Got Match?

I have not been intentionally neglecting you. I have reached that deep stage of dissociative fugue that we call "The Holidays". Now, I enjoy a good Saturnalia as much as the next person, but the wear and tear of lack of sunlight is reaching for me.

And this is not a "war on Christmas" blog. I love Christmas. I love, not the commercialism telling people to buy more and more expensive gifts, but the newness and the glitter of it. It costs nothing to look, and seeing the perks of red and green after the leaves are brown is enough to make anyone's day.

It is the Hope of rebirth that is being celebrated here. The Christian church adopted the pagan rituals that were so strong, even their legends of God on earth couldn't shake them. And that's Hope. The Hope of Demeter coming back in the Spring. The Fire lit against the Dark. The Hope of Resurrection. The Hope that the crops will grow again, one day, the eternal turn of the seasons. It is Mithras spilling blood on the ground to enrich the earth for the crops that will be born again. It is my favorite Christmas thingy, a small, stuffed lamb wearing a red scarf and a crown of holly with berries.

I have lived without Hope and color, and the first thing I remember is a red flower. A dark, blood red pulsing against a green stem. It was a long time until I found any color to match it, and I remember it vividly to this day. We know the Norse peoples practiced human sacrifice, and that their sacrifices ate a last meal composed entirely of grains and seeds. They, too, must have seen a red, pulsing flower one day, and planted it against the Winter.

So descry the fiber optic trees and glitter all you want. Lament the Barbie tree houses and iPhones. Dis-embrace the strange wines and foods we get no other time of year, cranberry Sprite and fruitcake, anyone? But do not seek to destroy or deny what is behind the gray thoughts of Winter: Hope, and sunlight and rebirth. And a fire lit as proof against the darkness.