A big eastern syndicate

The tubleweed has been blowing around this blog for a few months now, and I expect that I've lost the attention of most of my potential readers, but I can't let the Christmas season pass without making a post. It's tradition!

Right now you're probably wondering: do we have to talk about being a non-believer at Christmas again?

Sort of. Part of the tradition is to reflect somehow on my faith journey in the context of Christmas. But most of the Christmas-as-an-atheist topics are tiresome. The Christmas culture wars exist only to stoke the ire and to stroke the egos of those fighting either side. That Christmas traditions are almost exclusively derived from pagan sources is irrelevant except to set a precedent for my own repurposing of Yuletide celebrations. If we're going to talk about Christmas, we need something a little less trite.

I want to dig a little deeper and probe what people mean when they talk about the "real meaning" of Christmas. Usually when people -- religious people, at least -- talk about the real meaning of Christmas, they mean its religious message, particularly in opposition to its commercial component. Indeed, this is the central thesis of the "A Charlie Brown Christmas".

   

With all due respect to Charles Schultz, I reject this as a false dichotomy. Lord knows I'm not into the commercial Christmas. In my adulthood gifts have mostly ceased to make sense, and I hardly know what to tell people to get me for Christmas, let alone what to get for others. But in ignoring the commercial aspect of Christmas, am I forced either to embrace its religious content or discard the holiday altogether?

No. Emphatically no. In addition to the religious and commercial components of the season, there's a third meaning that's as widespread as anything else. This is the humanistic message: peace on earth, goodwill towards men; charity, kindness, and redemption; and the meaning found in human relationships.

I can hear the objection from a mile away: the humanistic message is merely a component of the religious message. But that's not usually how the story goes. Usually the humanistic part of Christmas is expressed without mention of any religious message.

And I have evidence. Evidence in the form of Christmas specials. (Of which "Charlie Brown" is the notable exception.)

Our first stop is the original Christmas special, Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". You probably already know that, in England at least, Christmas observance fell into serious decline around the time of Cromwell, and that Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol" during a Victorian-era Christmas revival. Dickens' view of Christmas, in addition to being distinctly anti-commericalist/anti-capitalist, is entirely secular. Indeed, it's a rejection of the Cromwellian hyper-piety that pushed Christmas out of the way in the first place. There's a reference or two to God, and of course the Christmas ghosts are supernatural entities. But there's no reference to Christ or the Nativity, no call to remember the religious underpinnings of the season. The Christmas spirit in Dickens' story, as embodied in the redeemed Ebenezer Scrooge, is the innate goodness of humanity, the triumph of people over things, the power of love over loneliness.

   

Next up is "It's a Wonderful Life". Yes, we do see angels, although their cosmological nature lends itself as well to Scientology as it does to anything in Christendom, and George Bailey does pray to God near the end of the film. But even in post-war America Frank Capra sees no need for religious sermonizing. Much like as with Dickens, the moral is about human relationships: meaning is found in the people we touch rather than the possessions we amass. George Bailey, the richest man in Bedford Falls? There's a double meaning in that.

 

Our last stop is Dr. Seuss's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". My wife found this wonderful article today. Its paragraph on the final scene of "Grinch" says it better than I would have:

"It’s a lovely moment, and I don’t want to dissect it too much, because its beauty lies in its simplicity. It’s the simplicity that gets me, and it’s what sets The Grinch just that much closer to my heart than any other story of the season. There’s no speech about Jesus, and Santa doesn’t show up to save the day. If you look closely at that glowing mass that rises above the Whos as they sing, you’ll see there isn’t anything inside. Which could mean a whole lot of things, or could mean nothing at all, but what it means to me is that Christmas isn’t anything special in and of itself, not even for the Whos. Christmas is something you have to make happen, not through 'packages, boxes, or bags,' but through the act of warmth and love and kindness."

   

While I'm posting stuff, it seems fitting to include a song I recently discovered by Australian singer/comedian Tim Minchin. The religious among you might be offended by a mild, albeit rather good-hearted critique of some aspects of your worldview. However, despite his being on the wrong hemisphere for this sort of thing, his Christmastime sentiments resonate with me. (Incidentally, if you want to see me tear up, tie me down and make me watch the bridge starting at 3:51. By the time he gets to "these are the people who make you feel safe in this world", there's a better-than-even chance of waterworks!)

   

Maybe, as the Grinch realized, Christmas doesn't come in a store. Maybe it doesn't even have to come in a church or in any other institution. It comes in homes, among people and across generations, gathering in the cold solitude of winter for warmth and love and togetherness. It has a meaning that transcends culture and epoch, that reaches back through history into shared ancestry. A meaning that's bigger than assent to or denial of any theological statement. A meaning so universal it can only be described as human.

