Return of the Light
Dec 24 2022
To find myself here
in this hot dry land
of choking dust and desert sand
where covered women and bearded men
crowd a bustling bazaar
is like a fever dream
on Christmas Eve.
No jolly elf.
No busy malls.
No red and green colour schemes
and sentimental music.
No snow,
no dark winter nights
of festive lights and chimney smoke.
Entire worlds
circling like alien planets
oblivious to each other.
Canny buyers haggling
and the call to prayer,
while families back home
prepare for the big event.
We look inward.
We rarely imagine different worlds
so diametrically opposed.
Although it's not so much opposition
as simple ignorance;
the narrow solipsism
of ways of life.
And when I return
I too will be invisible;
a non-believer
raised in a different tradition
who ghosts through Christmas
unconcerned and unobserved;
like an anthropologist
detached from the object of study,
both fascinated
and mystified.
But perfectly content
to stand apart
from the hustle and bustle
and pressure to buy.
From the strained family relations
and disappointed expectations
after all the hype and hurry;
the hypocrisy
of the season of giving
and return of the light.
After a conversation with my neighbour, a poem about my relationship to Christmas — that overwhelming and all-consuming cultural phenomenon — was on my mind.
The title, as well as the final line, call back to the pagan origin of the holiday season — so opportunistically appropriated by the early Church — and is itself a kind of hypocrisy: the bacchanalian decadence condemned by traditional Christianity now incorporated into its most celebrated occasion. This is similar to the hypocrisy inherent in the season of giving and reflection having become more about consumption and social pressure.
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