Any Day Now
It could have been any day in the year, but today is the eve of Christmas, a day on which our thoughts turn towards gifts, peace, and the foreshadowing of great sacrifice. For it is a Christian thing that we have done, to take something pagan (like Saturnalia or Eostre or Samhain) and make it into a sacred day by some form of hallowing.
All days and any days can be treated such. So too can deities. The ancient gods of many lands became neutralised and nullified, their names bent to accommodate angels and saints. Even the Greek or Latin names of the faithful bear the echoes of their immediate past paganism — why name a child Sylvanus unless one remembers the spirits of the forest?
And so we have come to this, that we have made the dread of elves into the mockery of elfs, or the fear of Auld Nick into the jollity of Santa Claus. But not to pick at too fine a point, why should we not? As long as we remember that there is darkness out there, and that laughter and light will turn it back (if not fire and the sword), we have a worldview that is reasonably true.
It's always better to see the whole story though, and not just have a view of the stage from below. As Shakespeare wrote, "'Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil." We take comfort from that. Yet, we note that it was Lady M who said it in Act One, and we remember what that led to before the final resolution of Act Five.
We need to be mature, to try to see the whole battlefield and not just respond to the flashes of light and smoke. Then we can learn to fix our eyes upon the Christ, not merely the Bethlehem star; to see the perfection and finishing of faith, not just the faintly commemorative shadow of its beginnings. Though we see as through a glass darkly, we will see clearly soon, as if face to face.
All days and any days can be treated such. So too can deities. The ancient gods of many lands became neutralised and nullified, their names bent to accommodate angels and saints. Even the Greek or Latin names of the faithful bear the echoes of their immediate past paganism — why name a child Sylvanus unless one remembers the spirits of the forest?
And so we have come to this, that we have made the dread of elves into the mockery of elfs, or the fear of Auld Nick into the jollity of Santa Claus. But not to pick at too fine a point, why should we not? As long as we remember that there is darkness out there, and that laughter and light will turn it back (if not fire and the sword), we have a worldview that is reasonably true.
It's always better to see the whole story though, and not just have a view of the stage from below. As Shakespeare wrote, "'Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil." We take comfort from that. Yet, we note that it was Lady M who said it in Act One, and we remember what that led to before the final resolution of Act Five.
We need to be mature, to try to see the whole battlefield and not just respond to the flashes of light and smoke. Then we can learn to fix our eyes upon the Christ, not merely the Bethlehem star; to see the perfection and finishing of faith, not just the faintly commemorative shadow of its beginnings. Though we see as through a glass darkly, we will see clearly soon, as if face to face.
Labels: Christianity, Christmas, Meditation
etched with acid at 12:49:00 am
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