Ho ho & hokum
Well, I do hope that everyone had a swell Christmas (are we still allowed to call it that?) Once again this year, the festivities round these parts were a celebration of contradictions – the run-up to C-day marked by further exploring the Christ myth – near confirming the likelihood that even He was a convenient fabrication that encapsulates much wishful thinking – while painting a handmade crèche, since Christmas without Christ still dwells in my mind as too obscene acquiescence to base and unimaginative consumerism.
And caught, as usual, between disdaining that surge of sudden love and compassion for friends a foes alike, that we roll out but once a year – caught in a frenzy neatly planned by marketing departments in the thick heat of August – then crying like clockwork over the perfect schlock of It’s a Wonderful Life & cie, brimming with glad tidings and wishing like a schoolgirl: golly, oh, couldn’t it be so?
Plus I gave in to consumerism, and confess that I take great pleasure in offering gifts to those I love – a pleasure doubled this year by having managed not to endure a single vile and irksome mall. (That alone should be nominated for a blessed miracle.) I braved no throngs, no frazzled clerks, no tinny Vive le vent or bitter drunken Santas – nothing to damper what I vowed would be a good and slow and quiet time.
And today it snowed, so my joy is complete.
But now as the year is near to wound down, I see that the season of Lists is upon us. That odd desire to encapsulate the last twelve months as though they were somehow isolated from the continuum – each list more an attempt to prove personal insight, than any measure of actual worth.
I could be wrong, but lists certainly do seem to have reached their apex of popularity. Though I suppose it’s only natural for a generation burdened by the knowledge of living in a vast and complex world – bombarded daily by intricate crises from around the globe.
Lists are very comforting: a concise and highly readable way to create an illusion of authority, of order in a chaotic universe. A way of distilling decades of history, thousands of books and movies and songs… into ten neatly bullet-pointed highlights – so saving us from having to delve, confront contradictions and preconceptions, and our own admission that we have so much left to learn.
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