This past week I succumbed to my yearly bout with a
cold/sinus infection. I don’t know why every year I think I escape it and every
year, just behind everyone else, here it comes—WHAM!—like a wrecking ball to
the head. This one was particularly awful and had me practically bed-ridden for
all of Monday. (Honestly, though, who doesn't want to spend their Monday in
bed? I just wish it had been on my terms.)
Anyway, I spent the day on the couch in front of the
Christmas tree and between naps, bowls of chicken soup, and Sudafed doses I had
plenty of time to contemplate one of our more bizarre holiday customs. I mean
really, why do we celebrate our Savior’s birth by chopping down a perfectly
happy Fraser fir, carting it inside, festooning it with tiny lights (only half
of which seem to work at a given time), and bedecking the be-jeebers out of it
with ornaments? Who decided this was a great way to mark the start of the
salvation story? Sure, there’s something about an ancient German tradition, but
then you have to start answering questions about pagan celebrations and the
winter solstice and that’s just not where we’re going right now. (Yes, I’m also
aware that subjecting my ill sinuses pine pollen was probably not the most
holistically healing idea, but the house is full of it anyway and that
beautiful tree makes me happy so lay off.)
Back to contemplating the Christmas tree. Why do we chop down a perfectly happy tree
and subject it to all the aforementioned finery in the name of the Savior’s
birth? Because, without the Christmas tree, we wouldn't have anywhere to hang
the Christmas ornaments! Duh!
*sigh*
“Lynnea,” you say, “that’s just restating the problem. It’s
still bizarre.” Maybe, but think of it this way; it’s not really about the
tree, it’s about the ornaments.
I don’t know what your ornaments are like, but the ones in
my house are more bizarre than the tree. There’s the miniature roller skate
that belongs to my mother, my father’s collection of Frank Lloyd Wright
designs, and my small cowboy boot painted with the Texas flag complete with the
lettering “San Antonio 2012!” There are sailboats, tiny anchors, and even a
starfish. A real starfish with his
friends, two real sand dollars. The winner, though, is the tiny Teddy bear
dressed up in a witch’s outfit that has a sign that says “Happy Halloween!” This
is very specifically a Christmas ornament, and not a Halloween decoration,
because despite the fact that it’s wildly inappropriate it is a testament to my
Grandma Finley. She loved Halloween. She loved the kids and the costumes and
the candy and the fact that our whole neighborhood just had one big
trick-or-treat party. She even hoped to come back after her death reincarnated
as a Jack-o-Lantern. (I tried to explain to her that Christians in general and
Southern Baptists in particular don’t believe in reincarnation, but that didn't matter.) So the Halloween bear on the Christmas tree is really more a witness
to her love and passion and joie de vivre
than it is evidence of a theologically confused family, and really isn't THAT what Christmas is all about? Celebrating the joie de vivre?
Speaking of a zest for life, that brings us to the Gentlemen of the Road. This past August I had the incredible opportunity to go to the
all-day outdoor music festival in the lovely city (cities? It has a slight
split personality thing going on) of Bristol, TN/VA. (Not its fault it was
built on two states.) For a good twelve hours, my friends and I wandered around
both sides of State St. listening to some fabulous music, eating great local
food, imbibing (responsibly!) of local brews, and generally milking our $70
passport tickets for every penny they were worth. I say we won.
It’s only this week, as their live compilation album came
out, that I’m really remembering the most amazing part of that experience. Sure,
seeing nine fabulous bands including Dawes and Mumford & Sons was pretty
awesome, but the most incredible part was the people. Holy gracious, but there
were people. So many people! A wall to wall, elbow to elbow,
standing-room-only, don’t-sit-down-you’ll-get-squished amount of people.
And talk about a cultural anthropologist’s dream. It was
almost worth the $70 ticket just to people watch. You had your hipsters in their skinny jeans,
button-downs, and black-rimmed glasses; your preps in their chinos and seersucker;
your mountain-men types in their head-to-heel Carhartts; your
dance-to-every-song types wearing bells and bangles and twirling hula hoops;
your average-run-of-the-mill festival goers (yours truly); your teenagers
trying to fit into every category at once; your pot-heads with their…pot; your
wanna-be trust-fund hippies in their designer tie-dye; and your real-deal
hippies in their matted dreads and coveralls (including the most dead-on Jerry
Garcia Doppelganger I have ever seen!) Thousands of people from every walk of
life, but the really incredible thing about this mish-mashed seething melting
pot of humanity was the commonality despite the differences. The underlying
theme for everyone’s day was the music. It really was all about the music.
Hearing the live recordings months later I remember standing
in the midst of that teeming crush of people while we all sang along with the
music. All shapes, all styles, all colors, all sizes, all ages, all
backgrounds, all singing along at the top of our lungs to the same lyrics to
the same songs in the same place at the same time. I can hear it in the crowd
when Dawes launches into “A Little Bit of Everything” and I know it was there
because I’m in that crowd screaming that song in that place; my voice is in that
mass of noise and I can feel it: it’s the joie
de vivre.
Which gets us to the Belfast City Council. It’s not really
the City Council in particular, and it’s not even Belfast and the rest of
Northern Ireland, but it’s everything they work for and represent. My Norn Iron
family has been on my heart and mind of late, more so than usual due to all the
recent broo-ha-ha over a recent decision regarding the flying of the Union Jack
at Belfast City Hall. I thought about trying to explain this situation but then
realized there was no way I could do so in under 2,000 words and even then
there would be no justice done and you’d probably just be more confused, so if
you want more info check out this link from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-20651163.
Let’s just say it’s nasty and violent. Dropping myself on the 50-yard line of
Neyland Stadium in the middle of the Vol’s homecoming decked out in Gator gear
would get less hostility than the Belfast flag decision. Suffice to say that
the division there makes our little “fiscal cliff” issue look like a
Kindergartener’s playground scuffle.
Northern Ireland is no stranger to division, it is no
stranger to violence, and it is no stranger to blatant sectarianism. But it is
also no stranger to art, beauty, history, music, culture, dance, happiness,
life, and vitality. It’s just that these great things have a tendency to get
overshadowed by the nasty crap. The violent protests get the publicity while
the prayer meetings go undocumented.
I was thinking that what Northern Ireland really needs is
the multi-faceted, multi-cultural, multi-generational joie de vivre of a summer concert festival where everyone is united
by a common bond of awaking souls. But then I realized that it’s not just the
Belfast City Council and Northern Ireland and its flag debate. It’s Chicago and
its gang wars. It’s Los Angeles and its race relations. It’s Phoenix and its
immigration policies. It’s New York City and its wage discrepancy. It’s North
and South Korea, it’s the Sudan, it’s the Middle East, it’s the world. We all
need more summer concert, Gentlemen of the Road joie de vivre.
And that’s what’s up with the Christmas tree. Bizarre tradition
though it is, it’s not really about the tree; it’s about what the tree
represents. It represents families with mixed up holidays full of love and
laughter. It represents faith and hope. It represents a parade of time marching
out over hundreds of ornaments that all point to one central message: joie de vivre. Life to the full. And isn't THAT was Christmas is all about?
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