the sun is down

“Is that gash in your leg
Really why you have stopped?
‘Cause I’ve noticed all the others
Though they’re gashed, they’re still going
‘Cause I feel like the real reason
That you’re quitting, that you’re admitting
That you’ve lost all the will to battle on

Will the fight for our sanity
Be the fight of our lives?
Now that we’ve lost all the reasons
That we thought that we had

Still the battle that we’re in
Rages on till the end
With explosions, wounds are open
Sights and smells, eyes and noses
But the thought that went unspoken
Was understanding that you’re broken
Still the last volunteer battles on.”

Just some thoughts on christmas. Nothing new to some people probably:

The connection of christmas with winter solstice isn’t random. The winter solstice is the death of the sun–the darkest day of the year. Solstice markings through the ages must then have been full of mourning and fear, but combined with hope– hope for the birth of a new sun, hope that the world would not simply end in darkness and apocalypse, that spring would return, and that circles are at the core of things. To get ChristinChristmasy on you, the birth of a ‘divine son’ to ‘Mary’ in the dark days of Roman occupation fits very well into this motif (and is perhaps not an evil myth addition, I think). Chesterton and Lewis spoke well on this. Never sure if I agree with them (they are too attractive to me), but there are moments.

‘The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe’ is about a place stuck in Winter, in fear, and in mourning (and also in surveillance and suspicion–it is during WWII after all). And it is the animals (Beavers) who have stubborn hope, and the youngest (Lucy) who have imaginative joy that can be used as a method for representing and struggling with dark things.

The Pevensie children play a game while a war is going on. They are hidden away from it by their parents, and they mimic this hiding in their games. Lucy goes to the darkest of places, the inside of a wardrobe, which turns out not to be so dark after all. But actually, it is. Hope, warmth, and cheer, in the form of Tumnus, betray. And the Nagasakian Narnia is perhaps a different place than the Londoner’s. (and also, screw you Walden Media, for the filth you have purveyed, and you, Harper-Collins, for the mis-ordering)

Christmas is a difficult time for many. Not only is it filled with idiotic, gluttonous, consumerism and world-choking synthetic polymers, but one is supposed to feel joy, or hope (And of course the nostalgia ((painful homecoming)) cuts both ways). Traditions can be helpful, but they can be difficult when one feels one should be a certain way because ‘it has everso been before’. (Also, if your tradition is in the minority -Hello Maccabees!-, that’s also a problem)

And if one does not want the sun to return? If one’s sunshine was taken away? What then? If the sun returns, as Tradition hopes it will, it will not be the sun I want. It will not be the son I dreamed I held in my arms.

In Memory of Xavier Sprout O’Keefe