LONDON—There has not been much to ho-ho-ho about. But I find the detritus of gift-wrapping paper all around me; my lovingly adorned Fraser fir is lit up; the holly wreath is on the door.
All the gleeful parties and the merry-making—social fandangos brimming with surface conviviality—have now been discharged. It’s winterly, but it’s not going to be white, after all. I think I will now sit quietly in a room, rest my ragged feet, and let the sob, which has caught me completely unawares, well up in my throat. Wimp that I am, I might even cry. ’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring.
We live in a time of torrid tumult, with storm clouds hovering above us. In the age of New Poverty, once perfectly prosperous wage-earners have lost their jobs; the terrible strain is splintering families; millions of young and middle-aged people are going unemployed for longer; some, forever.
The economy is shrinking; we’re all feeling distinctly poorer and there isn’t much charity going around anymore.
After a long and leisurely dinner at Joe Allen the night before, it could prick your conscience—as it did mine—to then trip over mucky sleeping bags outside the restaurant, with prone bodies seeking warmth from heating vents, and then to walk down The Strand to see a very long but orderly line of disheveled homeless people collecting food parcels from a van parked, incongruously, under a festively lit tree.
Lip of a volcano
Here in this great and splendiferous city throbs the full current of human life, and spreads a moral stain. It isn’t Dickensian London—there are far too many oligarchs and plutocrats egregiously living and spending high on the hog for that.
But the overlooked and underestimated, the negligible and invisible, will disagree. So I wobble with righteous—but helpless—indignation. And then, I count my blessings.
The random, sometimes cruel nature of life and fate treats us all the same, with indifference.
This time last year—a truly bleak, bone-chilling midwinter —I was in hell. With fanged fury and wearing a frightful Old Testament look, illness burst through the door, shrouded in menacing darkness, to steal our mirth and peace of mind. Dear God, how we take these things for granted!
It became a constant fetter on a turbulently unquiet mind; a dread sitting heavily on a suddenly armored heart; a trepidatious walk ’round and ’round the lip of a volcano.
Nights became days; sleep was thin and elusive, but hope became that Emily Dickinson thing with feathers, perching in the soul. Every sentient minute became a silent prayer. It was Christmas, but nothing like it.
As the months sped by in alarming haste without my consent, I lived in fear of normalizing an unbearably abnormal situation. It could break your heart—as it did mine—to know I found God again. Or, He found me. With meekness of heart did I fervently beg Him for mercy, healing and blessing to bestow.
Extreme adversity
It is no piety to admit that I really was lost—extreme adversity and illness will do that to you—but I was found again. Family and friends who knew me well loved me just the same.
If we accept that there’s a time to laugh and a time to dance, would we also allow that there is a time to weep and a time to mourn? Yes, tears are a constant in this world, aren’t they?
In Cagayan and Iligan, swept away to death were hundreds of unsuspecting residents snuggled fast asleep in their beds. Elsewhere, people yearning for freedom are paying with their lives, yet hope still springs eternal in the human heart.
The dead live longer afterwards than we think, and at Christmastime, in floods of sweetly painful memories, they come upon us once again, to steal the claim they have on our remembering, our affection.
It’s a slow burn anticipating and preparing for Christmas. The caliginous evenings, delayed trains, grumpy crowds, the din. The commercial and mercantile fascism, especially in the economic downturn, has become more virulent, with cash-strapped shoppers swishing about, completely knackering credit cards it would put them in permanent debt servitude to pay off.
In what should be a profoundly ruminative and spiritual time, the enforced jollity is too much to bear, with people who are death to the soul havering and piffling vexations to the spirit. Seduced by material gloss, sparkle and shine, beguiled and gulled by fresh, new increments of superficiality, we seem to have lost our way, haven’t we? And so this is Christmas, and what have we done?
O holy night, o night divine; Christmas morning not far off now. My heart swells with love and gratitude for my only child and for those truly here and present in my life. And so we eat, we pray, we love, to borrow a best-selling phrase. We expose the humbug and forgive. We say a heartfelt thank you. We loosen the purse strings a little in order to give, as we would receive— cheerfully, said Seneca, quickly and without hesitation.
As we prepare to hazard whatever the future brings, to say goodbye to the old, hello to the new, let us rejoice a little, for yonder breaks a truly glorious morn. Have yourself a merry Christmas. And let your heart be light.