In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone,
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
To Adam Gopnik, the carol
that best expresses what the festival is all about is Christina Rossetti’s poem
In the bleak mid-winter. Rossetti
wrote the poem in 1872 at the request of Scribner’s
Monthly for a Christmas poem. It became a carol when it appeared in The English Hymnal in 1906 set to music Gustav Holst.
We know who Rossetti and Holst are,
but who is Adam Gopnik? He is an American author, born in Philadelphia, PA, educated
in Montreal, Canada, the son of professors at McGill University. He now lives
in New York with his wife, Martha Parker, and two children, Luke and Olivia. His
essays are most frequently published in The
New Yorker. Claiming to be a secular Jew, he is very knowledgeable about
religious traditions and cultural history in general. His essays frequently reveal that he is also an
expert on fine art. Gopnik’s most recent publication is the simultaneously printed edition of 50th anniversary of The Massey Lectures, broadcast over the CBC radio network in November 2011. Entitled Winter: Five Windows on the Season, the book presents a highly readable overview of the literary, religious and cultural character of what most Canadians regard as an inevitable, if not wholly enjoyable experience. Just how extensive his research was for this series of lectures is dramatically expressed in the 32-page bibliography at the end of the book.
Of greatest interest to me is his third lecture/chapter on Christmas. He gave it the composite title of Recuperative Winter:The Season in Spirit. He believes that the Christmas holiday is “a holiday that is eclectic, banged together, yet remains the central winter ritual, the central mystery, the central rite of our year end celebration.” It has always been so since the ancient Romans and later Jews began to celebrate this festival of lights in the Saturnalia and Hanukkah respectively, centuries before the Christian scriptures were written and their liturgies celebrated the birth of Jesus.
It is not happenstance that our modern Christmas, Gopnik writes, is more northern and wintry as it has evolved since Victorian times. It is here in the northern hemisphere that we experience the solstice most notably. Darkness sets in in late afternoon and snow is a much anticipated part of the season.
The material and the spiritual, the religious and the secular, became inextricably intertwined during the Industrial Age of the mid-19th century. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in Britain and Thomas Nast’s Santa Claus in the United States epitomize the transformation of Christmas into the supreme expression of materialism wrapped up in religious charity we know it as today.
Or is it really the very opposite: a mysterious religious festival wrapped in the tissue and ribbon of excessive materialism? “More abundance means more doubt,” he writes. “A festival of pagan lights becomes a festival of progress and poverty – and ends as a festival of overabundance and anxiety.”
The Holy Family featured in so much Christian
art had to travel on foot the torturous distance from Nazareth in Galilee to
Bethlehem in Judea. Mary was in the final stages of her pregnancy. There was no
room for them in the inn at Bethlehem when they finally arrived. A host of
angels praised the birth of the Saviour in a stable. Their song of glory to God
and peace to the world symbolized that this was a divine and spiritual event. The
Magi following a star from the east – perhaps even from as far as China – to present
the world’s most expensive gifts to the Christ Child. Then the Family was
forced to flee to Egypt to escape the brutality of Herod’s massacre.
Gopnik is not critical of our
contemporary Christmas celebrations. What he has done is give us a reality
check of how we really do celebrate this season. Is it with mixed motives or
hypocrisy? Could it be both?
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