Today, the Midwinter Moon goes dark. In my part of the world, the latest sunrises, 7:25am, began yesterday in a day of such dense fog and cold drizzle it was hard to tell when the sun was in the sky. The days are already about five minutes longer than the shortest day, and the sun has shifted a few degrees northwards on the horizon at sunrise and sunset. The solstice is over.
Now, this does not mean the Midwinter holidays are over. Twelfth Night isn’t for another week, and Plough Monday, the official time to get back to routine labor, is not until the 13th — which is as late as it can be, since Epiphany is a Monday this year and the first Monday after Epiphany, the traditional timing of Plough Monday, follows a week later. The 13th is also the full Wolf Moon, which is new tomorrow.
This is the second new moon in a calendar month. If our months were actual measures of the moon’s cycle, this would not happen, but here we are. Some folks have taken to naming this little hitch in timing the black moon, but that seems a little dramatic for me. The dark moon is black every moon cycle. But who am I to gainsay their fun?
It’s not been fun for many moons…
I feel like this has been the year of melancholy Midwinter. Truly, most of 2024 has been less than enjoyable. I suppose it is a good thing that it seems to have flown by, with one whirlwind disaster falling hard on the heels of the next. Collapse is exhausting and disheartening and bewildering. It’s almost too much effort to shake off the doldrums long enough to celebrate. Easier just to shuffle through the days trying to avoid the pitfalls and dark things with teeth.
On Christmas, Son#1 and I were off work. It was a cold and snowy Wednesday. We weren’t especially hungry, and we don’t go in for excessive gifting in my family. We chatted with the distant relatives and had a nice brunch, but on the whole it was a lethargic day. And it got me to chewing on things…
The point and promise of Christmas, indeed, of the whole Midwinter season, is that you’ll not be hungry, unsheltered and alone. Even in the midst of midwinter darkness, there is light. But hungry, unsheltered and alone is exactly what our socioeconomic system needs us to be. Always. If we are content, we will not keep this machine going. It is predicated on our discontent, our fear, our hunger, our isolation. Especially our isolation. If we were allowed to gather, to be in community, we’d not need to ever spend money. We’d never be hungry or unsheltered.
What we are fed at Christmas is the polar opposite of what will nourish us, what our bodies and minds need, what we want, and what this holiday — all holidays — promise us. My son and I got to talking about the future of Christmas, and we wondered how many more seasons the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come had left. I can’t see it continuing much longer. It is meaningless. It is hard. It costs so much. And it gives us nothing in return but a mountain of waste and a disconcerting sense that we just missed something important. That we keep missing something important, every year.
It’s not just how can we keep this up… It’s why bother?
As a young person, I didn’t know too many people who didn’t enjoy the holidays. This was when most of us had holidays. Families were together to share the joy and the extra work. In my family, there was plenty of time off from wage work. I am not sure this reflects privilege or if it was more generally the case that not much got done when school let out. People did the minimum to keep the shop open or the farm running. People who did jobs like my current job used to be paid salary and used to be able to shuffle hours around and take many tasks home. And nothing was begun in December. December was a month of closing the books.
None of that is true anymore. There is no time off. There is no gathering together. It is sad commentary that in my town we came together and enjoyed life more after this summer’s flood than at this holiday. I do not encounter too many people who are excited by the Midwinter holidays any more. Because there is no holiday. There is nothing holy, nothing set apart, nothing significant. For nearly all of us, Christmas is only one day freed from routine and it is mostly spent alone. This is not meaningful time. But there is expense and labor, and our culture drowns us in expectations, most of which are false, we know, but we doggedly persist in trying to meet them anyway. Because that is all there is to this season. No… not season… day. In fact, on the 26th there were already tips for disposing the holiday tree. Why bother putting it up?
This year was the first year that I heard many people voicing that thought. I might blame that on my age. This holiday does lose its appeal as you age out of the parenting years. Except I heard it from young people more than older people. Granted, these are the same young people who live in such precarity that they have given up hope of having a family of their own. Yuletide accentuates childlessness. But I’d not heard so many young people lambaste the holiday until this year of tangible and accelerating collapse.
Now, I would not be sorry to see Christmas go away, though I will not give up my Midwinter observances. What I fear is that if too many people walk away from this, our one major holiday, before our economic systems collapse completely, we will have no holidays at all. No break from wage work. Nothing to mark time. Nothing to give days meaning and significance. No promises left to us.
Of course, we have little enough as it is. We are kept from deep engagement with time. If we were allowed to experience meaningful time, how would we force ourselves back into the mindless monotonous drudgery that is required of us all each day? If the promise of Christmas were kept, if we were sheltered and nourished and surrounded by loving community, then there would be no need for our socioeconomic system at all.
No, there are few promises left to us as it is… but rather than giving up on meaningless holidays, what if we were to make them meaningful instead? I don’t know what that would entail. I am fairly certain meaning is rooted though, based in place and peoples and shared stories. There would not be a Christmas, but there would be a multitude of Midwinter holidays. And Midsummer. And Harvest Home. And May. There would be significant reasons to celebrate the whole year through.
Because isn’t that what we always hear: to keep the Christmas spirit all year long? That’s not talking about gifts or excessive food or even twinkle lights. That’s talking about the promise — that nobody will be hungry or unsheltered or alone ever again. I rather think that if we were to keep Christmas in our hearts all the year through, that would be the end of our culture.
And today… I don’t think that would be a bad thing.
I’ve long thought this culture was unsalvageable, that even to preserve parts of it would take Sisyphean efforts that would ultimately fail. But after this year, I don’t believe it’s possible at all, not even in the short term at great cost in effort and resources. More importantly, it’s not worth saving. There may be some good things. There is undoubtedly some beauty in this culture, but is all existentially dependent on harm and waste. There is no decoupling. It is braided together at the root — that foundational belief that some many enjoy the fruits of others’ labors and lives, while those others make do with the scraps. What used to seem beautiful is tainted by the excrement of harm and injustice. I think it is preferable to take the true beauty and grace offered by a life free of that taint — which the world provides in abundance. Humans are the only beings that create conditions of need and scarcity. That promise of nourishment and shelter and love is the birthright of the entire rest of the world. And not just at Christmas…
It has been an exhausting year. There are more people than ever hungry, unsheltered and alone. And I feel that there is a growing awareness of the fact that this is by design, that this is how this culture is meant to function. I think that is what most young people mean when they say they don’t like Christmas. It’s not the holiday, it’s the culture and its empty promise. I just hope they reach for something more enduring and real. Because right now it seems like many people are just sinking deeper into indifference and depression. And I suppose it might be too much to ask to build a new culture when the old one is bearing you down into the mire.
But maybe with the new year we’ll find new determination… Maybe one more flood will show us how happy we could be if we turned away from the things that cause floods… Or maybe the culture will simply tear itself apart, leaving a million vacuums to fill with holidays and meaning and kept promises.
©Elizabeth Anker 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 