Christmas Thoughts

Reflecting on Sacred Spaces and the Holiday

I got home from work early this afternoon. Most of my coworkers are off on vacation and my day is consumed with catching up with administrative work I’ve put aside this past year. Just like my office, my house was empty except for the cat and the dog. My wife and daughter are visiting a friend today and won’t return for a few hours. So, I did what I tend to do when I’m alone by myself. I clean. I threw in a load of laundry and washed the dishes I neglected last night. With everything perfect, I decided to make myself a fresh cup of coffee and sit down and write.

It was while making coffee, freshly ground, steaming on the stove, that I took in the space around me. The dim room, filled with the smell of fresh coffee, basked in the light of the Christmas Tree we put up last week. The cat sleeping on top of the refrigerator and the dog is curled up on the couch. It was beautiful, and at that moment, I felt warmth and joy.

Mircea Eliades's concept of Sacred Space, which I’ve written a lot about, came to mind. Here, in my modest living room, we created a sacred space. The Christmas Tree, an ancient symbol of eternal life, and a Christian symbol of rebirth, its triangular shape reminiscent of the Holy Trinity pointing at heaven, topped by the Star of Bethlehem, an evergreen symbol of Christ’s unwavering gift of eternal life to mankind.

We live in a profane world, desacralized, severed from the divine, yet even in our world traditions remain, even if most of us have forgotten or chosen to ignore the true meaning. Here in my home, by decorating a tree with my family, I performed a ritual and created an Axis Mundi that connected our living space with the past and the eternal. When I look at the tree and my daughter, I can’t help but remember when I was a child and I decorated our tree with my, now long-departed, father. I remember the joy of youth and the joy of the holidays, and I relive them with my family hoping that it continues with my daughter beyond my time.

I’m not writing this out of saccharine sentimentality, but out of joy for the realization that the sacred is still around me, even in our world. Most importantly, because this Christmas season I’ve felt disconnected and unenthusiastic about the holidays. I think we all need to take a moment and reflect on the joyous things around us, even if, and more importantly, they are hidden by darkness. No matter how dim, the light is still there, and it is up to us to brighten it.

Merry Christmas

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In the Substack world, you might have noticed that I’ve been rather quiet. I just finished two weeks of vacation. I took my daughter to Universal Studios for a few days to check out all of the Harry Potter stuff, which was a great time and I plan to write about the whole Potter stuff shortly. But, that was only for a few days, most of my time was spent doing nothing, just relaxing.

In the past, I had this horrible neurotic tendency to pre-plan every moment of my vacation. I don’t have work so I plan a weightlifting routine, and set up a writing schedule, and plan to clean my garage, wax my car, improve my cardio, an extreme list of tasks that I invertedly fail to accomplish which sends me into a state of anxiety. At the beginning of my current vacation, I started to do exactly that, luckily my wife pointed it out to me and told me to knock it off. So I did. I decided that I won't write, fiction, or Substacks. That I wouldn’t catch up on any reading unless I felt like it, and I would just do things as they came along without obligation. Honestly, I needed this and I’m glad that for the most part, the last two weeks consisted of spending time with my family and drinking wine and beer on the couch.

I did jot down some notes and have a few stacks planned for the next few days. At least two movie reviews, and a book review, and I’m almost done revising a short story that I’m sending to my editor, who is probably mad at me for running behind. But overall I’ve enjoyed the disconnect from the interwebs and I’ve grown fond of avoiding all idiocy, a disposition that seems to have been timely with all of the recent stack debates.