This week I dug out the light box I bought when we lived in Seattle, where darkness falls before 4 pm each day and persists till nearly 9 in the morning. The box generates an intense light that helps overcome the malaise some people experience in the season of darkness. For some reason, even though I live hundreds of miles south these days, this year I feel the need. I think it’s a case of the holiday blues.
Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah (also called, like the Hindu celebration of Diwali, the “festival of lights”). Each holiday has its specific meaning, of course, but beyond its tale of militias and miracles, Hanukkah, with its practice of lighting an increasing number of candles each night, symbolizes the return of light after a time of darkness.
Each religion’s calendars and stories are different, but most places in the U.S., mid-December nightfall reveals a third festival of lights: Christmas, of course. Christmastime is often challenging for me. Like quite a few Jews who grew up in predominantly Christian settings, I associate it with a type of cultural exclusion: the ubiquitous piped-in music, the decorations, foods and greetings taking up so much space in the public square that there is very little left for those of us who don’t partake. The image I associate with Christmas is walking at night past houses festooned with lights, gazing into picture-windows at crisp green trees surrounded with a golden glow, and feeling there is a type of belonging I will never experience.
Only now that I’m solidly middle-aged instead of ten years old, I’m aware that many of my non-Jewish friends feel something akin to my own dissatisfaction and exclusion, generated by the great gap between the aggressively marketed Christmas cheer stamped our by the commercial cultural industries and people’s own actually existing family experiences.
Here comes something to put my kvetches into perspective.
I’ve been writing for the last few months about Prison Nation, what this country has become in the process of creating and filling the largest prison-industrial complex on the planet. (Check out my blog essays on October 24th, October 31st and November 22 if you want to read previous installments.)
Now, as the winter holidays approach, Holler to the Hood (H2H), based at WMMT-FM in Whitesburg, Kentucky, a project of the community arts and media center Appalshop, has released its annual “Calls from Home” one-hour radio special, featuring messages from friends, supporters and family members to their loved ones in prison. This gives a whole ‘nother meaning to the holiday blues.
In the space of an hour, the messages touch on almost every imaginable human feeling, from deep, uncontainable loss to unbounded exuberance. Children sing to their fathers, mothers express hope they will this year be able to visit their sons transferred to prisons much too far from home. Some of the messages are pleas, mothers begging to hear from their children. Others’ voices are strained by the effort of trying to pack into a few words the feeling of solidarity and support they wish to convey. Some make reference to the transgressions that put their loved ones where they are, some to those unjustly incarcerated. Some sound exhausted, stealing precious moments before they must leave for work, or keeping the kids up specially late to say hello. There are poems, sermons, political speeches, and even a paean to night fishing. You can download the program here, and spend an hour putting a human face on our ever-expanding prison nation in the hope of awakening conscience.
Tonight, when I light the candles and say the blessings, I will dedicate them to the families who suffer the consequences of criminal violence, be they related to victims, perpetrators, captors or captives. In our increasingly punitive culture, as the commercialization of prisons expands, when one individual is punished, his whole family suffers, and often that suffering leaks into the larger community, spreading pain in its wake. I will dedicate the candles to the return of light to our eyes, our hearts, the world.
Dear Arlene,
Twice again you’ve hit the nail squarely on the head both about the unsettling experience of being non-Christian in our immersed-in-Christmas and overly commercialized society and in your remarks about our nation’s tragic tendency to punish both the perpetrators and victims of our materialistic drug and self-gratification addicted society.
My wife and I by personal choice converted from Christianity to the Baha’i Faith 40 years ago. As you may know, Baha’is believe that all the world’s faiths — including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism to name a few — share a common spiritual foundation. We see all faiths as a series of continuous revelations from God to man and thus as pillars of a single divine temple. Based on this belief, Baha’is see ourselves as supporters of all faiths and not as exclusive members of a single faith.
