The friendship that dare not speak its name

As I've written elsewhere, Advent is, at least for me, the hap-happiest time of the year. The lights go up, the Christmas songs start playing, and I find myself weeping like a schoolgirl while listening to the Lake Woebegon monologue. However, there is a melancholy undercurrent for me because of another theme which becomes ubiquitous this time of year.

I speak, of course, of the polar bear and penguin, who are seen sledding, skating, sharing a caffeinated corn syrup-based beverage, and just generally frolicking together on everything from advertisements to throw pillows this time of year. Their friendship is so open, so mutually supportive, and so freely and graciously given it puts me in mind of Isaiah 11:1-10, the text I preached the second Sunday in Advent. As the lion lies down with the lamb, so the polar bear with the penguin. It's nearly eschatological in its beauty.

Except that it can't happen because polar bears and penguins live, literally, at the opposite ends of the earth (polar bears on the North Pole ice cap and penguins around the South Pole on Antarctica and South America). Leave it to Coca-Cola to come up with ad campaign even less likely than persons of every race and ethnicity joining hands and singing in harmony whilst buying one another a caffeinated corn syrup-based carbonated beverage.

I guess it really is eschatological.