Better Watch Out!

Happy Winter Solstice Christmas Hanukkah Kwanzaa whatever ya got, everybody! 

At my house, before our daughter turned eight or nine years old, we celebrated what would be best described as secular Christmas.  That is, we set up a lighted tree with presents, and had a morning gift-a-thon on the twenty-fifth; no crèche; no baby Jesus in sight.  For us, it was as good an excuse as any to give her a whole bunch of toys, all at once, just for the sheer amusement of watching her go nuts with play.

My wife, having grown up in a Jewish household, was only too happy to play Christmas.  For my part, with a birthday the day before, the occasion has always been an inseparable part of my annual celebrations.  And, having been raised non-sectarian, I never felt much compunction about cherry-picking the more hedonistic practices of the season for my own. 

Still, with the passing of each year, I came to feel that our peculiar little tradition was an unintentional mockery of a holiday otherwise taken very seriously by so many people, many of them close friends.  What to do?  

I considered that December 25^th wasn’t the actual date of Christ’s birth, and that so many of the rituals and symbols of the Yuletide were recast from more ancient traditions, including the decoration of a tree at winter solstice, and the giving of gifts.  In that spirit, for our next holiday season, I introduced a new family tradition: “A Winter Solstice Lit Apparition.”

This display, put together fairly last minute, was a basically conical assemblage of metal bar stock, wire, free-form cut up sheet metal bits, sundry machine parts, ornaments, lights and so forth; a hodgepodge of stuff brought up from my basement workshop, in an attempt to pay minimalist homage to a you-know-what.  I got a pass from the family on this. But, I missed having a tree.

In the following three or four years, I made more earnest attempts at honoring the returning sun.  I think my best was a two foot diameter, wire-form globe, counterbalanced by an eight foot arm that extended across the living room ceiling, at the end of which dangled a lone ball ornament, as if a distant satellite.  The arm swayed gracefully in the currents of warm air, gently prodded by the heating system.  I gave myself credit for having created something with poignancy, even if it felt kind of lonely.  

Decades earlier, I remember the time when, for unclear reasons, the tradition of having a Christmas tree in our home nearly came to an end, were it not for my taking on sole responsibility for execution of the project: of procurement, installation and subsequent decoration.  Everybody’s entitled to a little Christmas loneliness, I guess.  There’s a coming-of-age story in there, somewhere.  But, that’ll be for another time. 

And now, more loneliness.  I run Santa’s friggin' workshop!  But, my produce has been largely abandoned for all manner of light-up mesmerizations and digital sorcery from the Silicon Valley.  Cripes!  They don’t even have snow there.  I must be out of my mind, making all this mechanical hoo hah.  Clearly, it’s only a matter of a short time before all of our very existence is transferred to memory sticks.  Then, some whacked out space aliens can play "Hooman Lives" on their whacked out alien media experience devices, slurping it up like humming birds, then trading their favorite bits with their pals.  Eventually, the favorite bits will coalesce into a kind of meta-experience that they form into an altogether new creature!  Stay tuned for more!  

Now, go buy some MechaniCards, dammit!
                                                                        -Brad