The Darkness of Christmas

Bravely retreating into the quiet of the holidays

The winter solstice, the longest night of the year, is closely followed by Christmas. According to some historical accounts Christmas was once actually the official solstice and the pagan celebrations of the solstice led to the celebration of Christmas. The point is, this is the time of darkness. And whereas this darkness and its often quieting psychological effect has become eclipsed by our superficially cheery, Soma-addicted culture, it still is the dominant feature of the winter holidays. And the question is how do the two, the dark aura of winter and cheery consumerism of Christmas, relate?

American culture likes a specific kind of psychological darkness, a crime, suspense, gun-powered, good guy/bad guy, ambiguous crystal meth selling husband, fighting a battalion of aliens, zombie apocalypse, kind of darkness. But the other darkness, the more mundane one, the one that makes us question, feel, suffer, curl up, is the one we all possess. That one, it seems, is fairly universal and yet, not quite okay.

This became most clear in a recent story telling class I went to. They explained that we should not choose to tell any stories that reveal ready emotion of sadness, regret, or, well, anything that makes people feel uncomfortable. That the was the driving point: the audience shouldn’t be uncomfortable.

We see this in American films, where every film has to end on a high note, every story with a smily resolution. As opposed to French films, famously known to leave you right in the middle of the suffering, making you wonder whether the characters will ever find peace.

This sort of comfort with discomfort is prevalent in other parts of the world, too. Feeling sorrow, or other emotion in the presence, or with the witness of others, is catharsis, a release, a sense that in this darkness, we are not alone (in Iran, crying publicly is a sign of true suffering, which is a sign of true devotedness, and has been faked for so long that now its largely a joke). In many cultures, people cry while singing, cry while praying, and cry while hugging. Funerals are marked by public moaning and wailing. The dark sides of a human are not to be hidden, regardless of how uncomfortable they are, primarily because by being out in the open and shared, they are less so.

The other night, my friends were complaining of the forced brightness and dictated generosity at this time of year. That the constructed mood didn’t actually represent the feelings presented by the aura of winter. It made me wonder whether all the festivity is there merely to help us avoid the inevitable dark of the season.

In a recent article in the NY times about the winter solstice, the author explores how, historically, before electricity, night time was essential to the calming down of the human psyche, how it helped people shut down and slow down at the end of the more productive day-light. And with the advent of electricity, this respite in the daily cycle was lost.

So in the celebration of the darkest season, the one we so forcefully light up, on trees, roofs, bushes, and maybe even inside ourselves, maybe instead we should let the quiet sink in, sit in the silent unknowns of the night and let our minds rest.