created: winter.1995
What set of circumstances must there be for one to again enter into the holiday spirit with enthusiasm and blithe? As opposed to disdain and selfishness, the former are not, I repeat: not antiquated terms. Originally, I learned that the spirit deemed “holiday” was one where a little bit of each day was put on hold to deal with a roughly 5 day period leading up to one day in particular. The closer we got to that period, the more out of each day… the denser the cheer, the glossier the personalities. Culminating in that five day period where, not unlike a cat learning to swim, we were so overwhelmed that we HAD to give in and go along in order to get through. This, however, gives the impression that the days were ones to be loathed…the end to be hotly anticipated. As children, emotions such as these were as foreign to us as 9 to 5. We went into those days as something akin to pirate merchants waiting for the annual sack of our benefactors. “Better to give than to receive”? Yet, as we grew up…as we evolved, we learned that there were massively important values attached to the season. The clichés lost their absurdity and began to coagulate into ideals and principles that, for me anyway, have only recently been able to stay sitting shotgun thruout this Earth’s remaining 360. And while it still may be intellectually damaging our youth to press home the birth of one possible man and what he meant 2000 years ago as the fulcrum to the season, that belief has produced some amazing side-effects. The giving of love as actual and concrete and tangible. The spirit that we are all one and that “peace be with you” needs just as much airtime as the George Bailey…but I digress….
Something has happened over the past few years. There seems to be a dichotomy running through the Shaman’s holiday spirit. Perhaps, I’ll let Mr. Freeze-Meister take the podium first. Throughout my 26 years, these holiday seasons have been increasingly approaching one big, ugly marketing scheme. Is it because the ends meet juuuust a little off and that the gift-giving process is one that fights over the grocery money BUY!! GIVE the GIFT of THIS enormously transitional box of BLAH for X amounts of DOLLARS. But make sure the LUCKY recipient is able to RETURN the TOKEN for while , yes…it IS the THOUGHT that COUNTS, thanks for thinking. WHAT AM I SAYING AND WHY AM I SENDING IT TO YOU ALL? The whole holiday season has, over the past few years (deja vu) taken on a wholly materialistic attitude. We’re all so widespread and distant of hug that we think that this object will tide over or something. For all of our sake, how far away have we evolved from the days when we gave Frankincense and hooch to those we loved? Better yet, how far off are we from a holiday that is not pock-marked with obligatory gift-giving. Back to the 9 to 5 analogy and all the vices and restrictions that go with it. I know that its a time of year that evokes even in the shadiest of souls the love for others and that given time to brew and ferment, that love inevitably produces the need to show that love…to give it a tangibility where we can go one-more than show it to those we love. That we may give it to them as an object…a token representative. Perhaps its as simple as that there are just too many choices for us when we set forth to give those we love that token. Minimalist? Martyr? I just want love so much and want to give so much that I begin to simply want to shower those I love with those material tokens when, by doing or thinking that, I’m bounced right back to the same questions and statements we all think in some way or another: WHERE WERE YOU FOR THE WHOLE REST OF THE YEAR? JUST BE THERE, MAN! I DONT WANT ALL THIS!! I JUST WANT YOU. YEA, THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT IS ABOUT GIVING, BUT ITS MORE ABOUT THE TWO-WAY STREET. I LOVE YOU, MAIN.
I’ve cultivated and harboured what I consider to be a wonderful, enthusiastic frame of mind about these days. I have, hook-line-and-sinker, bought into the marketing scheme and bell curve and actually “like” going out and shopping for items that I think would make the ones I love smile. Fuck the long lines to park! Everyone smiles at everyone else anyway, right? “Go ahead! Close this register! I’ll cheerfully just get back in THAT line and smile whilst doing it!” It’s the holiday season, and it only comes around twice a…wait..ONCE A YEAR! Besides, everyone looks so well! Smiles and outfits and plump shopping bags and children full of wonder and couples arm in arm and frost on the breath and all this….all this, if you can look past the “hassle” will all be worth it if you can light someone up with whatever you can give them. From the most massive of long-term-use gifts to the most sincerest of holiday greetings…if you can touch even the most simple of souls, than you’ve achieved what it is that makes it all happen again and again and again. And more importantly, if you’ve done it all with YOUR peace of mind, you’ve invited the ideal to stay with you for whole year.
So, as for my questions in the beginning, must there be one certain set of circumstances? Is it as shallow as one having the money to shower those s/he loves with gifts? And if so, what of the penniless that give more to others than ANY of us will ever understand. Where do we all fit in if that is the limits of the spectrum? For me, its the term “cheer.” No matter what arises, if you approach with cheer and projects its as well, than every experience will, at very least, flow. I used to think that if I expected the worst possible outcome for any given situation, than I would be “pleasantly relieved” when the actual outcome arrived. What I did not then realize was than by my own protective pessimism, I was effecting the outcome. Conversely, you approach any situation expecting the best possible, while at the same time, realistic outcome…well, lets just say that it is a much healthier mental outlook.
What this all means to the holiday spirit? Well…maybe…just as life feeds on life, good spirits feed off other good spirits. Its a collective and since if we all choose raft down the white-water of the Holiday Season, than we all must either scull or serve as ballast. I saw myself THIS season getting the good cheer of the holidays ripped from me by a Wells Fargo Stagecoach and it really pissed me off. Like I shared the horses plight by wearing the same blinders. I began to view the whole process like that cat learning to swim: Having to quickly (re)learn how to get this over with as little difficulty and as little water in my ears as possible. And, man…that’s not what its all about. It’s all to old to pare down into brackets of dollar signs. It’s been with us for far too long, and we all just need to see how it’s mutated. Keep asking ourselves those questions. And who knows, maybe I’m reiterating philosophies you all have neatly operating as we speak and I’m just getting on board. Posing questions at the head of a trail make ANY hike across ANY terrain much more interesting. Dont they give us direction? Questions, I mean…posed to ourselves…
As most of you know, spew need not travel in linear orientation. Ideas flow forth. And sometimes they stay susinct and other times they just weave into patterns only visible from multiple passes. And so like these holiday seasons, going over them again and again may just reinforce within us all how important their tidings to others are. Its about more than giving. Its about sharing with others a part of ourselves. Perhaps that was what was itching to get spewed tonight.
SHAMAN