I’ve always been absolutely amazed by early humans. Having always lived in/around large cities, I’m able to spot the Big and Little Dippers, the North Star and Orion but not much else. There have only been a few times in my life I’ve been remote enough to REALLY see the night sky enough to appreciate the magnificence of it. I should add more of these to my bucket list. Joshua Tree sounds nice.
Even a busy, distracted modern person like myself notices the days becoming shorter – to the point it’s dark on both ends of the workday. The exact point, though, where it shifts – being able to understand exactly when it happens – a year being comprised of 365 days – a day being comprised of 24 hours – that on Dec 21 every single year the Earth will begin to pivot the other direction – is amazing.
What I find even more amazing than this is that mankind, completely isolated from each other, recognized the incredible significance of this date, building temples and ceremony sites around it. Stonehenge (England), Chichen-Itza (Mexico), Manchu Pichu (Peru), Temple of Karnak (Egypt) are all incredible creations of mankind built specifically around the solstices. I mean, do you think they were ever off? In Tulum (Mexico) there is a small stone square that the summer solstice shines directly through to this day. How exactly? The humans that built these structures are long gone and yet groups of us still gather to witness these remarkable moments when the sun shines perfectly through them on June 21.
We can only imagine what these groups of humans faced during the winter months. The return of the light, to them, meant the return of food, the end of cold, the hope of survival.
Before Christmas was Christmas it was countless other things. The Roman Emporer Constantine decreed it a Christian holiday in 336 AD. It seems pretty widely accepted (you do YOU though) that Dec 25 was selected as the date to commemorate the birth of Christ as opposed to it being the actual date Christ was born. It makes sense, to me, why this is. Out of the darkenss, the hope of mankind is born. You don’t have to be a believer to recognize the point Constantine was trying to make.
How did the recognition of the birth of Christ or the observance of the Earth tilting turn into the bazillion dollar shower-people-who- want-for-nothing-with-all-the-things spectacle it is today? I’ve never really looked into it but am going to guess it was a case of capitalism turned into a case of consumerism. Christmas is big business. Huge. Show that special someone how much you care. Make the commercials that have kids incessantly pestering their parents for that Official Red Ryder carbine-action two-hundred shot range model air rifle. I’m sure it was an easy sell.
As a person whose mood is greatly affected by the amount of light in each day, you would think I’d be all over Christmas. If not Christmas, you’d at least think I’d be standing at Stonehenge or Cahokia Mounds to see first-hand what the sunrise on Dec 21 meant to mankind. But I’m not. I find myself typically beaten down by the darkness, the cold, the guilt, the expectations, and the constant effort to keep it inside and let others who enjoy it – enjoy it – to participate in such things.
Before I was aware of Seasonal Affective Disorder, I had recognized that March 1st was a day of enormous relief for me. It was the day I knew I was going to make it. If I could make it to March 1st I could take a deep breath and know I was going to be ok for a while. Spring has always been my favorite season. It’s the thing I miss most about living in Florida. Seeing the trees wake with the lightest green of new leaves. The blush of a redbud tree. The brave little crocus’ pushing up through the snow or the tulips showing their defiant colors in the still-frigid air. I took great joy in all of it. All the magic of the next spring and summer will be born 18 days from now. Out of the darkness, the hope of mankind. A single minute of light longer than the day before. It truly is a miracle – you don’t have to be Christian to recognize that. The truth is that every society and every religion back to the most pagan of days recognized it and all for good reason. Aside from those terrifying fish that dwell in complete darkness none of the rest of us would make it. Humans would cease to exist.
I get it. My grievance with Christmas is not in it’s meaning. My grievance is a) the bazillion dollar guilt machine it’s become and b) the lights, songs, smells, and familiar symbols of it that have only been visible to me in the darkest times of my life. Even as a child, when Christmas was magic to me, I recognized the fact that there would be nothing but darkness after the tree came down. Two more months to go till my personal day of hope and nothing to break the bleakness or the frozen sky.
Christmas, to me, was at first pure magic. It then became a fear of what was to come. Enough cycles of what came after shaped it into one big PTSD trigger. I’m aware everyone is not like me. Not as sensitive, not as quick to make associations, not as easy to bruise as I am. As terrible as the downside is to be me, an enormous upside comes with it. I don’t really want to be different than I am. I understand that eliminating the extreme on one side of me would also eliminate the extreme on the other side. I wouldn’t do it. It’s a large price to pay, but I would not do it. I can only hope to learn better ways to manage the downside of being me. Maybe next year I SHOULD start traveling. Maybe I should start standing where our primitive ancestors stood and celebrate the return of light.
As it is, I can barely feel the Earth reverse its tilt above the incessant consumerism and false cheerfulness of the season.
Can we just not?
