Where Has the Magic Gone?

This weekend, while the crowds jostled for seats at the Narnia movie, I watched Richard Attenborough's Shadowlands--not for the first time. The beautiful film depicts the true love story of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidson. Some of the strongest scenes involve Lewis(played superbly by Anthony Hopkins) and his colleagues at the university where he taught. They chide him often for his "childish" books like Narnia. It is made clear that they would never be able to regain the lost magic from their own childhoods.

Terez Rose writes on how learning to play the violin has brought the Christmas magic back to her own life:

Why does magic grow so inaccessible to us as adults? Life nudges us away from it, exposing our childhood dreams and treasured precepts as the naive illusions they'd always been. There is no Santa; there are no such things as fairies and spirits. How then to explain, as I played my violin, the magic sweeping over me like the embrace of a divine spirit? In that moment, I had it all back - the peace, joy and timeless sense of security of my youthful Christmas Eves.