Lawrence Hall, HSG
Do Vladimir Putin and
His Office Staff Play Secret Santa?
Some speak of an after-Christmas letdown. And perhaps it is
true that all the weeks of expectations and demands and sometimes forced
merriment crash down into a silence on the 26th.
But Christmas truly begins at midnight on the 24th
of December and ends with the Feast of the Epiphany on the 6th of
January. In the northern hemisphere our
ancestors took those twelve winter days in feasting and celebration after the
liturgies of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
The first Monday after Epiphany was Plough / Plow Monday, beginning the
new agricultural year with farmers breaking up and turning over the soil in
anticipation of spring.
This year Christmas Day fell on Wednesday, so most Americans
return to their metaphorical plows / ploughs dark and early on Thursday
morning, but maybe while wearing a nice, new coat against the cold.
More practically, the car or pickup might be wearing a new
battery which will crank the engine without the need for jumper cables.
Most decorations remain up until Epiphany, which is exactly
right, honoring the Infant Jesus and serving as a counterpoint against the
cold, dark weather. The letdown comes when, at last, the tree and decorative angels
and wise men and Disney princesses and plastic ivy and the lights, all those
wonderful little lights, must be taken down and packed away until next year.
After the floor is vacuumed of pine needles (real or made in
China of weird chemicals) and the furniture re-arranged, the low, grey skies
outside the window remind us that winter has settled in for a long visit.
If the house is blessed with children parents are advised to
wear slippers upon arising in the mornings lest their bare feet fall upon Barbie’s
scepter or Ken’s sports car.
Christmas toys once engaged children – girls played with
their dolls (pardon me while I dodge hashtags of outrage), boys played with
their cap pistols (eeeeeek!), and living room floors and front yards were adventure
lands of cars, airplanes, push-scooters, books about Robin Hood and Gene Autry and
space cadets and Annette and her adventures, dump trucks, Barbie’s Dream Missouri
Pacific train set, trikes, bikes, wagons, footballs, basketballs, kickballs, little
green army men, little plastic cowboys and Indians, games formed up and won and
lost, and occasional tears.
Christmas toys now seem to be a matter of silent, earphoned Children
of the Corn staring dully and obediently into little glowing screens. What are
The Voices telling your children?
The season of Christmas, now mostly known as
after-Christmas, is good in its own quiet ways – social demands are fewer, the
house is quieter, there are hidden resources of chocolate to be explored, and a
good cuppa and a book by the fire is possible, where we can also meditate on
the eternal verities, such as whether bloody tyrants and their office staffs
play Secret Santa.
Peace.
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