Ecclectic Ponderings of the Season

I have, for as long as I can remember, come to the winter holiday celebration with ambivalence (to put it mildly). For me, it begins in mid-October and then just builds from there until, by the time everyone else is feeling all "merry and bright" I am a full-on humbug -- and generally pretty sincerely hysterical about it in the bargain.
Some of that is wrapped around a mixture of family history that is so cumbersome and complicated and just icky that I don't even want to step into the muck to begin to recount it. Suffice it to say that I don't have a lot of warm fuzzy memories to hang my holiday hat on. Part of my difficulty with the mid-winter celebrating is that it happens in WINTER. Ewwwww! I am not a snow person. I detest the cold. The dark brings me down emotionally. All I really want to do is curl up under the warm, snuggly blankets and hug and cuddle and sleep -- waking occasionally to make love before drifting back to sleep. I do not ski. I do not ride sleds. I do not ice skate. I do not shovel snow (given any choice). I do not like being out in this nasty, awful, dreadful, miserable winter weather. Period. Warm. Give me warm, sunny days and a patio with a beer or an ice tea -- preferably served by a charming cabana boy... GRIN! Further, I really do feel conflicted about the religious context that pervades the holidays. I am NOT Christian. The whole Jesus thing is a problem for me in terms of "intellectual integrity."I like the pretty pageantry of the whole story -- I was raised with it and I know all the music and I have a serious collection of nativity sets, but the fact is that my personal spirituality is not in line with this very Christian holiday. I don't have anything against people who DO do this path, but it isn't mine, and I know that is the truth for me, so I can get to feeling a little raw, if I pay attention at a certain level. It just doesn't feel honest. And don't even get me started about the commercial drumbeat that pounds out the mantra from way before Halloween with ever increasing urgency -- HAVE YOU BOUGHT ENOUGH; SPENT ENOUGH; PILED THE PILES HIGH ENOUGH? I don't enjoy shopping. Ever. Not for myself, and not for anyone else either. I am never sure what to do about gift giving. Not creative or inventive or sure what is the right thing for anyone on the list. I am easily overwhelmed at almost every single turn in the gift tumble. And I'm no better when it comes to receiving gifts -- I don't like being surprised. I hate that whole wrapped up package scenario. It makes me nervous.

So. I have been a little surprised this year to find myself easing gently and softly through the season with a sense of quiet and calm and simple enjoyment. I've scaled down some of what I might have done in years before. I've chosen what to bring out of the decorative items that I've had in my collection for years -- I've given myself permission to only put out only what I really want out; those things that I most enjoy and really want to see in my environment. I've found I'm enjoying the music that is seasonal as we've played it at home -- simply letting it wash through the place and take us where it will. Some nights, after dinner, we turn out the lights, put on the candles and just sit and listen, or even sing along. Sharing the music that seems to fill the house with a particular kind of warmth and joy. It has been good.

I've found I'm pondering and listening to the language of the holiday with some sort of different perspective this year. Not so put off by the Christian nature of the celebrations, I am finding other meanings that are speaking to me in the images, symbols, and traditions. For a celebration that is, after all, deeply rooted in pre-Christian ritual and belief, none of that should probably be surprising. Still, I am glad to find things that can carry me through the pervasive frolicking with some kind of orienting that makes it all seem at least a little bit contextually sane for me.

So, here are some bits and pieces -- shared for the holiday with you --

This first is really not Christmas oriented, or even holiday oriented, but I find it evocative in the context of our world situation, especially as Bethelehem continues to sit at the vortex of so much upheaval in our world. How remarkable that these words, penned at the opening of the First World War seem so applicable to where we find ourselves so many years later. As the seasonal darkness settles down over us all, this is the season for lighting the fires of hospitality and hope in our homes, our hearts, our communities. Wherever ignorance and fear and hatred hold sway, people of good will and good heart must find the courage and the conviction to reach across seemingly impassable boundaries to make common cause. We are, all -- here on this tiny, shining bit of matter in a vast universe, more alike than different.

