass up, so I snapped a few photos and went on my way.

It's been two years since that moment, and I honestly hadn't given it much thought until now.

I recently watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas," the 1965 animated short by Charles Schulz that not only became an instant holiday classic, but has developed sort of a cult following through the years.

In this made-for-television Christmas story, Charlie Brown is experiencing the holiday blues as he tries to make sense of the season.

"Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy," he says to his best friend, Linus Van Pelt. "I just don't understand Christmas, I guess."

He's not alone.

In recent years, I've become disillusioned by all of the pomp and circumstance associated with Christmas.

Our culture seems to embrace bigger is better, brighter is finer. The more glitz and glamour there is to something, the more we seem to like it.

Whether it's the 72-foot tall Rockefeller Center Christmas tree sporting 50,000 LED twinkle lights in Manhattan, or over-the-top Christmas display contests held across the country that would make even Clark Griswold blush, the Season of Giving has been lavishly embellished into one of our nation's largest commercial enterprises.

That is not what Christmas started out as two millennia ago, and it certainly isn't what the holiday is all about, either.

Charlie Brown, chronically down on himself, felt the vice of commercialism surrounding Christmas and questioned the holiday's efficacy.

As the story progressed, though, the round-headed kid began to see the true nature of Christmas, stripped of its tinsel and glitter.

A small, orphaned evergreen Christmas tree surrounded by tall, shimmering aluminum in the middle of a tree lot gave Charlie Brown the reminder he needed that the magic of Christmas was really about being insignificant.

"Do they still make wooden Christmas trees?" Linus said quizzically.

For Charlie Brown, he was immediately drawn to the little tree, as though he identified with it. Like him, the tree was out of place, a misfit in a world that demanded popularity as the measure of significance.

"This little green one here seems to need a home," Charlie Brown muttered. "I think it needs me."

True to form, of course, Charlie Brown gets plenty of grief from the rest of the Peanuts gang when he returns from his errand with the diminutive, scrawny tree.

"You were supposed to get a 'good' tree," Lucy scolds. "Can't you even tell a good tree from a poor tree?"

By Lucy's standards — as someone who wants real estate in her Christmas stocking — nothing short of the tallest, shiniest tree would do for the gang's Christmas play.

But Charlie Brown nailed the meaning of Christmas without even knowing he did.

Linus cues him in, though, with an on-stage, spot-lit soliloquy after Charlie Brown cries out, "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?"

"For behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people," Linus quotes from Scripture. "For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord."

Then Linus turns to his friend and says, "That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."

Indeed.

Two thousand years ago, a seemingly insignificant virgin and her betrothed, a simple carpenter, traveled a hundred miles to participate in a government census.

Reaching their destination, the woman went into labor. No one in town would pay them any mind. Even the innkeeper shut his door on this insignificant couple.

Finally, they found one kind man who loaned them the use of his feed manger, an insignificant-looking cave-like structure meant for livestock.

There, the woman gave birth and the heavens opened up announcing the arrival of the Savior, God's Son, Christ the Lord.

A seemingly insignificant woman was chosen to bring this miracle child into the world, and her suitor, a man of no particular distinction, was selected to raise the child as his own.

The boy grew up in a carpenter's household, learning the humble trade and practicing it insignificantly, before being called into the ministry that would change the world forever.

Much like the events of that first Christmas, Charlie Brown stumbled upon an insignificant little symbol of peace and hope. Humble in appearance, the tree's authenticity spoke more poignantly than any of the shiny pink giants that clanked when Linus knocked on them.

Charlie Brown's tree represented true Christmas.

So did the little snowman decoration I saw adorning the law enforcement memorial.

Watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" the other day was the epiphany I needed, and I fished out the photo from my archives.

The snowman reminded me so much of Charlie Brown's meek little tree: So small, yet such a powerful message.

Size doesn't matter, and glow comes from the inside.

At Christmas time, there is power in being insignificant, because that reminds us the Season of Giving was born out of humility.

We give at Christmas time not to please ourselves or our senses, but to help others who may be struggling to find that silver lining, a glint of hope, that light at the end of a tunnel.

Significance is born out of insignificance.

George Bailey, from Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," learned that lesson one year in Bedford Falls, too. Inheritor of his father's humble little Building and Loan, Bailey wanted to do important things, travel to distinguished places around the world, and be someone of significance.

It wasn't until he met his guardian angel, Clarence, that he realized his significance was born out of first appearing insignificant. He meant so much to so many people in town. He touched them in subtle ways that he hadn't noticed before. And they showed up at his door in droves to show him a Christmas miracle.

At the end of "A Charlie Brown Christmas," the Peanuts gang finally comes to its senses and decorates the puny little evergreen tree after all, recognizing the beauty in its simplicity and how much it resembled in form that very first Christmas.

They turned something insignficant into something significant.

The snowman spoke to me in the same way. The fact that it sat atop a somber memorial, giving off that silvery light, that glint of hope amidst a backdrop of darkness, made its symbolism even more poignant.

The snowman was my Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It stood out more than any of the other decorations dressing the Nevada State Capitol building and Carson Street.

The way Linus tells it, we've made a big complicated mess out of a simple holiday message.

We want everything more glittery, shiny, glamorous and bigger than the year before. Christmas is treated like a great, big production rather than the humble celebration it started out as two millennia ago.

Perhaps that's why Charlie Brown was attracted to the meek little orphaned Christmas tree: It's simplicity spoke to his heart, his very being.

Christmas isn't some gargantuan commercial racket, contrary to Lucy's summation. It's a simple, humble and quaint message of giving and gifting to help others desperately searching for some hope in their lives.

The Charlie Brown Christmas tree and the snowman decoration express in no uncertain terms that each of us matters in this world, regardless of how small or insignificant we may see ourselves.

May we each experience the significance of being insignificant during this Season of Gifting, because it's not about us. It's about what we do for others.