Happy holidays, everyone!
It’s mid-Hanukkah, and Christmas eve eve eve eve.
Light shining in the darkness, hope, the salvation of mankind…the Wal-Mart parking lot being packed. Best top off that cup ‘o joe (or cocoa.) It’s time to dive into the swirl of light and darkness. If you’re having a tricky time of it this year, I hope this helps.
Think of it as a philosophical Christmas card. You open the envelope. “Ah, Josh, I wonder how he’s been. Hmm..hmm…oh…huh?…wow…ah…I see.”
Thought of the Week
Can you have Christmas without Easter?
And now, for some elaboration…
Andy Williams is a Putz
Or he was, technically. No surprise Jingle All the Way used the song ironically to set the stage for frantic misery. (Schwarzenegger’s starring cameo as himself is a holiday classic. And perhaps it’s Johnny Mathis singing a cover.)
Singing in that smooth voice “It’s the most wonderful tiiiime….of the year”, Williams seems to choke us peasants in a rainy Walmart parking lot with impossible visions of the ideal Christmas. “Have a nice day, sucker.”
…Perhaps I’m a bit cynical here (and the tune is enjoyable sometimes), but speaking strictly from personal experience, outlining an unattainable idyllic picture doesn’t cheer me up.
Especially as I’ve got everything I could want. Loving family, supportive friends, a day where people are glad to see me, and I them.
As the mall speakers blare, I have a sinking feeling that even if I were toasting a marshmallow at that party I was hosting…I’d still be me.
Maybe Andy’s just a mirror that’s a little too shiny.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman
The strains of this old English carol give one pause - what about this light in the darkness?
“God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman, let nothing ye dismay - Remember Christ our savior was born on Christmas day.”
It seems closer than Andy’s.
My scientific, cold, calculating inner cynic sidles up, suddenly embodied from the smoke of my imagination.
“I dufno, sfounds”…he pauses, lowering his stained blue mask, and spitting out a fiber made in China. “Sounds awful Jesus-y.”
“Oh….yeah, but…so? And you’re still wearing that thing?”
He looks irritated, and vanishes.
(My agnosticism has entered an uncomfortable stretch. Dogma keeps popping up everywhere it hadn’t, and metaphors blaze into glory while believers roll their eyes in exasperation. At least it’s not weak appeasement anymore. Everyone is annoyed.)
Whatever, Kay
The darkened shops flash by in the night. The stoplights blink a bright red and green. Kay Starr warms the car speakers with her marvelous voice, bringing a Christmas of 1950 to the rainy streets of Lynchburg.
"Old Mr. Kringle is soon gonna jingle
The bells that'll tingle all your troubles away
Well, that’s a lot to ask Santa for.
I think I was 14 when I noticed. The feeling had been gathering for a few years. I got a guitar case for Christmas. (The guitar arrived a few weeks before on my birthday.) It was beautiful, brown, and…empty.
I still have it.
Both the guitar case, and that hollow feeling that stuff can’t fill.
The outside is covered with sweet stickers. There’s usually a guitar inside. Now the emptiness sings.
A Glimmering
My boots crunch through the frosty grass. It’s light, but the sun hasn’t peeked over the mountain yet. Light in the darkness…light in the darkness….
Man, this is so…unfashionable…to talk about. Still, it seems important. Light in the darkness…
Light isn’t the darkness getting less dense, gradually turning gray, then tan, then radiant. It’s something else. It’s opposite. It displaces.
And there’s something there.
There Are No Santa Easter Bonnets
Back to Kay Starr’s merry tune about Santa:
He'll be here
With the answer to the prayers that
You made through the year
You'll get yours
If you've done everything you should, extra special good
It didn’t quite work out that way on Easter.
“It’s not an accident that the axiomatic western individual was someone who was unfairly nailed to a cross and tortured. It’s like…yes…exactly…right…so what do you do about that?”
What if Easter was a story of the Romans awarding Jesus the early version of a Grammy for his skill at singing and exemplary behavior. Not only would it be insufferably propagandistic - a true tool of control to “be good for goodness’ sake” - but we’d all be living in a giant Andy Williams song.
When we grappled with our own suffering, the ache would be hopeless.
A Way Forward
Perhaps what arrives in the darkness of the world, in the crushing poverty, in the filth, in the obscurity of time, in the impossible, in the cold is…
A way forward.
Forget a box of chocolates. Life is - or can be- like a giant Walmart parking lot. Suffering, that is.
I wish Santa could bring me the solution. A new car, my own observatory, or even a preferred political outcome. Wouldn’t it be nice. But they’d all seem hollow somewhere like that brown guitar case in the closet from a Christmas past.
Something is glimmering in the night. It’s not less dark, a tolerable gray. It’s different. It’s a spark.
Some will say it’s a personal savior. Others might take a more metaphorical stance, a Petersonian “by voluntarily accepting the suffering and moving forward, it’s possible to transcend it and shatter the concept of reality itself.” Some friends would suggest more coffee and a better gym schedule.
Fine if you shrug. Maybe this isn’t for you.
I can only speak for myself.
I’ve been wandering through the frost, thinking.
- Josh