Dec. 28 Column

At this time of year, I often think of the Andy Rooney pearl: “the most glorious mess lies around the living room Christmas tree-don’t clean it up too soon.” Some of us will be celebrating Christmas season into the New Year, a tip of the hat to the 12 days of Christmas until Epiphany, January 6. We are in the gap between Christmas and New Years. I so admire the people who do not insist on the holiday being celebrated precisely at noon on the 25th and are flexible enough to adjust the varying needs of family  and the desire to get together.

Even the most insistent spiritual but not religious may enter the door of a church at Christmas time. As we approach New Year’s the secular celebrations have trounced the church as we mark the turn of yet another calendar page. Though the sands of the hourglasses are almost gone, there on the other side is the promise of a happy, healthy new born.

Too many rituals of family dysfunction mar the holiday. I do not grasp why it is not a get together unless feelings are hurt and someone is left crying. It is as if we walk around we so many grudges that we seek out a chance to unload that poisonous cargo.

The readings for this Sunday from Luke 2 include the lovely story of Anna and Simeon at the temple with 8 day old Jesus. One or maybe both actors are really old, even older than me, as our daughters would say, as in my mind they look the way we picture the outgoing year. They appear to be denizens of the temple precincts, the very model of pious, devout people. All of their lives, they have hoped for the sign that a new age was dawning, but year by year those hopes faded a bit, as Rome’s power seem to tighten its grip. They are guardians of the ritual of prayer and hope, twins.

Yet, hope exists in spite of the facts on the ground, not their absence. Hope may be doomed to disappointment, but its power lies in its capacity to imagine a new or brighter day.Simeon blesses, blesses, the child who was and is the embodiment of our hopes for a better way to live. I like to think that both Anna and Simeon receive a bit of youth again, as did Naomi in the great story of Ruth. In our time, Jews continue to celebrate the birth of a child and bless the child that he or she may grow into the life of Torah, marriage and good deeds. Elijah, the harbinger of the messianic age is welcomed there, for each new birth is the birth of hope.  

In some ways, I love the symbol of Father Time teetering toward the edge of extinction as an exhausted year stumbles to a close. As we age, that same feeling occurs as we hurtle toward retirement. Every movement toward turning a chapter in life brings the threat of unwelcome change and the promise of new life being born, not busy dying as Dylan said,     

Many of us have given up on the great ritual of making New Year’s resolutions. Too many failures have weakened the desire for self improvement. In the created Festivus, participants would air grievances, disappointments in those close to them. As a spiritual practice, this strikes me as salutary, a clearing of the emotional and mental baggage we lug throughout the year, for that matter, our lives. When the presents were taken up, I would burn the papers in the fireplace. I would write out old lingering ghosts of Christmases past and write them out and burn them along with the wrappings. Please consider creating some new rituals for the New Year and holding on to the ones that bring you health and jo