The rituals we’ve just experienced go way beyond the gifts, candles, hymns, foods and symbols themselves. They serve a psychological function too; they’re part of the connective tissue defining our lives. This matters because the situation in which we find ourselves is, at heart, absurd. (Religious people don’t have to confront this, of course, because their faith has got the whole business covered and, for all I know, they’re right.) Sorry to go all Viktor Frankel on you, but Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, etc, are just some ways we imbue our transitory existence here with meaning. So think of that T-shirt with the snarky saying you got from Brad, your hipster cousin, differently, OK?
Sir Terence David John “Terry” Pratchett, OBE, 1948 – 2015, who wrote 41 comedy fantasy novels, understood this better than anybody (one of his characters was Cohen the Barbarian).
In addressing the human condition in Life After Death, he wrote,
In the Ramtop village, they believe that no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock he wound up winds down - until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.
That’s a lovely way to think about children, grandchildren, family and friends, perhaps what you wrote, and the people who’ll remember when you are no more.
One of my history professors in college was the formidable John Phillip Posey, who got his advanced degree from the University of Georgia. He was a quintessentially Southern Gentleman and a devoted advocate of the Civil Rights moment in the South.
One day in the run-up to a practicum, he dispensed words of wisdom I’ve remembered to this day.
“Mr Oliver,” he announced in a drawl all bourbon and Spanish Moss, “it’s always better to state the obvious than attempt to elucidate the obscure”.
Happy New Year from everybody at New Bellevue House. I hope 2024 is good to you.
...it can't be any worse than 2023. I have no immediate family to carry on my legacy, although I'm Fairy Godmother to five, but I will live on forever with the star that bears my name and the tickets to Mars & Jupiter's moon. A most excellent 2024 to you and Leesa.