Candlemass. We chase away the darkness.
Christmas comes toward me in waves. At first I try to ignore it. Then I resist it passionately. Finally I go over the fault line and surrender to the whole thing, letting go of my end of the year angst until gradually the spirit of the season catches up to me.
Of course it helps to avoid the 'shopping' thing, as the malls and roads become almost impossible. It helps to simply watch the traffic and the shoppers wash past like flotsam in a rapids. Once one gets over the dissonant note that obscures the buzz of giving beneath the confusion of buying, and then lets go of all the rest of the consumer pageant, one can use the opportunity to review the year and express some feeling of connection toward all our relations, acknowledging, if only to ourselves, the parts they've played in a year of unfolding wonders.
It helps me to remember that the holiday is after all derived from ancient celebrations of the return of the light, when the long nights of winter start to grow shorter. Christmas in my head is programmed with too many expectations and obligations. All of the advertising represents a view of my country and religion that I can't bring myself to share anymore. All of the marketing, from the 'Baby Jesus' and 'Santa Claus' to the 'Scrooge' and 'Mr. Grinch' looks to me like consumer packaging. This year the excesses of Christmas quickly follow the excesses of the election. Christian America celebrates the birth of a savior while stalking the world like a rogue rooster, wearing a homemade halo and its' crown of Hollywood thorns.
After so many months of focusing on the election, on politics, on foreign policy and on the ridiculous performance of those who say they want change but can't bring themselves to fundamentally change themselves, I've mostly chosen simply to look away, toward something else, toward the future and toward the things that come out of the soul. Too much politics for so long and we forget that we are creative beings and not just reactive ones. In the heat of the struggle we spend so much time reacting to gross violations of the laws of life I've been hearing in my mind the old question/slogan from the anti-war movement in the sixties, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"
Sure, there will likely always be wars and the political drama, but underneath it all is a deeper revolution, driven and fueled by what people see, and feel and need in their lives. All of the political and religious dogmas in the world can't stand for long in the way of these. At best our frozen pursuits of fame and wealth are adaptations to the tides of creation, or reaction to them. People make laws and then they break them. Governments are the led one way and then another. Whatever paths or obstructions human beings erect are transcended by the river of time and change. In our time and in our culture it's the artists who are first to accept the vision of the future and then to translate it into form.
7:33:42 PM 
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