More than Ornamentation
The season wouldn’t be complete if there wasn’t the mad scramble for Christmas decorations. Regardless of your belief about the season, you can attest to the well-worn paths people trod to their local big box store for lights, ornaments, and embellishments along with the reasonable assumption that, behind all the glitz and glamour, there’s a significant amount of stress.
In America, we have the buffer of Thanksgiving Day between Halloween and Christmas which, to be fair, adds its own compliment of stress, family, and fuckery to the mix. Nothing like celebrating the incursion of repressive white religious zealots into a land sacred to the Indigenous people but, I digress.
In Copenhagen, November marks the re-opening of Tivoli Gardens for Christmas. After a brief spell being decked out for Halloween, Tivolo is shut down for a few weeks, redecorated for the Yuletide, and then opened to the masses for their delightful consumption. From the rides to the food to the magnificient colours, Tivoli is a feast for the eyes and senses.
I’m presenting these shots to you in black and white because, for all the splendour of the seasons and decoration, there’s a counterbalance at play. We’re celebrating the “what will come” while tens of thousands are finding themselves at the mercy of a state unwilling to yield. We’re rejoicing in the simplicity of lights and structures and gifts when there are those whose next breath is the only gift they’re counting on. For every colour, there’s a darkness that looms.
Before our trip into Tivoli, we were blessed with the opportunity to observe, up close and personally, the assembly of those dedicated to a Free Palestine. It wasn’t violent, it wasn’t full of the rancor that we so readily run to as a dogwhistle of “us versus them,” it wasn’t anything more (or less) of a plea for safety and place. It was beautiful for its collection of young and old, light and dark, creed and colour; a true mosaic of humanity organized together under a call for purpose.
If there truly is a “ reason for the season” beyond the grift of capitalism’s claw into our pocketbooks, it’s found in the shadows made possible by the interplay of light and dark. It’s found in the ripples on the pond reflecting back the images of a pagoda and rollercoaster. It’s in the whipsaw of the tilt-a-whirl, the burning light of so many stars guiding humans to and fro, and in the darkness of a Copenhagen night.
The reason I write this is simple: we have to be more than the celebration of “things.” We have to be more than just our homage to a broken belief in Christmas. We need to be more than just presents under a tree, a Yuletide sing-a-long, and the garishness of a theocratic polity.
We need to be the lights that guide the broken home, we need to be the welcoming arms for the orphans and widows, we need to be more than just a body in a pew, a ticket on a ride, an ornament on tree.
My dear souls, we can embrace this Christmas season with all the abandon in the world but if we forget the broken, the homeless, the orphans, the widows, the oppressed, the run-down…then what are we? If we can’t see beyond the light into the darkness and shadows, will we ever understand what it means to be human?
Find and purpose this Christmas in being more than just ornamentation. Be more than just a gentle hymn or a warm body in a pew, more than an agitator on a social media channel. Be an agent for the light and darkness that composes who you are.
May it ever be so.
Originally published at https://davegraham.substack.com.
