Commusings: Christmess by Jeff Krasno

Hello Commune Community,

Happy holidays!

This is the final Commusings of 2022. 52 up and 52 down. Such is life. It’s been equally busy over on the Commune podcast. Across 2022, we’ve published in excess of 100 episodes and the show has been downloaded over 3 million times. 

All I can say is thank you. It’s truly an honor to do this work – to spend my life in conversation with people 10 times smarter than me and to synthesize those discussions here in this column. 

I don’t take your readership or listenership for granted. The attention economy offers countless options for podcasts and blogs and I deeply appreciate that you have focused your precious attention here. Hopefully, my gratitude is reflected in the rigor that I try to bring to every article and episode. I genuinely feel like I have gotten an honorary degree over the past year in multiple disciplines. This opportunity to learn wouldn’t be possible without receptive eyes and ears on the other side. I look forward to another year of excavating the ideas that can lead to greater personal, societal and planetary well-being. 

Today’s article pokes playfully at the perplexing rituals of Christmas. It’s fitting given that I have spent much of the year in various states of confusion researching the inner workings of the mitochondria or attempting to transliterate Sanskrit. If anything, I have become comfortable with the discomfort that comes with a certain amount of bewilderment. Generally, confusion portends a breakthrough. When leveraging persistence, knowledge awaits just over confusion’s hill. 

Here at [email protected] and waxing and waning on IG @jeffkrasno.

In love, include me,
Jeff

• • •

Christmess

In the early aughts, I travelled frequently to the great cities of Japan; Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Fukuoka, Nagoya, Kyoto and others. I was looking after a roster of virtuosic musicians, mostly jazz artists, who had gotten a foothold in the Japanese market. The Japanese have a fascination with certain aspects of American culture. And, of course, given my pre-occupation with Zen, haiku and kintsugi among other sino-esoterica, the obsession is bi-directional. 

Of course, inevitable confusions emerge from this exuberant curiosity for the customs of the West. On an early winter trip to Osaka in 2004, I visited one of the city’s vast, sprawling underground malls. Affixed above the entrance of this commercial wonderland was a ginormous Santa Claus nailed to a cross. 

There were throngs of people briskly entering and exiting the subterranean labyrinth completely oblivious to the massive cultural blunder suspended above their heads. I’d never witnessed the social hegemony of the West translated in such a simultaneously gruesome and hilarious fashion. 

Even for those in West, however, Christmas can be a confusing time – packed with the emotional chiaroscuro of joy and melancholy, revelry and introspection, forgiveness and long-held resentments.

The holiday season expects our joy and, in a desperate bid for good tidings, we swill the pints of Christmas cheer. The piped-in choruses of major-keyed carols backdrop a frenzy of gift-wrapping, potato-mashing and cider-spiking. But while the twinkling lights shine bright on the tree, the branches cast a shadow in which our merriment is muted by bittersweet nostalgia and probing self-inventory. If your soul is one with the spirit of the season, God bless you. But if sorrow cleaves your heart right now, then, please know, you are not alone in your aloneness.

It’s befuddling to consider how the celebration of the nativity of a prophet transformed into a commodified free-for-all led by a bespectacled man with fur-cuffed trousers. Upon reflection, can we really blame the Osaka mall’s environmental décor team for their gaffe? The confusing emotional tumult of the season is mirrored by an equally confounding tradition. 

The observance of the immaculate birth of a lithe, sandaled Jewish boy from for the warm climes Galilee became a Christian celebration featuring a corpulent, jovial septuagenarian with a red suit and galoshes from the North Pole. The apostles have grown antlers and pull a sleigh laden with Playstations. We once sanctified Mary’s incomparable chastity, and, now, in honor of the birth of her son, I dutifully fulfill the wish list of my daughters with make-up from Sephora. Why not Santa on a cross?

Generally uninspired by the Holy Mother, Schuyler, bless her, was a virgin until twenty. I devoted two years of unsullied chivalry to my noble pursuit of her. (And in my prime years I might add.) I dubbed her “private area” the Kingdom of God, for there was more chance of a camel passing through the eye of a needle than a rich man entering it (Mark 10:25 ;-). I won’t claim that our daughters were conceived immaculately, but it was awfully close. 

I particularly empathize with poor Joseph. Imagine all the nappies he devotedly changed without even a proper shag, let alone much paternal credit. Just as The Holy Spirit “overshadowed” Mary, Joseph lives in the shadow of God. Strange that a religion that gives its savior two dads also promotes the fatal public stoning of homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13). I jest … but it’s in the book. 

Evidently, the emergence of Santa Claus as Christ’s proxy is a product of syncretism evolving over millennia. Saint Nicholas of Myra was a 4th-century Greek Christian bishop famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian man with dowries so that they would avoid a life of prostitution. 

Father Christmas dates back to 16th-century England during the reign of Henry VIII, when he was portrayed as a large man in scarlet robes lined with fur. He exemplified the spirit of good cheer at Christmas, bringing peace, joy, good food, wine and revelry. As England no longer kept the feast day of Saint Nicholas on December 6, the Father Christmas celebration was moved to December 25 to coincide with Christmas Day. Essentially, the traditional celebrations of Old Saint Nick and Christmas were merged. 

The modern visual of our jolly, red-hatted Santa is derived from the 1823 poem by Clement Clark Moore, A Visit from St. Nicholas (more commonly known as The Night Before Christmas). The political cartoonist, Thomas Nast, also played a significant role in crafting his image. Of course, good old American capitalism embellished our jovial gift-giver as well. Coca-Cola sweetened Claus’ persona throughout the 20th century with advertisement campaigns. 

For years, I eschewed the holiday, deriding its over-commercialization, perhaps a reflection of an evolving anti-materialism, or maybe just a half-hearted attempt to spiritually bypass the traumatic Christmases of my adolescence, when I shuttled furiously between my divorced parents’ houses divvying up time fairly like slices of pumpkin pie.

I still give December 25 a minor side-eye, but the unbridled holiday spirit of my children has slowly humbled, if impoverished, me. My daughters are a stark reminder that my life isn’t all about me. It’s about me in connection with them, with you, and with the world. 

The messiness of the holiday season brings life’s contradictions into stark relief. We experience both the joy and discomfort of togetherness while balancing the serenity and loneliness of solitude. We express the immaterial emotions we hold for one another in the form of material gifts. We celebrate the birth of a new beginning while grieving the passage of those we have loved. In growing, we accept the imperfect perfection of life’s incongruities. 

In the end, we must live with these paradoxes because the universe is one giant coincidencia oppositorum. We only know grief through love. We only know compassion through our own suffering. We have a feeling of self – of explicit differentiation – yet we are all woven into an implicit unity in which everything depends on everything else. 

In the end, there is little to do but surrender to the strange, beautiful Christ-mess of it all. If you draw inspiration from this day to practice forgiveness, compassion, and gratitude for the abundance of what fills your life, then you will be walking in the footsteps of the baby born on this day. You will be finding Christ in the mess.