Monday, December 20, 2004
The Bells
Even though I am a liberal (and thus, as we've been told all month, an enemy of Christmas) and not religious (which makes me an enemy of America), I celebrate Christmas without cognitive dissonance and no feeling of hypocrisy. Christmas was long ago transformed from a religious holiday into an event so thoroughly secular that the wingnuts' efforts to force it back to its religious roots, annoying though they are, represent closing the barn door long after the horse is gone. Santa and Jesus are side-by-side elbowing for space under trees from coast to coast, and I daresay in most households, they co-exist peacefully, making no demands on one another.
Christmas music plays constantly at our house each December, everything from Nat and Bing to Elmo and Patsy, and I count a few religious carols among my favorite Christmas songs. One of them is "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." It was originally a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow titled "Christmas Bells," and although all of the words are his, the stanzas have been rearranged (and some removed) to make a song of it. Longfellow didn't intend it as a Christmas carol, writing instead after the death of his wife in a fire and the wounding of his son in battle during the Civil War. This is Longfellow's original text:
Living with chaos and randomness is one thing--you can learn to accept it, and even begin to thrive on it. What's harder to accept is the knowledge that whatever good comes in this chaotic and random life must come from human action. Yep--if the Wrong is to fail and the Right prevail, it will be through the actions of the same flawed human beings who make the cannons thunder.
Once again this year, there's little evidence that we're capable of silencing the cannons and living in peace with our fellow creatures. But there is something about Christmastime that sparks up a small flare of hope, even in one as pessimistic as I, that someday, perhaps we might. Hope is, after all, the last thing left in Pandora's Box after all the world's evils are loosed. So maybe, the little kindnesses we do for one another at Christmas as individuals might somehow, someday percolate upward and spread to the world at large. Maybe not. But at Christmas, it's easier to be hopeful. And it's a happier way to be.
Even though I am a liberal (and thus, as we've been told all month, an enemy of Christmas) and not religious (which makes me an enemy of America), I celebrate Christmas without cognitive dissonance and no feeling of hypocrisy. Christmas was long ago transformed from a religious holiday into an event so thoroughly secular that the wingnuts' efforts to force it back to its religious roots, annoying though they are, represent closing the barn door long after the horse is gone. Santa and Jesus are side-by-side elbowing for space under trees from coast to coast, and I daresay in most households, they co-exist peacefully, making no demands on one another.
Christmas music plays constantly at our house each December, everything from Nat and Bing to Elmo and Patsy, and I count a few religious carols among my favorite Christmas songs. One of them is "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." It was originally a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow titled "Christmas Bells," and although all of the words are his, the stanzas have been rearranged (and some removed) to make a song of it. Longfellow didn't intend it as a Christmas carol, writing instead after the death of his wife in a fire and the wounding of his son in battle during the Civil War. This is Longfellow's original text:
I heard the bells on Christmas DayNever mind how appropriate the lyric is on this, our fourth straight wartime Christmas (equal to World War II now). To me, it's always rung true. In despair, I, too, have bowed my head, seeing that there is no peace on earth, seeing how strong hate is, seeing how it mocks our pretensions of being better than we really are. When I bow my head, it's not to pray, but to avert my eyes from the sight of humankind doing what it does so well and with such relish. In those moments, I understand the appeal of religion, and how comforting it would be to believe, as Longfellow did, that "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep." Better to believe somebody's in control, even an arbitrary, capricious, illogical, mysterious-ways-working God, than to look squarely at the chaos and randomness that defines existence as a creature on this planet.
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till, ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep;
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."
Living with chaos and randomness is one thing--you can learn to accept it, and even begin to thrive on it. What's harder to accept is the knowledge that whatever good comes in this chaotic and random life must come from human action. Yep--if the Wrong is to fail and the Right prevail, it will be through the actions of the same flawed human beings who make the cannons thunder.
Once again this year, there's little evidence that we're capable of silencing the cannons and living in peace with our fellow creatures. But there is something about Christmastime that sparks up a small flare of hope, even in one as pessimistic as I, that someday, perhaps we might. Hope is, after all, the last thing left in Pandora's Box after all the world's evils are loosed. So maybe, the little kindnesses we do for one another at Christmas as individuals might somehow, someday percolate upward and spread to the world at large. Maybe not. But at Christmas, it's easier to be hopeful. And it's a happier way to be.
