No matter how black, white, male, female, Irish, German, tall, short, ugly or pretty you felt this year, you are part of a family that has been targeted by an unforgiving cosmos since its inception but has, regardless, survived. If a TV show about this family were to be created, you would very, very much enjoy it, and pay very much money for several seasons of it on DVD, because humanity, warts and all, is an inherently heroic species that has spent about 99.99% of its short lifetime as an underdog. And If you see no billboards telling you that, it’s not because it’s not true. It’s because there’s little to no profit to be made telling you. I could go on and on about the suffering we’ve endured and the adaptations we’ve made, but to me, our species’ crowning jewel is that on the shortest day of the year, when the sun spends most of its time swallowed, when everything is frozen, when nothing can grow, when the air is so cold our voices stop right in front of our faces…we put a string of lights on a universe that is currently doing nothing to earn it. We not only salvage an otherwise desolate time of year, we make it the best time of year. It’s like black people owning the N bomb, or gays saying faggot, or Americans loving being whatever a “yankee” is. We throw our arms around it. Giraffes don’t do it, spiders don’t do it, ferns don’t do it. And you know what? They suck. Some of us think that when God hits us, He means He loves us and expects more of us. Some of us think God is an asshole or a superstition, and the best way to defeat him is to ignore him or politely smile through His beatings. But we fail to see that it’s all the same in the most important way: that we come into this world programmed for perceiving a relationship between the known and the unknown. The men that flew the planes into the World Trade Center had this programming in common with the men that built it. Some things are defined not by us as individuals, but by our biology. There is no decision that can be made regarding the winter of our existence that will make it go away. There are only ways to decorate that winter. This is the case for Al Quaeda, and for Billy Graham, and Bill Maher, but this is not the case for giraffes. The thing about being human is that you come into the world burdened by consciousness. Some would say blessed, some would say cursed, but few can argue that it’s inappropriate to call it being anointed. The Greek word for which is Kristos. A word predating Christ and certainly Christmas but not the winter solstice. The Christ myth is the myth of a being, part man, part God, coming into our world and showing us that we are all every bit of everything we ever wanted to be, already. Always, in a resonant story, the slippers have been in the anointed’s possession the entire time. The lion was always brave. The scarecrow was always smart. Everything you have ever dreamt of being, that is what you are. The Gods that really love us, the ones truly worthy of our fabrication, they don’t imprison us for any longer than we want or need to be imprisoned. When we’re ready, we push on the cell door and it swings open. The gift of Christmas is the freedom to question God, to become God, to realize we are already God, and act accordingly. To shed our dishonesty, inherit the weather and render each other and ourselves Kristos. So little to do with mangers, really. So much more to do with Frosty the Snowman and everything you’ve ever understood to be a secular perversion. The original meaning was probably so holy it was secular. The original meaning is: ”the ground is frozen, will it ever get warmer, or will it keep getting colder until we’re dead, I don’t know, and I don’t care, because I’m human, which means I will pass out spitting in God’s eye and I will wake up in bed with his mother.” So, you know, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year, and don’t worry too much about being too hip about all of it, because the planet is a circle, and the year is a circle, and there’s a big seam in it, and better men than you have tried, and failed, to act like that wasn’t important. Super important. Super awesome. - Dan Harmon
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 20:54:28 +0000
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