Christmas

Well, Christmas has passed, and everyone had a good time.  We stuffed ourselves with turkey & dressing, the kids got the toys they wanted, and Athena and I even had enough money to get each other a few much-appreciated gifts.

I love Christmas, even though I am not a Christian.  It is such a season of happiness and fun.  Stressful, too, but worth it for me.  The whole season is layered with so many centuries of tradition and belief, stretching back beyond memory.  I love the wonderful secular mythology of Santa created by the Rankin-Bass stop-action animated movies (Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Rudolph, etc).  It is only the latest layer of mythology added to this mountain; on top of the Christian festival of the birth of the savior, pre-Christian German tree worship, the winter solstice, the Yule Log, and on and on.

When much of our city lost power, (our neighborhood was out for 5 days), I became intensly aware of the precariousness of human life in the grip of Winter.  There are no streetlights, no microwave, no radio or TV.  Food spoils in a few days.  You are cut off from everone except your close neighbors.  The nights are absolutely black, and freezing cold.  You can see nothing at all.  Without fire, you could not survive a single night.  And all through December, the nights are getting longer and longer, colder and colder.  There is a real primeval fear: what it it keeps getting colder?  How long will our fuel last?  How long will our food last?  We must always live on a knife's edge of survival: if in the fall we did not stock enough food and fuel for the entire winter, we will die.  There is no forgiveness, no second chance.  

Suddenly, there is a miraculous change.  The night, which seemed to be engulfing the world, relents.  There is a little more daylight than there was yesterday.  Tomorrow, there is a little more.  We are saved!  The grip of winter has been broken, and the sun is returning!  We still have months to go before spring, but the tide has turned.  At last, we can look forward with hope instead of fear.

Truly this is the season when hope is born, when the sun (son?) who will save us and gift us with life is reborn.  Once again, in the stately turning of the world, we have been forgiven, and all undeserving we are promised new life.