Silliness

My son giggled a lot watching one of the Peanuts TV specials today; I think it was called "It's Magic, Charlie Brown."  Today was his first time watching any Peanuts in video form (except for the excerpt of Snoopy fighting the Red Baron from the Christmas special).  I gave him a 3-DVD set of Peanuts as an early Christmas present.   He wasn't that impressed with "Merry Christmas Charlie Brown," nor "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown"--they are just a bit dated, I think in a charming way, but it's not enough action to hold my boy's interest.   However, "It's Magic" had him laughing hysterically.  All the goofy things Snoopy does--making Charlie Brown disappear, then putting a ghost costume and a tie on him--it's complete silliness, but that's just what made him laugh so hard.

I'm not going to launch into a big sermon about how much we need silliness in our lives...but we do. In contemporary U.S. culture, silliness has been replaced, to a large degree, by sarcasm and irony...that's why so few of us really know how to giggle like a six-year-old.  Myself included.