Years later, we watched with dismay as our kids were forced to endure the experience of being non-Christian in our heavily Christianized holiday extravaganza where even our families were unable to see how sad it made our kids when they got only a few gifts under the tree while their cousins got dozens of gifts each. This despite the fact that – in an effort to soften the impact – our kids got gifts for Hanukkah, during our families’ Christmas celebration and during the Baha’i gift giving period in February as well.
Still, being children, they couldn’t help but feel ‘left out’ when they were so visibly ‘deprived’ on Christmas Day. My wife and I got to the point where the adverse impacts of Christmas excesses on our kids were so evident after a Christmas where there were 185 gifts under the tree for an extended family of 6 children and 6 adults (our kids got 8 gifts each that year while their cousins got 25 gifts — and this in a family where no one but us even took their kids to church!) that my wife and I swore we’d never take our kids to Christmas again to experience such embarrassment.
So, yes, I understand what it means to be non-Christian in our heavily commercialized and supposedly Christian nation where almost everything is focused on how much you buy (or spend) and how much loot you collect rather than on the deeper spiritual meaning of the gift-giving itself.
I also understand what it means to witness the tragic impacts on lives and the disruptions and emotional trauma to families that can occur within the framework of our punitive legal system. We had the unusual experience a few years ago of watching two nieces — from both sides of our family in two widely separated parts of the country going through the nearly simultaneous experience of being arrested for drug possession (one for meth, the other for crack) and dealing. Both girls were roughly the same age at the time but one of them had 3 children while the other had none.
The childless niece was arrested in Illinois with her ex-con boyfriend who was already a two time loser and the actual dealer in that situation. She was eventually sentenced to 2 years in an Illinois prison. Fortunately for her, she was able to get approved to participate in that state’s severely under funded drug rehab program while she was in prison.
Since being released on parole two years ago, niece #1 has remained drug free, has completed a second bachelor’s degree in drug counseling with a straight “A” average, and is now seeking funding for an MSW Masters program with the goal of beginning a career as a full-time drug rehab counselor. During that two year period, we watched her mother — who lived thousands of miles away at the time — nearly lose her mind with worry and sadness as her daughter sat in an Illinois prison. To her credit, her personal success in overcoming her addiction lead to her being chosen in 2005 as the “poster child” for a nationally sponsored and funded campaign to convince the Illinois Legislature to fully fund the prison system’s drug rehab programs. This lead to her speaking before a large audience which included members of the press plus local, state and national political figures to tell her story and make a personal appeal for full funding of the Illinois’ state prison system’s drug rehab programs.
The second niece — the one with kids — was not sent to prison; but spent 10 days in the local jail knowing the ultimate outcome of the custody of her kids rested in the outcome of a case over which she had no control. In this case, the niece was lucky enough to appear before a State District Judge in her small home town.
When that wise judge saw our niece in his courtroom, he looked at her with complete shock and dismay and shook his head slowly saying, “I knew your grandfather. He was my personal friend for over 30 years. He was a hard working and honest-but-poor man who gave freely to everyone and would have preferred to die rather than ever break the law. I can’t imagine how humiliated and ashamed he would be today if he was alive to see you in my courtroom under these conditions. But I’m certain that if he were alive, THIS would surely have killed him!” The judge then sentenced the young mother to time served plus a year’s probation and sent her home. She too has remained drug free and is even now struggling to raise four kids as a single parent. During the period while all this was going on, we literally watched the girl’s 120 lb mother lose 40 lbs until we feared she’d die from worrying about the fate of her only daughter and her grandchildren.
Today, we look back in awe and wonder at these two sad family stories which happened on both sides of our extended family — the well-to-do side and the poor-and-struggling side — and Thank God that we somehow managed to escape similar problems with our own kids who had coincidentally been raised in a home where morals, ethics and religious/spiritual principles were stressed while their cousins were not. Of course, we’ll never know for sure, but I believe that may be the factor that made the ultimate difference!
All I can add to this story, Arlene, is to say, “Amen” to the dedication you offered when lighting that first candle on Friday Night. For in today’s complex political, cultural and economic environment, there — but for the Grace of God — go all of us and our beloved children as well!
Todah, Arlene! Gut Yontiff, Shalom and LeChayim as well!