I had a big long rant about Christmastime delusion, spending money to put yourself into crushing debt, just to be able to show how much you love your friends and relations, through the gifting of material goods, but, on reflection I deleted it all.
Blind rants rarely make for good reading.
Instead, I've had a day to think about things, have eaten roughly a gross of tamales, read some Dylan Thomas, and, in short, have decided that translating some Bertolt Brecht in honor of the occasion might not be the best thing to do. Not when the theme of the piece was survival, though removal of your humanity. Not when the Nine Lessons and Carols broadcast featured one of his poems, set to music.
So, I hope you'll forgive my bit of bourgeoisie sentimentality when I wish you a happy Christmastide, and hope you have somewhere warm to sleep, something to fill your stomach with, and maybe someone to keep company with, to help watch the wheeling of the year send us spinning back towards the sun, and warmth, and light, and life.
And for a gift? I'll let you have the Dylan Thomas that I read earlier, read by the man himself, in two parts:
A Child's Christmas in Wales:
Part One
Part Two
"Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."
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