A google+ tagline, rejected due to too much sadness but deemed okay for my blog

The world is adorable and absurd and tragic. Like a puppy who can't find his way out of a laundry hamper...

...and dies of starvation.

Sufjan Stevens, you goddamn thief

Here is "Svefn-G-Englar", from Sigur Rós's 1999 album Ágætis byrjun:

And here's "Vito's Ordination Song", from Sufjan Steven's 2003 album Greetings from Michigan:

It's even in the same key. Sufjan apologists, I dare you to argue that he didn't lift the chord progression, instrumentation, and feel for his song from his Icelandic superiors.

The ergodic life

Today I flipped off an old lady while biking to campus.

And I liked it. Even now, I'm feeling pretty good about our interaction!

The situation: I was pulling up on my bike to the last stoplight on my route to campus, a quiet intersection on a peaceful, heavily-forested street. The light had just turned red, and I came to a stop about five feet behind a fellow biker. A car, pulling out in front of us, slowed down as the driver—a woman in her sixties—looked at the biker in front of me with unusual intensity. As her face contorted into a disapproving scowl she pointed at the other biker, mimed with her hands onto her head, and mouthed "helmet". She was rebuking him for riding without a helmet!

I don't know what my fellow biker's response was; the light had turned green and we were both starting to pull out. But as I began moving to the intersection, she caught my eye and I realized I was about to get the same silent lecture: a chastening glare, a ridiculous miming with both hands, and an agitated mouthing of the word "helmet".

I hesitated a moment, an irritated scowl undoubtedly on my face, before deciding that my rage was sufficient for all men and that this aggression would not stand. I twisted to face her departing car and offered up my middle finger. My only regret is that, in hesitating that small handful of seconds, I may have missed my chance to make my salute within her field of vision.

Cue the obvious objections. Yes, I realize that riding without a helmet is relatively dangerous and that I probably should wear one. Yes, I realize I returned rudeness for rudeness. Yet I don't feel guilty. If you're a family member or a close friend, it's your prerogative to express your concerns about my safety. If you're a police officer and I'm in a state that requires helmets (I'm not), I'm willing to take a ticket or pay a fine without complaint. I'm more than happy to abide the confines of the social contract in which I participate. But nowhere does that social contract mandate that I be squawked at by an old hen who can't tell her children apart from strangers on the street.

After my retaliatory gesture, my mind jumped to a hasty generalization: where the hell does this old bag get off gesticulating a safety lecture to random passersby? Or, more particularly, at what point in your life do you decide it's your privilege to do so? When do you become Harrison Ford, yelling at the kids to get off your metaphorical lawn?

I bring this up not to deliver a mostly-unjustified diatribe on the generation ahead of me, but to discuss a fear that's been gnawing at me lately.

I've written here before that I'm afraid of growing old and dying, and that really hasn't changed. I'm coming to terms with many of the implications: I've pistol-whipped the first signs of fatness into submission, I'm steeling myself against the indications that my hairline is beginning its flight northward, and I'm learning to live happily under the soul-crushing weight of inevitable mortality.

But I'm terrified of the stagnation of my mind. I'm scared of my brain growing dull and inflexible. I'm worried that as I get older, I'll fall into the fallacy of assuming that life is ergodic: that the average over my life experience is indicative of the average over all people's life experience. I'm worried that at some point I'll become sufficiently comfortable with how I'm living my life that I presume to tell others to live it the same way. That I'll be the one shouting at other people's kids to put their helmets on.

Much of my fear springs from the fact that I have no practicable way of avoiding such ossification. The only way I know to combat this tendency is to continuously discard things I once thought I knew. If you think you've got something all figured out, it's remarkably difficult to learn about that something, so I try to take old conclusions and routinely put them up for review. So far, if I may be so bold, I think it's worked out pretty well.

But it comes at a cost, and don't know that I can keep this up forever. Sure, I'm aiming for an academic life, and an academic life should bring with it constant reexamination and reevaluation. But someday it'd be handy to be an expert on something. (I'm pretty sure search committees and tenure boards, not to mention students, will appreciate it.) And it's hard to become an expert when you're constantly dropping knowledge out the back of your mind in order to preserve your tabula rasa—assuming you can keep up the patience and mental sharpness to do so in the first place. If I want to achieve my dreams, it seems, I'm forced to compromise on something I consider a defining part of my character.

Maybe that's the price we pay for stability. Perhaps the cost of an established life is that I have to grow up, settle down, and entrench myself in a few worthwhile—yet finite—principles. Perhaps I'm doomed to become old. And stubborn. And stodgy. And, like it as not, to incite young, insufferable know-it-alls to make obscene gestures in my direction.

