MP3s: Christmas is emo.
Celtic Christianity often makes reference to "thin places", a concept that has its home in a particular kind of thinking about God, as Marcus Borg explains:
This way of thinking sees God, "the More," as the encompassing Spirit in which everything is....In words attributed to Paul in the Book of Acts, God is "the one in whom we live and move and have our being." God is a nonmaterial layer of reality all around us, "right here" as well as "more than right here." This way of thinking thus affirms that there are minimally two layers or dimensions of reality, the visible world of our ordinary experience and God, the sacred Spirit.
"Thin places" are places where the fog is lifted and we see things as they really are. The universe is shown. Christmastime is thought to be one of those "thin places." It's a story about God becoming human, about word becoming flesh, about the division between different layers of existence being bridged. It's a time when "joy and wonder is in the air," blah blah blah.
We forget that thin places are not always pleasant. When the true nature of things comes into sharp focus, it can provoke nasty bouts of existential shock and cause you to consider running away to clear minefields in Cambodia for the rest of your life. Being surrounded by symbols of bountiful joy and childhood wonder can draw your attention to how distant you feel from those feelings. A concrete example: when you live nextdoor to an old mansion covered in lights and candles and plastic nutcrackers and a yard full of inflatable snowmen and a constant stream of earmuffed and mittened visitors every night in December who come to gleefully gawk at the whole mess...
...it can make your own house seem awfully dark, cold, empty, and lonely.
"Cold White Christmas" (MP3), a song from the new Casiotone For The Painfully Alone album totally nails that feeling. Not just a thin place, but worn thin.
Sometimes we feel like E.T, riding our bicycle to go visit the Baby Jesus in the stable.
Weird wrinkled old alien, maybe kinda cute in a sorta pathetic way, but comically out of place, chasing after some kind of elusive hope. Are we ever going to get there? Is this bicycle even moving? Is the wonder and expectation of advent going to amount to anything? "Maybe not", says Parenthetical Girls' "Wait Another Year" (MP3).
But at least we can rejoice that we don't have to pay the neighbors' electrical bill.
I recognize that it's two months too late, but still, listen to those MP3s while you look at the rest of this Flickr set from Sharpstein Manor in December, next door to my old house in Walla Walla, which I already miss terribly.
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I am so feeling this, Korvin.