With all of the twinkling lights and sparkly decorations and glinting wrapping paper, it’s easy to forget this is also a season of shadows.
Statistics and commons sense will tell you winter can be the most depressing time of year. There are many environmental reasons for this.
The weather is cold. They sky is overcast and dismal. The temperature doesn’t really matter anymore because it’s low enough to kill you if you spend more than 20 minutes outdoors. And the long-term forecast? Don’t even bother. It’ll only make blood trickle out of your ears (unless you’re going outside, in which case it will freeze solid in your ear canal).
The lighting is even worse. The days are shorter. You blink and it’s dark outside. Your body rhythms keep trying to tell you to consider hibernating. If you could work out a deal with your boss and hire a person to keep hooking up new IV bags, you almost think you could pull it off.
As it is, the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, says the Winter Solstice (for the Northern Hemisphere) will be on December 21. From that day on, through June 21, 2006, we will get a little more sunshine each day; depending on cloud cover, of course. This looks good on paper, but anyone can tell you, it’s a slow trudge to the March Equinox.
The combination of colder weather and darker days can certainly influence peoples’ moods. But the biggest factor, one that is more powerful than lemming listening to lover’s lament songs, is the social rollercoaster of emotions associated with the holidays themselves.
We’ve been slowly gearing up for Christmas and New Years since Halloween. We used to start the day after Thanksgiving, but the commercial outlets voted and decided that wasn’t near enough time. Witches hats, troll boils, and vampire fangs were sold two aisles over from icicle lights and plastic evergreen trees simultaneously this October.
The gift buying, the push to be ready before vacations come, and the general proximity to friends and loved ones can add up to enormous pressure. And then, the next thing you know, POOF, the bowl college games are over, you’re back at the grind, and you feel just as tense because you don’t feel like you actual unwound over the holidays.
Going from warp speed to normal is bound to throw off your emotional inertia. Before you had lots of festivities and get-togethers to look forward to, and now you have a long gap before the next big holiday. Martin Luther King Jr. Day anyone? Do you want me to mention Valentine’s Day, or does that hurt as well? I’ll just move on.
If you don’t watch out, you’ll find the deck stacked against you pretty quickly.
We need to be watchful of the moods of others and of our own. Every should expect occasional down days; it’s part of the natural human experience. But in such a bustling and bristling holidays, its easier for us to lose track of what’s going on. We may not see obvious signs that stare us in the face from across the table, or maybe the looking glass.
The chorus of the previously referenced Green Day song comes to me sometimes.
"My shadow's the only one that walks beside me.
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating.
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me.
'Til then I walk alone."
The tone, attitude, and verve seems perfect sometimes. I can almost envision myself strutting down a deserted street to the beat of those words.
And yet, while I’ve almost felt justified in singing it and associating myself with the lyrics, I’ve never been able to truly believe I was alone. If I must be honest – and when one is going through one of these moods truth is paramount – I have lots of reasons to keep going.
Friends, family, personal accomplishments, or the simple pleasures in life (from watching little kids cobble together a snowman or listening to people sing along to mall Muzak) – all are reasons to have hope.
In this season we are surrounded by shadows. We shouldn’t forget that many of them belong to friends and loved ones who are willing to reach out.
For the same reason we don’t want the shiny distractions to make us forget the shadows, we shouldn’t let the darkness keep us from seeing the light.
Even as the decorations come down and the sparkly distractions fade, don’t forget to leave a light on as a reminder to yourself and others that there is always hope in all stages of life.
Tune in Tuesday and we’ll enjoy an audience with death.