Diversity Order

I read this today, and I liked it so much that I decided to post it in lieu of a real entry. From the inestimable John Locke:

Since, therefore, it is unavoidable to the greatest part of men, if not all, to have several opinions, without certain and indubitable proofs of their truth; and it carries too great an imputation of ignorance, lightness, or folly for men to quit and renounce their former tenets presently upon the offer of an argument which they cannot immediately answer, and show the insufficiency of: it would, methinks, become all men to maintain peace, and the common offices of humanity, and friendship, in the diversity of opinions; since we cannot reasonably expect that any one should readily and obsequiously quit his own opinion, and embrace ours, with a blind resignation to an authority which the understanding of man acknowledges not. For however it may often mistake, it can own no other guide but reason, nor blindly submit to the will and dictates of another.

If he you would bring over to your sentiments be one that examines before he assents, you must give him leave at his leisure to go over the account again, and, recalling what is out of his mind, examine all the particulars, to see on which side the advantage lies: and if he will not think our arguments of weight enough to engage him anew in so much pains, it is but what we often do ourselves in the like case; and we should take it amiss if others should prescribe to us what points we should study.

...

We should do well to commiserate our mutual ignorance, and endeavour to remove it in all the gentle and fair ways of information; and not instantly treat others ill, as obstinate and perverse, because they will not renounce their own, and receive our opinions, or at least those we would force upon them, when it is more than probable that we are no less obstinate in not embracing some of theirs.

For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others. At least, those who have not thoroughly examined to the bottom all their own tenets, must confess they are unfit to prescribe to others; and are unreasonable in imposing that as truth on other men's belief, which they themselves have not searched into, nor weighed the arguments of probability, on which they should receive or reject it.

Those who have fairly and truly examined, and are thereby got past doubt in all the doctrines they profess and govern themselves by, would have a juster pretence to require others to follow them: but these are so few in number, and find so little reason to be magisterial in their opinions, that nothing insolent and imperious is to be expected from them: and there is reason to think, that, if men were better instructed themselves, they would be less imposing on others.

So good.

Renaissance

Spring is a time for rebirth!

Clunker

This is a story that begins at the DMV and ends with my getting all nostalgic. (There is also no mention of Mormonism for all of you who are getting bored or irritated with the topic.)

Last week, the day before my twenty-ninth birthday, I formally became a Texan. Previously I had voted, purchased a house, and registered my car here, but I defiantly held on to my Washington state driver's license. Sadly, it was due to expire on my birthday, so with an entire day to spare I trudged my way over to the DMV in order to fully subscribe myself to the Lone Star State. It was an altogether unpleasant excursion. In addition to confronting the acidulousness incident to aligning oneself with the union's most insecure state, I couldn't find one of the necessary documents in the glove compartment, which necessitated a rather stupid adventure around Houston.

I drive a 1988 Toyota Camry. It was a gift, of sorts, from my grandparents. They had both gotten too old to drive safely, and as a poor undergraduate I was more than grateful to have even an old grandma car to drive. Since I got the car my grandfather has died and my grandmother has been stricken with Alzheimer's, but their car is alive and healthy—or, at least, as healthy as a 23-year-old car has any business being.

A few emotions keep me driving that car: pragmatism (read: cheapness), complacency, even stubbornness. But I also feel a sense of nostalgia for the old Camry. My grandparents were generous, loving people—my grandfather in particular was a seriously classy dude—and visiting them over summers is a fond childhood memory.

So when I got the car, I didn't take much out of it. The glove box was full of old receipts, insurance cards, and maps, but I left them in place. Occasionally, as I rummage around the car looking for something, I'll happen upon something—directions to the store?—written in my grandfather's nearly illegible scrawl. I appreciate the occasional opportunity to remember him through something done by his hand. It's almost stupid, really—if I want to keep them, I should take these mementos and put them somewhere safer and more permanent than my car. But there really is nowhere else for them to go.

Unfortunately, after the debacle with the DMV I decided that, memories or no, the time had come to clean out the glove compartment. Last night Amanda and I went through the pile of stuff, deciding what to keep. Initially I was determined to keep whatever I could, or at least anything with their handwriting on it, but it didn't take long to concede to the practical: if I can't keep this stuff in the car, what am I going to do with it? Am I going to set up a scrapbook of old tire warranties and road atlases? Fortunately very little in the glove box had anyone's handwriting on it, so virtually everything was scrapped.

Before we threw everything away, however, Amanda spotted this certificate, which she expertly photographed:

Amanda loved it in an 80s-vintage sort of way—an old document showcasing the aesthetics of its age—but I decided to keep it as a token of all the things we threw away. A representative of the Les Schwab Tire reciepts and Nationwide Insurance cards that we couldn't keep. A tribute to Jack B. Stout, the salesman who sold my grandparents this car more than two decades ago. And a link to the past. After Amanda photographed it, I took the certificate, put it into the envelope provided by Peterson Toyota, and stuck it back in the glove compartment.

It... belongs there. Is that weird?