Plus ça change

For as long as humans have memorialized religious and cultural events with feasts and gift-giving there have been corresponding backlashes seeking to return such celebrations to the way they used to be. No doubt the second observance of any given holiday is beset by plaintive wailings of "but we didn't to it that way laaaast year" which are repeated with gathering and indignant alarm every year thereafter.

Which brings us to the Holiday Season 2008. Happy Diwali everyone!

This year I am taking a position on the vanguard of So It's Not Like Last Year (or Any Year Prior to That). I read a lot of old books, books which are just as rife with complaints about immoral excess amongst celebrating citizenry as our current blogs. I'm struck by the similarity of arguments over the centuries - that children are given too much, that adults eat too much and overshop, that religious institutions don't do enough to stem the tide of modern intemperance. The dismay of 1800 isn't so very different from ours today.

Not that I think that we can turn a blind eye to any problems, micro or macro, that may arise from both public and private observances. I groove on the Handmade Holiday and the Buy Handmade movements as much as the next girl. I adore Etsy with the heat of a thousand white-hot suns. And yet I recognize and wince more than a bit at the creeping temptation and encouragement to use such sensibilities and resources as shorthand for how well someone "gets" any number of issues, from transforming any given holiday into some ill-defined notion of past celebrations to making an economic statement.

Who among us wants to be the one who tells a working-two-minimum-wage-jobs mom that she needs to be getting online (digital divide, anyone?) and ordering artisanal puppets for her children because that's better for the environment and a more authentic gift? Or that she should kitting up to make those puppets, with the required expenses of fabric and glue gun and needle because that's what moms of yesteryear would have done (o.k., maybe Ma Ingalls did without the glue gun...) and those women would have been satisfied thrilled with such modest, within-budget expressions of affection? Meanwhile, the dollar store has adorable puppets in a range of styles that are deemed by a privileged class to be less-than because of where they were made or how much energy they required to get here. Well, that's not a conversation that I am willing to have.

There's an awful lot that vies to detract from our wholehearted engagement in whatever celebrations appear on our personal calendars and much to make us doubt any celebration in which we indulge is sufficient by one measure or another. Goodness knows that a glance the headlines is enough to make anyone want to call the whole thing off, or at least attempt to dial things back to an imaginary golden time when we believe that people didn't face such scariness as a matter of course. But of course they did, humans always have (there were no good old days, after all, where children and adults were perfectly pious in their merrymaking). This is part of the reason we have such celebratory seasons as the one we are entering. It's no accident that so many of us are preparing for festivals and holidays relating to various notions of finding light, literally and metaphorically.

I like walking into stores this time of year and taking note of the many types and varieties of candles, rich in color and scent. I love the strings of lights as suitable for Diwali as for my own Christmas observance. My local "designer discount" store has a collection of gorgeous Menorahs for sale - Jews mark the miracle of the oil with nine candles on a Menorah, candles which could also serve well for Sweden’s St. Lucia day or Thailand’s Loi Krathong festival.

The message is clear to me. In a time of deepening darkness, the best response is to find the light in each other. Let us avoid trying to find our own search lacking as compared to current false ideals papered over past realities. Humans are united in the search for illumination. This season, may we all find it, in every sense.