I’ve struggled with the overwhelmingly commercial month before Christmas since I worked long hours as a youth in a retail store where sales dollars were the only part of Christmas that mattered. But even so, the Christian Nativity story always struck a resonant chord in me.
When I was younger, I imagined scenes from the story told repeatedly in church: a couple enduring forced travel, the humblest of births, angels and distant kings celebrating a baby who would carry a new message of love and tolerance into the world; and a family and newborn forced to flee almost immediately when King Herod tried to ensure his continued reign by hunting down and killing babies.
It’s a story built on multiple miracles and I succeeded in believing in them for a long time. Originally, I had accepted the story as “gospel,” which it literally was. Later, I learned the pragmatic nature of the story, conveniently established at a time of year when many “pagans” were already celebrating festivals related to the winter solstice.
The celebration of the Christian Christmas story became symbolic, but the importance of the message remained. It was a miracle that a new prophet was born in a time of religious corruption (money-changers in the temple) and foreign domination by the Romans; miraculous that Jesus taught forgiveness and unqualified love.
Its modern date nearly coincides with the astounding miracle of our regular trips around the sun and the variable, but predictable, daylight. Early civilizations performed near miracles by calculating the Earth’s path and fluctuations of daylight without advanced tools (or AI). They established the solstice as a time of rebirth and regeneration at the darkest time of year, and celebrated as people experienced just a minute or two of added daylight on the next day.
Some see miracles in nearly everything associated with the ancient band known as the Beatles. The power of spring sunshine was celebrated by George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” for the 1969 album “Abbey Road.” That year in England was even colder and darker than normal, which is saying something for an island renowned for its gloomy climate. In the midst of a spiritual search that found him chanting and singing the Hindu mantra Hare Krishna, Harrison couldn’t face another business meeting to manage the explosion of wealth and celebrity attached to the group.
Instead, he played hooky and strolled about the garden of a friend (Eric Clapton) as a hopeful April sun began to drive away the “long cold, lonely winter.” It had been a troubling year for Harrison, including an arrest for marijuana, temporarily leaving the most successful rock band of all time, and an uncomfortable medical procedure. In Clapton’s sun-splashed garden, Harrison found faith in the sunshine that would erase the ice which was “slowly melting;” there were “smiles returning to the faces,” and a promise to a “little darlin’” that the sun will make it “alright.”
Today many in America today are facing a “long cold, lonely winter” in some of our darkest days, literally and figuratively: rising prices for nearly everything without an increase in income; the knowledge that a serious illness could drive them into debt and bankruptcy for the rest of their lives; our military on a killing spree in an undeclared and internationally illegal war; heavily armed men intent on meeting arrest quotas regardless of a person’s service to America or adherence to its laws; a political party and Supreme Court willing to rewrite the Constitution which has saved us from ruin for 250 years; pardons sold by the extortionist-in-chief, even as they blatantly contradict some of his stated priorities (a safer America, stemming the flow of illegal drugs into the country); etc., etc.
Christmas and the solstice encourage, even require, a belief in miracles. We need to believe in a miraculous Santa Claus who brings us closer to some of those things children wish for: world peace, food and shelter for everyone, a healthy family, and close friends. The all- powerful sun may help us see the actions, individually and as a country, which will correct our errant course.
Our greatest leaders, Gandhi, MLK JR., and Mandela, all believed in miracles, and succeeded in moving mountains. Their belief and actions came at a terrible cost: two assassinated, one jailed for 27 years. They may have wavered at times, but their dedication to the power of love and forgiveness still persists years after their deaths. They believed in miracles, and in the end, were proven correct.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era historical fiction novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.