The whole, absolute point of Christmas is to rise above the things we think we can't do without, endearing and tasty as they seem, like department store jollity and good things to eat.
Still, the whole, absolute point of Christmas tends to get confused, and just about always has one part Jesus, one part shepherds and angels, two parts tree and lights and what'll-it-be?-asked-the-bartender.
Merry Christmas and Holy Christ-Mass, to the formal discomfort of many on both sides of the equation, seem entangled beyond efficient separation, although the year 2008 affords a fair range of opportunities for at least a certain degree of mental and emotional disentangling. A "merry" Christmas it won't be for many in the Dickensian sense of comfort and joy.
When you've lost your job, or your stock market funds have fallen by half, and when economic landmarks like General Motors seem barely able to stagger along, and a kind of reverse Santa named Bernie Madoff sneaks down the chimney to help himself -- under sorry circumstances like these -- the times appear manifestly out of joint, more screaming nightmare than fireside reverie.
That leaves the Christ-Mass in at least partial possession of the day. It may not be a bad thing. In fact, how could it be?
A principal frustration to the culture is how little the culture is able to actually control, hard as it works at the job of control. You think you've got your stock portfolio zipped up and encased in fleece and along comes Bernie Madoff to prove otherwise. The most democratic, most benevolent-minded government in the world, that of the United States, finds itself unable to guarantee the continued spread of good times. If General Motors can't cut it !
Or is that too simple a formulation? What human institution, when we get down to it, never stalls, never sputters, never runs out of gas? Even the greatest military force in world history couldn't plant six feet under all the enemies of civilization living in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these still live to trouble us.
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