W.B Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming!

Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I

That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Another set of words that have brought me to a place of thinking this year come from a frankly "Jesus" promoting Christmas song by Kenny Rogers -- "Mary, Did You Know?" The truth is, I like it musically. Beyond that, though, there is something in these words that speaks to me about the whole "virgin birth" thing that is part and parcel of the Christmas story that I was brought up with as part of my Catholic childhood. For those who have not had the Catholic experience, the doctrine of the virginity of Mary is a major article of faith within that tradition. I don't know very many people who come of age within Catholicism who don't struggle with the sheer cognitive looniness of the "virgin birth." Still, I like this song. It celebrates the mystery of motherhood (quite apart from the religious overlay) in terms that I believe any woman who has ever gazed into the eyes of her infant child can understand. There is that wild unknown place when you hold that new, unformed human person in your arms. Surely, EVERY birth is "virgin" in some very real sense. It is territory that cannot be known ahead of time, cannot be understood in any sort of concrete sense short of actually walking through the process.

Mary, did you know

that your baby boy will one day walk on water?

Mary, did you know

that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?

Did you know,

that your baby boy has come to make you new?

This child that you've delivered,

will soon deliver you.

Mary, did you know

that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?

Mary, did you know

your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?

Did you know,

that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?

When you kiss your little baby,

you've kissed the face of God.

The blind will see

The deaf will hear

The dead will live again.

The lame will leap

The dumb will speak

The praises of The Lamb.

Mary, did you know

that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?

Mary, did you know

that your baby boy will one day rule the nations?

Did you know,

that your baby boy is heaven's perfect lamb?

This sleeping child you're holding,

is the great I AM

Then there is the continued injunction, delivered by angels, if you read the accounts of the birth of Christ, as told in scripture, especially in the Gospel of Mark -- "Do not be afraid." Angels tell Mary not to be afraid when they announce that she has "found favor with God" and will become the mother of the Messiah foretold by the prophets. Angels tell the carpenter, Joseph, not to be afraid to take Mary for his wife, even though she is bearing a child which he knows is not his. Angels tell the terrified shepherds not to be afraid, but instead to go and seek out the child which has been laid in a manger... I don't know about the veracity of the whole story, but I do know one thing. Messengers from "god" who tell you not to be afraid -- are actually telling you to hang on to your hat because life is just about to get interesting as hell. I am trying to remember if there was an "angel" the night that Master sat at the end of the sofa, long after everyone else was asleep; looked straight at me, and announced that He loved me... Did I hear some angelic voice steadying my nerves -- assuring me that there was absolutely no reason to be afraid? Maybe so...

Then there is the even deeper, older, more rooted set of traditions to which it all hearkens back... the time of magic and wonder before there was anything but a world ruled by sprites and the wood nymphs and the whole pantheon of gods and goddesses from cultures flung across the globe. In the more innocent and earthy celebrations of the solstice and the turning of the year and the returning of the light, I still find something deep and resonant:

In Russia, there's a Christmas divination that involves candles. A girl would sit in a darkened room, with two lighted candles and two mirrors, pointed so that one reflects the candlelight into the other. The viewer would seek the seventh reflection, then look until her future would be seen.
The Early Germans built a stone altar to Hertha, or Bertha, goddess of domesticity and the home, during winter solstice. With a fire of fir boughs stoked on the altar, Hertha was able to descend through the smoke and guide those who were wise in Saga lore to foretell the fortunes of those at the feast.
In Spain, there's an old custom that is a holdover from Roman days. The urn of fate is a large bowl containing slips of paper on which are written all the names of those at a family get-togehter. The slips of paper are drawn out two at a time. Those whose names are so joined are to be devoted friends for the year. Apparently, there's often a little finagling to help matchmaking along, as well.
In Scandinavia, some families place all their shoes together, as this will cause them to live in harmony throughout the year.
And in many, many cultures, it's considered bad luck for a fire or a candle to go out on Christmas Day. So keep those candles burning!

swan