THE NEW NEXT YEAR

I always get homesick at the holidays starting with Thanksgiving and of course Christmas but not so much New Year's. Only a couple things marked the new year for me. One was the Late Night service at church where they always showed a missionary film that could give you nightmares and ended at midnight with everyone forming a circle to hold hands and sing "Blest Be the Tie That Binds" and "Until We meet Again." The other was the next day when after the parades and dinner, I usually got to be outdoors until late. I loved the isolation that could be enjoyed for most of the winter. My brother said that at one the point, only the mailman and the school bus came by as no one had to go by our house to get to theirs.

Even later on, when I could do more than go to church on New Year's Eve, I never did that much. I don't think of them as wasted opportunities as I wasn't that much of a people person to begin with. You can only watch so much. And it never came close to be exciting. More the usual over the years was me staying up to watch the coverage on TV. So, I still don't have very many feelings of anticipation  or nostalgia. After moving to the prairie, I entertained the thought of dancing naked around a fire to bring in the new year. Had I done so, I'm pretty sure the holiday would have risen to be my favorite.

But New Year's is more than parties and resolutions. It's making making various Top Ten lists of what was most important and making predictions as to what will be important in the coming year. It's an elitist mainstream exercise that predictably entertains. But beyond the usual, there is something about the new year. The most profound year for me was Y2K. I believe it was National Geographic that aired the ways various cities, cultures and peoples marked the coming of the new millennium.

It is hard to imagine The Next New Year (3000) when the world crosses over into another new millennium. I know some are hoping for dystopia because that seems to be so much fun to them right now. But I don't think it will be the Hollywood or literary versions. Just like I don't think it will be utopian. Although that would be my choice. Some don't think we'll ever get to the next millennium because of the various doomsday, end of the world, everybody moved elsewhere scenarios are in play. Bible believers have had everything pretty well spelled out for some time. They just don't know when it will be set in motion.

If nothing extraordinary happens, there is no reason to believe that we can't make it to that change of date. It will be different for sure, but if the basics hold up and they are what make a difference in whatever divides, harms or threatens to eliminate us, then there is a real chance. It is only a matter of choosing Love over Hate, Goodness over Evil, Being Fed over Starving, Peace over War, Inclusion over Exclusion, Freedom over Slavery, and the many other better ways that we cling to when all else has failed. Is it possible for humankind to live better and come to the next millennium with much to celebrate? Once 2013 is in the books, we'll only have 987 years to find out.



BONUS PIC

CHRISTMAS REDUX

Dudley (Cary Grant) the angel in the classic Christmas movie The Bishop's Wife says, "We all come from our own little planets. That's why we're all different. That's what makes life interesting." Which explains a lot. Similarly, I've always thought of the Earth as the penal colony for the rest of the universe. Which explains the non-interesting part of life. It's hard to argue against a naughty and nice world.

To simplify, some take the everyone is "ultimately good" approach, at least deep down inside somewhere, while others take the everyone is "ultimately bad" regardless of any good they may do. The rest are left to some kind of sorting out approach which usually places their kind on top in whatever ways they deem important. It makes it all rather convenient.

I've met several people who say it's our differences that make us who we are. And again, they just happen to be the right kind of difference. Usually all of this is chalked up to human nature, evolutionary development or mismanaged potty training. But it is curious how we skew everything toward whatever we believe and assume that the lack of insight, intelligence, information, or illumination is involved with what others believe.

It's hard to imagine a theologian who, after years and years of study and teaching, asked, "Who is this Jesus?" Yet, he apparently did. He gets credit for uncommon honesty, even if he couldn't come up with a cosmic conclusion while others seem to, or claim to, know for sure. But what if Santa had 12 reindeer? These are the kind of questions that can keep you up at night.

                                            
I'll not go into all the struggles of faith that I've had with Santa Claus. But from when someone dressed like him, usually my dad, knocked on the door of our old country church after the Christmas program with a bag of candy for the children, to the number of presents under the family Christmas tree whose tags said, "To Chuckie from Santa" but looked a lot like my mother's writing, to the last time I watched Miracle on 34th Street, the relationship with Santa Claus (If that's his real name.) has been pretty strained. Perhaps it was all those years of trying to get off the naughty list. I'm not sure when I began to compare what Santa could do with what Jesus could. But here again, it was curious.

In a world so bent on determining what is fact and what is fiction, the categories don't seem to have changed. I think believers, agnostics, non-believers, the unaware, seekers and those who don't care one way or the other identify the majority in regard to what is beyond the way we understand ourselves. (Degrees, varieties and combinations of such are a given.) What has changed is the level of rhetoric, defensiveness, accusations, misrepresentations, and vitriol. Is it so important to be that right?

Often Christmas has been the opportunity to cease hostilities, at least for a few days or a few hours. So, even with those who thought their kind of difference was special enough to warrant the loss of life found some reluctance to push it to the limit or maybe they were just tired. I find it curious that there's such a thing as The Christmas Spirit. It's a phenomenon that has a lot of explanations. But after everything, it's still about a child being born. And that's about it, there's not much else to say. 

JOYEUX NOEL