Season's Grievings

'Tis the season to be jolly. Actually, not many people would appreciate being called "jolly" since it infers a negative image when said person is naked, but there is no doubting the Holiday season is nigh. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Tet, or any other number of late-year holidays, there is one immutable truth: we cannot wait until it is over.

Oh sure, there's the whole Peace on Earth and Good Will Towards Men thing, but those are arbitrary concepts. What's peace to one person may be subjugation to another. If some ding-dong cuts in front of me at the check-out counter, peace is the last thing on my mind. I'm going to cut his throat with my Border's Rewards card, carry his head to the Lady's Auxiliary who do the volunteer gift-wrapping and settle in at Bugaboo Creek for two-inch-thick slab of prime rib afterwards. And the whole Good Will Towards Men not only completely eliminates women from the sentiment, it also makes it impossible for me to enjoy my steak since my Border's card would be bloodless.

I think the whole concept for celebrating the Holiday season late in the year is to keep us from going insane while making us go crazy. Now follow me here. It is a well-known fact that light, especially sunlight, produces a chemical reaction in our brains that releases endorphins that make us happy. Well, wouldn't you know the Winter Solstice falls within the same week of those holidays? We need light during that time. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day (in terms of sunlight) in the whole year! Don't believe me? Go to Sweden or some other country that rises above the Arctic Circle. Their suicide rate is almost at lemming-level and all the kids are into Death Metal music. They're not just producing world-class hockey players and chewy licorice fish, they're trying desperately to keep their sanity.

Now, for those of us in the Western world, the holidays are a time to set every angle ablaze with red, green, blue, orange, yellow, and white lights. Sure, it's pretty, but there's an evil below the surface. Those lights on the tree aren't for decoration, they're for keeping us wobbly-eyed and sedated. Decorating the house? It's to keep the kids from unsheathing the Ginsu blades from the knife block in the kitchen and doing in Mom and Dad. And who here hasn't had a relative who grabs the family and tosses them into the station wagon or mini-van and goes on a driving tour of the neighborhoods looking at how some people have more illuminated clutter on their lawn than Pee Wee Herman. Every self-loathing father on the block secretly clenches his teeth when he passes the Anderson's house because they ALWAYS have the most lavish and classy light display. Mom doesn't help when she coos, "Oh, honey, look at what the Andersons have done THIS year!" It takes all the discipline of a trappist monk to keep Dad from careening into a snowbank, kicking out the family, and going back to torch the Andersons' house.

To rip off an idea from Northern Exposure, the Holiday season is a festival of lights, which is really just a festival of life itself. It's affirming, comforting and brings us warmth. It's the tree in the morning, all glittering and majestic. You may have seen the tree every day for a week or so before that, but on Christmas Day, it's at it's most vibrant. It's almost as if it knew today was THE day. The Menorah, solemn and celebratory, dignity in the candles, fireworks, and memorial fires of our ancestors and family, both past and present. Light is a celebration. Light both hides and exposes our grieving. Light is all this and more.

Light is Life

I'm not too cynical to enjoy the finer elements of the holiday season, but it is fair to say that if the grand Holiday Season was held in June, during the Summer Solstice, I doubt we'd get all bunched up about it from a secular standpoint, especially since the holiday season has been co-opted from religion by Buck McDollar. But, I'll leave that rant for another time. It's December, I have some shopping to do, and I have my trusty Borders Rewards card ready to go.