A Christmas like no other

Whether stuck in an airport, on a couch or in a blizzard, it felt different

Here in North America, Christmas 2022 will be remembered as a wild, crazy time when everything went awry. Nothing went according to plan; just ask the thousands stranded in cold buses, grounded planes and even Walmarts. Mother Nature delivered a body blow to all travellers hoping to embrace relatives and friends they had not seen the Christmas before and even the one before that. No one was spared; even here in heavenly Victoria, we got a winter blast that resembled those in other parts of Canada. All this gave us ample opportunity to practice loving our neighbours and helping them in times of need, which is what Christmas is all about. Remember, the Holy Family also got stranded in a barn, so this is a kind of fundamental experience. And apparently, quite a few folks did heed the call and rescued stranded families freezing in their cars on snowmobiles, which is the classic Canadian way.

Presents tend to cheer us up, but even better is when we help our fellow humans—that’s when we feel good about ourselves. Which is turning out to be difficult. This year, as the terrible truth about vaccine injuries slowly leaked into the mainstream, we felt either rage or despair. Or simply ignored it all as a ‘conspiracy theory’. Whatever your reaction, it was not the news you wanted or hoped for. Confusion about who and what to believe marked all of this year.

So it’s fitting that the ‘word of the year’, the one that was most searched on Google, was Gaslighting. If nothing else, this proves we are profoundly shaken in our basic belief that people, even those at the top, tell the truth, most of the time. That we still have ‘freedom of expression’. Thanks to Musk’s Twitter Files, we know that is a lie. Our leaders lied about lockdowns, vaccines, and masks, and suppressed all dissenting opinions. When the State and corporations collude, you get fascism. At least, that is what Mussolini thought. No wonder we are no longer able to trust the people in charge of our media, and that is a death blow for the Democracy we claim to be. But the crisis goes even deeper. It is not just about the corruption in our political life; ultimately, this is a crisis of the spirit.

We aren’t in a good place. I mean ‘we’ as a culture, as a people. The West if you like. But this ruined Christmas gave us the perfect opportunity to reflect. To really, really slow down and get to that quiet centre from where the world looks different. I did it by watching three versions of Handel’s Messiah. The perfect one was by the London Philharmonic conducted by Sir Colin Davis. I was not waiting to be rescued from a snowstorm but stuck on my couch with a wrenched knee. It forced me to slow down completely. My reward was a sublimely joyful Messiah. I have rarely been able to enjoy it the way I did this year, marooned, and rapt as the music built to a heavenly crescendo, echoing the soaring architecture of the magnificent domes of Europe. Though I cannot claim to have the faith, I am affected by this masterpiece. It speaks to me, the unbeliever, the lapsed Lutheran. Why is that, I wonder.

I am not alone in this. Many of us keep the old Christian traditions like Christmas and Easter while not being ‘believers’. I suspect it’s because we have found nothing better to take its place. Because if there is one thing we are finding out, it’s that we cannot do away with a belief in something greater than ourselves. If we start to believe we are God, terrible things happen. The two fake religions, Communism and Fascism, have surely taught us that we need more than a dictator and a set of tyrannical rules to order our lives.

All of this is something one can think about while listening to The Messiah or even to Jordan Peterson, lecturing at Ephesus on the Logos. I give him high marks for at least daring to float the idea that maybe, just maybe, we need to re-imagine the message of Jesus and the stories of the Bible for our own time. That a hierarchy of transcendent values is essential for our very survival. That declaring the death of God was a tad premature. Personally, I believe he simply left the building for a while, hoping that we will sort ourselves out before returning.

It’s no accident that Peterson turned to Christianity after suffering terrible illness, and a drug addiction so severe it nearly killed him. Peterson is one of many highly intellectual and educated people who, running out of hope and rational answers, have returned to some version of Christianity. Peterson is apparently getting ready to publish his next book, on the meaning of Exodus. That’s not a departure from what he has been doing until now, after all his Maps of Meaning was the first foray into the foundations of Culture. This just takes it further. He is going down an arduous road and I am not sure I can follow it, but along with millions of others all over the world, I am watching.

Peterson is attempting nothing less than a resurrection of Christian values, something that is so difficult I doubt that he will succeed. But at least he is trying to confront the existential and metaphysical crisis, the morass of self-hatred, that is threatening to destroy the West. Peterson understands the danger of not having a transcendental vision better than most. A kind of troubled saviour figure, he has surfaced at a profoundly confused and chaotic moment in western history. I don’t always agree with him, but he has the intellectual courage to confront painful questions that have no easy answers.

As the song says, You gotta serve somebody. At the moment, we are bitterly divided as to who or what that might be. We have exhausted all the usual suspects though some deranged woke people want to give fascism another whirl. This is a crisis that has been coming since the Enlightenment when we threw out the baby Jesus with the dirty religious bathwater. A renaissance of a different kind is needed and it’s not going to come from The Science. Science is a powerful method but it cannot tell you what is of value or indeed, what the method should be used for. If the pandemic corruption has taught us anything, surely it is that.

I doubt that 2023 will deliver clarity on anything. Indeed, the astrologers and psychics agree: the first half of this coming year will be as chaotic and turbulent as 2020. We’re still working through some major planetary conflicts. One astrologer, who could easily be an old time Hollywood Diva, predicts that Putin will be poisoned by people he trusts. In the fall. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe not. We shall see.

As for me, I discovered that being old and stuck on the couch at Christmas is not so terrible, after all. Under normal circumstances, I would not have spent all that time listening and marvelling at The Messiah, nor worked at comprehending Peterson’s Logos. It was good. I am working on being grateful, something I have tended to ignore throughout my life. Whatever 2023 will bring, I know that I am one of the lucky ones: I don’t live in Ukraine. My first memories are of war; I don’t wish it on anyone. And if I have a hope for this coming year, it is this: end this bloody, hypocritical conflict. Stop lying about the corruption and collusion of Big Pharma and Big Government, own up to what has been done. Show some contrition. Only then can we begin to breathe easier, to trust again, to hope again.