Birth, Death, and Rebirth

December is, in the mind of a child, synonymous with winter and, of course, Christmas. My own memories of Christmas are sporadic. I remember, for example the first time I heard Santa filling my stocking followed abruptly by the muffled sounds of my father stubbing his toe. I remember the time my great-grandfather was brought to our house from the nursing home and realized that he had no idea who any of us were or why he was there. It was my first experience with senior dementia. It sounds glum, but many of my Christmas memories are dark, though not all. I remember the time my Santa brought me a Big wheel-like John Deer Tractor, or the time I nearly leapt into the fireplace, as I was so excited that I received the star wars figurine I desired. Good memories are, in general, associated with childhood presents. A few though have been formed upon reflection. I can for example summon to mind the last Christmas I spent with my great grandmother, and while I can with equal rapidity recall the Christmas I had a terrible fight with my father, I recall with equal clarity how my grandfather helped me overcome the emotions of that fight by allowing me to sob hysterically into his overcoat while he sat patiently stroking my back.

I think it is fair to say that Christmas, for me, is a mixed bag. It has been good. It has been bad. It has been surreal, blessed and spooky. I guess in that way you could say that Christmas is a day like any other. For every day has something different. But I won't insist too strongly on this point, after all, I think we all know that this is not entirely true, and to insist that it is, is to deny centuries of celebration and veneration that has held our imagination since practically forever. Christmas is something special, a time of great focus and attention, and to say it is nothing more than a day like any other is to deny something intrinsic not just about the holiday, but about ourselves.

It is interesting how we are creatures of celebration. I mean there isn’t a culture known that doesn’t celebrate something, and that, in the least says something about the importance of a day like Christmas. I mean who doesn't celebrate something? A birthday, an anniversary? and I mean really, who hasn’t heard of Christmas?

I started this musing because of a sentence that popped into my head. The sentence was “Christmas is a day where we celebrate the birth of a baby that will die four months later.” I don’t know where that thought came from or why I thought of it. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, and certainly not on the holidays. It just sort of came into my mind and there it was. It wasn’t supposed to be dark. I think I was telling myself that holidays that occur in the darkest of winter can be about birth, and that holidays that occur in the spring can be about death, even though it would seem that just the opposite should be true. I mean, why do we celebrate the death of Jesus (and technically his rebirth) just as spring in bounding into life? In the same vein, why do we celebrate the birth of a baby even as all around us is dead and dying?

For those of you rushing to answer, realize, please that these are rhetorical questions. The real question isn’t about birth, or death, the real question is, why does it matter? Not, why does it matter that a baby is born, or why Jesus or anything like that. Those questions I have. They have been beaten into me in Sunday school and in an infinite string of sermons and Catholic nuns in High school. No, that question I think I got. No, the real question is, when there is so much pessimism and cynicism and doubt, why, when Christmas really does sometimes feel like just another day, albeit a day with presents and turkey, why does Christmas matter?

I recoil just a bit at this question because it feels a little like “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” But in the end, it is exactly that Christmas is a day like any other, a day of birth and a day of death, as day of cycles and change, and a day when all of this is brought to our attention. It is precisely because of this day that I can summon so many good things, so many bad things, and so many different memories of all sorts. It is a day in which the memories my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents can be summoned back with such clarity it is as though they are alive for me once more. Old memories are summoned and new ones are formed. It is a time when the past and future collide, a time of death and rebirth, and, I think, why humans tend to celebrate, not just this holiday, but any. These times hold a mysterious power over us, they are unexplainable, mysterious, and, I think, if we were wiser, we would fear them, and not just because of the sacrifices and the stresses, but because the power of these days of celebration, and the myths and stories that surround them which are awesome in their power to hold us.

I think I will close by adding a comment made by Joseph Campbell: “The individual has to find an aspect of myth that relates to his own life… The first is the mythical function, the one I have been talking about, realizing what a wonder the universe is, and what a wonder you are, and experiencing awe before this mystery. Myth opens the world to the dimension of mystery, to the realization of the mystery that underlies all forms, if you lose that, you don’t have a mythology. If mystery is manifest through all things, the universe becomes, as it were, a holy picture. You are always addressing the transcendent mystery though the conditions of your actual world.”