Tidings of comfort

The weather says "This band of snow showers will move rapidly across all of Connecticut..and eastern Hampden and southern Worcester counties in Massachusetts through 930 am." Well it's after ten thirty and still snowing. Flurries of big fluffy snow flakes alternating with the much more serious specks, the ones in the business of whiting out roads and stinging any skin left exposed. Yesterday, Ruth told me that she heard Band-Aid's "Feed the World" christmas song on the radio. "It's official. Christmas is here" she told me. Waking up to the winter wonderland that used to be downtown has reaffirmed that point. It's here....

Even my sister, who usually likes christmas, said this year she has heard so much holiday cheer on her local radio that she began December overwhelmed and underpleased. Being smacked over the head for weeks already with the HAVE A MERRY FUCKING XMAS AND oh yeah, BUY THINGS! message can make anyone lose their taste for the holiday I think. So many people express a distaste for this level of commercialism at christmas, and yet you have to wonder why it is not rejected en masse. I suspect it is because there are many built in mechanisms to discredit and invalidate any sentiment that betrays anything less than deep, driving, retail oriented enthusiasm for our western winter gift giving bash. I swear if I had stayed in Anthropology, I would study this (and weddings). In the words of one of my favorite teachers, "it's a rich mine to, uh....mine"

Have I mentioned why I believe things like "Merry/Happy christmas" and "Be of good cheer" are codified and frozen seasonal sayings, why they could quite reasonably be considered incantations rather than the more functional communicative events a naive listener might suppose them to be? Why the word "joy" written in large ornate letters is a seasonal decoration? I believe it linked to the fact that this is inherently a bad time of year if you live in the north (geographic, not political). Consider these practices in a pre-industrial context, when winter very well might have meant death. In that light, these phrases might be better interpreted as reassurance to the listener that although winter was coming, friends, family, and neighbors would help them get through alive. Granted, it is only marginally less bad now in our modern society. If you are not affluent, winter means unpayable energy bills, risks of health problems (with medical bills and probably no or bad insurance), and dangerous slowed travel in what is probably a less than great vehicle (if you can even afford that). Basically, winter still sucks for us moderns unless we have the money to insulate ourselves against it. If we do, presumably it can be all winter wonderland and ice capades. Interwoven with this disparity and dual implication of coming winter is one of our most pervasive of cultural values, the "land of opportunity" one - that is the one that says "anyone can be rich" and which enforces the "american dream" myth. One could argue that it is not merely treasonous but essentially sacreligous to acknowledge that there are massive disparities in access to resources which have the direst of consequences for those with less or no access. This is the mechanism of invalidation. And the realization goes something like this: "Don't like christmas? How dare you suggest that something is wrong with being so fucking jolly you spend more than all your money on crap?"

In our modern consumer culture haze, we have dropped the security through communalism elements that might have originally underlay expressions of "christmas spirit" and have replaced them with the commercial ones (btw, it seems this had to have started happening pre-20th century). What was christmas spirit? Possibly, it used to be the reassuring glow you felt as a participant in community wide interactive expressions that were marked by "tidings of joy", sharing goods and resources with one another, and shit like that. Now that reassurance is gained by assuming the pretense of disposable wealth. It makes sense since such wealth, in the modern context, would provide at least some protection from the more frightening aspects of winter. It certainly would explain why christmas is marked by excessive displays of giving. I mean, the more presents you buy, wrap, and give, the more cheer. That seems to be the equation. And giving is better than receiving, right? Why? Because by giving, giving, and more giving (even when you have little, fewer, and less) you are acting as if you have the protective luxury level income rather than one that is subsistence level (or less).

Ultimately it is dysfunctional because the american dream is a nightmare of poverty and want for too many. And yet you will see the working poor families lining up to spend like they have a Trump sized bank account. I used to listen to my neighbors fight every year about what they could and couldn't afford to buy for the kids. Last year, I listened to the emotionally troubled teenage son of my neighbor R__. I listened as he screamed "You never cared about me!", pounded the doors and walls, and then took off to get high in the woods while the snow fell. All this because R___ had told him they couldn't afford the video game hardware the kid had hoped for. Later, I sat at my kitchen table with R___'s partner L___. She held their baby, who had Down's syndrome and diabetes, and told me about the horrible fight she had with R___ because he intends to spend too much of their money on his son, that R___'s company is moving all their manufacturing jobs to China, and that the state is cutting off her health insurance. Meanwhile, her 8 year old daughter spins around my living room, high on the sugar from cookies I've baked, frenetically reciting all the presents she believes her father, who is divorced from L___ and will be showing up any minute with his new wife, new baby, and new pick up truck, will get her this year.

What was a celebration to reassure people that they had the strength, hope, and social bonds to make it through the coming winter months has been turned into something that is in and of itself bad. Well intended reminders to be hopeful and not forget life's joy are now commands "Celebrate!" "Be Merry!" "Deck the halls!" No wonder there are folks who can't see these as anything other than orders to engage in the nearly ubiquitous and necessarily insincere appearance of sentiment.

Despite all this, I do like the first snow. It is beautiful.