Winter XIX. Christmas

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Winter XIX. Science

The Christmas bells drew me forth this morning. With but half-formed purpose, I walked through soft, hazy sunshine towards the city [Exeter?], and came into the Cathedral Close, 

...and, after lingering awhile, heard the first notes of the organ, and so entered. I believe it is more than thirty years since I was in an English church on Christmas Day. The old time and the old faces lived again for me; I saw myself on the far side of the abyss of years -- that self which is not myself at all, though I mark points of kindred between beings of then and now. He who in that other world sat to hear the Christmas gospel, either heeding it not at all -- rapt in his own visions -- or listened only as one in whose blood was heresy. He loved the notes of the organ, but even in his childish mind, distinguished clearly between the music and its local motive. More than that, he could separate the melody of word and of thought from their dogmatic significance, enjoying the one whilst wholly rejecting the other...

To-day, I listen with no heretical promptings. The music, whether of organ or of word, is more to me than ever; the literal meaning causes me no restiveness. I felt only glad that I had yielded to the summons of the Christmas bells... It is a piety to turn awhile and live with the dead, and who so well can indulge it as he whose Christmas is passed in no unhappy solitude? I would not now, if I might, be one of a joyous company; it is better to hear the long-silent voices, and to smile at happy things which I alone can remember... Jealously I guard my Christmas solitude.

Alpha.

Today was cool, for here, but sunny. The sun is now low enough that it sweeps the sofa, facing my French windows, on the other side of the room from my little table. I spent the early afternoon stretched out on the sofa soaking up the rays like a cat. I'm currently between books so, for perhaps an hour, I warmed myself and thought of very little. A bit of a Christmas holiday from my routine.

Thinking about Christmas reminded me of something Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion,

In the December 2004 issue of Free Inquiry, Tom Flynn, the Editor of that excellent magazine, assembled a collection of articles documenting the contradictions and gaping holes in the well-loved Christmas story. Flynn himself lists the many contradictions between Matthew and Luke, the only two evangelists who treat the birth of Jesus at all. Robert Gillooly shows how all the essential features of the Jesus legend, including the star in the east, the virgin birth, the veneration of the baby by kings, the miracles, the execution, the resurrection and the ascension are borrowed -- every last one of them -- from other religions already in existence in the Mediterranean and Near East region. Flynn suggests that Matthew’s desire to fulfill messianic prophecies (descent from David, birth in Bethlehem) for the benefit of Jewish readers came into headlong collision with Luke’s desire to adapt Christianity for the Gentiles, and hence to press the familiar hot buttons of pagan Hellenistic religions (virgin birth, worship by kings, etc.) [If Mary was a virgin then Jesus was not a descendant of David, though Joseph was ‘of the seed of David”, and dragging him from Nazareth to the supposed census in Bethlehem to be born is a waste of time even if scripture said that’s where the Christ would cometh from]. The resulting contradictions are glaring, but consistently overlooked by the faithful.

Rituals
I have my own Christmas rituals, though many of them have more to do with my years spent working retail than with religious belief. In the retail book business a scary percentage of a store's business takes place during the Christmas season. You start building up stock in early autumn and by Thanksgiving the shelves and overstock should be overflowing with books. The last week, the store is a mad house of selling and wrapping presents and restocking shelves -- the equivalent, now I think of it, of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in my current, Greening, career.

It's an "all hands on deck" time in a small store where they may even hire some part timers for a few weeks. At one store we had college student friends of the owner helping out over their break.

So I do try to spend at least part of Christmas Eve in my busy local (vertical) mall. I do some last minute shopping, if only for myself, and generally hang out to enjoy the Commercial-Christmas ambiance. A few years ago the 2nd best French bakery cafe opened a large operation in the very heart of this complex, so that has become the focus of my celebration. Nothing says Christmas to me like a warmed up almond or hazelnut chocolate croissant, with tea, under a dome, while surrounded by shops I care nothing about. What few Christmas gift/card obligations I still have, have already been met by this time, so I can relax and enjoy the chaos around me.


Years ago, back before I joined the Green Team at GreenFestival, I was walking around the show and noticed a booth (they were selling speakers that were Green in some way) showing a DVD of an Alison Krauss and Union Station concert in Louisville (my hometown). This was, at the time, my favorite CD, but I hadn't known there was a DVD. I bought it and it has become my tradition to watch it every Christmas. I have had traditional Thanksgiving (Home For the Holidays) and Christmas (While You Were Sleeping) moves that I've eventually tired of, but I still love this DVD as much as ever. Interestingly (to me), my cousins do not share my enthusiasm for Bluegrass music. I'm not sure if this is a consequence of paternal genes, or of my exposure to Bluegrass in college.

Christmas past
I was just barely a teenager when we lived -- next to an upscale mall -- in the San Fernando Valley in the mid-1960s. These were bleak years in my family, my parents were at about the mid-point (low-point) of a 15 year rough patch in their marriage. For years I'd hoped they would break up, just to stop the arguing I couldn't otherwise escape. Nonetheless, I was a Christmas shopping fool in those years. I don't think I've ever been more invested in giving presents. Probably this was, at least in part, a developmental stage. Previously I had been wonderfully excited about receiving presents, now I was more interested in shopping for others and giving. I haunted the stores in the mall (multiple anchors!) getting just the right thing for everyone on my list.

As Ryecroft hints in this section, most of the people I shopped for then are now dead. At least one of the presents I gave back then has come back to me with my parent's estate... a key-ring I now use to hold building keys. How many others of the presents from those days did I unload at the charity thrift store after my parents died? I tried not to even look at the things I was getting rid of, as I had enough on my plate then without dealing with sentiments larger than my storage space at home. There's so much that I have that I wish would just vanish.

Recently I read a collection of interviews with people talking about death and dying. In a very emotional book, the passage that got to me the most was a woman saying that, when she died, all the "things" she had acquired or saved, whether family heirlooms or tchotchkes, would lose their stories. I sometimes think it would be a great relief if everything I own was vaporized in a fire. I think it would be liberating. At the same time, I've carefully saved letters my dad sent to his mother, while he was fighting in the Pacific in WW2, though they are of no interest to anyone (even me, as he didn't write about anything concerning the war. From what little is revealed by these letters he could have been on a peacetime camping tour of National Parks).

Next: Winter XX-XXI. Hypocrisy.