Christmas is back.
For the past month (or more), people have put up their lights and trees, sung along to their favorite festive tunes, bought and wrapped gifts, attended local celebrations and parties, and overall done most of the same activities they do every year.
“Something Magical,” a new Christmas song released this year by my favorite Icelandic musician, Dadi Freyr, sums it up well:
“We go through the same routine, just like last year, and the year bеfore that, and the year bеfore that, and the year before that. There is something comforting about the repetition, I don’t know. We hear the same songs for days in a row. Why fix if it ain’t broke? It sounds annoying, sometimes it is so. I don’t know. There is something magical about Christmastime...”
Something about tradition, routine, and repetition gives stability and comfort throughout all of our lives, and certainly that’s one part of why we do the same things each year when the holidays come around.
But I think the repetition at Christmas has an even deeper, more powerful meaning.
Every year when our part of the world reaches its darkest point, we cover everything in lights. Every year when our weather gets the coldest, we bundle up and light fires and drink hot drinks and hug each other to stay warm. Every year when we’ve fought and struggled, we spread messages of peace, kindness, joy, and hope.
And we do this again, and again, and again.
Last Christmas, I spent a lot of time thinking about one of my favorite “Doctor Who” quotes:
“On every world, wherever people are, in the deepest part of the winter, at the exact midpoint, everybody stops and turns and hugs. As if to say, ‘Well done. Well done, everyone! We’re halfway out of the dark.’ Back on earth we call this Christmas.”
Last year I clung to this message. The world had been through a dark year, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and I was ready to celebrate being “halfway out of the dark” and ready to make progress. Then 2021 came, and for myself and many people I know, it was an even worse year than 2020. Even when it came to COVID-19, while we made progress with things like the vaccine, we’ve also continued to struggle with variants and continued spread and even more deaths.
So much for coming out of the dark into the light, I thought. It’s a discouraging feeling to think you’re making progress and then feel like you’ve only slipped back to where you were.
But then I realized — celebrating being “halfway out of the dark” happens every year. This means the darkness comes back every year. But so does the hope.
Life is incredibly cyclical. Things go back and forth and up and down. Things happen over and over again in the same ways and new ways. But the cycle doesn’t mean we’re stuck. It’s part of how we move forward. The repetition is part of the process.
One of the main ideas we talk about at Christmastime is hope. Hope is defiant, and it’s tenacious.
One of my favorite musicals, “Hadestown,” explores this thought with the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. At the end of the musical, Hermes sings:
“It’s a sad song. It’s a sad tale. It’s a tragedy. It’s a sad song. But we sing it anyway. Cause here’s the thing — to know how it ends and still begin to sing it again, as if it might turn out this time, I learned that from a friend of mine. He could make you see how the world could be, in spite of the way that it is. Can you see it? Can you hear it? Can you feel it? Like a train. Is it coming? Is it coming this way?”
Hope keeps going even when it seems pointless, believing things could be better, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense. Hope keeps covering everything in lights when it gets dark. Hope keeps breaking out the coats and matchsticks when the cold comes. Hope fights through the difficulties every time, believing they won’t last forever.
And that’s why we put up the tree again, sing the same songs again, wrap and unwrap gifts over and over, all to celebrate a holiday whose very core is the belief that light comes into darkness and one day all things will be made new.
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