Editorials

It’s the time of year when the lower-middle-brow fashionistas who inhabit the pages of the magazines I sneak peeks at in supermarket checkout lines say we should be wearing Winter White. That’s as it may be, but it certainly is the season for Winter Whine. Winter Whine is the sound you hear emanating from everyone who is dissatisfied with their relationship to winter holidays, or with other people’s mode of marking the winter solstice. 

Some of them are annoyed with people who celebrate a different holiday from their own, or, even worse, celebrate theirs in the wrong way. “Let’s put Christ back into Christmas” is one refrain. This means, often: who are all these tacky people who seem to be gathering around our Christmas tree and making up new songs on non-religious topics? Or the Jewish version, “When my children were small they got one tiny gift for each day of Hanukkah, and now my grandchildren insist on expensive video games.”  

The public schools get their share of Winter Whine: “Schools should ignore holidays altogether.” Or, “Schools should celebrate all holidays, everyone’s from all over the world.” In my lifetime the pendulum has swung between these two at least five times. Kids of course prefer the latter version, where they get both latkes and candy canes at school. 

Compared to the rest of the United States and much of Europe, Californians who indulge in Winter Whining look pretty wimpy. In Michigan when the trees are bare and the sidewalks are coated with ice and you can’t take the kids out without spending an hour dressing and undressing, there’s something to complain about. But in California December is the beginning of Spring. The hills are green, and all sort of lovely flowers are starting up in the garden: early narcissus, pansies, poinsettias, Christmas cactus. We’ve got a lot of salvias in our yard which grew from cuttings in gallon cans purchased at the Strybing Arboretum sales in years past. Only recently did we notice that they come from the Chiapas cloud forest section of the arboretum, so that they’re supposed to bloom in winter—their main show is just taking off. (We also didn’t notice that the mother plant of the Salvia Wagneriana was eight feet high and 10 feet across, which is why ours now threatens to uproot the sidewalk, but that’s another story.) 

Some Winter Whiners object to giving gifts—not all gifts, mind you, just commercial gifts, whatever that means to them. Excess consumption—consumerism—they say, between pursed lips. Well, they always have the option of rescuing attractive objects from the shelves of Goodwill or Urban Ore and gussying them up with wrapping made from color comics to make re-use fun. Or, if they have a lot of time on their hands, they can make old things into new things to give away.  

Every Sunday paper at this time of year is sure to have an article about SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder. This is thought by some authorities to be caused by the dark and short days, so the recommended remedy is spending some time every day under a big, bright light. Is it possible that a well-lit Christmas tree or menorah has the same effect on those who suffer from SAD?  

Up in Seattle, Rabbi A asked the airport people to add an electric menorah to the array of Christmas trees on display, and their response was to take all the trees down, prompting Rabbi B to send an op-ed all over the country saying that his good friend Rabbi A risked making Jews look mean-spirited, and that opposing Christian symbols would contribute to further secularization of American society, which would be bad for all religions. We haven’t yet heard from the pagans—no, sorry, the Pagans—who might justifiably claim that the Christians stole the trees from them in the first place, not to mention the mistletoe and holly. Last I heard, the trees were back, though I’m not sure why. 

But what’s wrong with secularization, anyhow? And is it really new in the United States? There’s a credible body of scholarship that suggests that America’s founding fathers intentionally designed this country to be secular and wanted it kept that way. Allusions to the deity didn’t start sneaking into the civic culture until about the middle of the nineteenth century. They peaked in the middle of the twentieth before starting the current decline. Many would say that this secular trend is the result of disappointment with those disciples of the major religions who manage to consistently ignore the clear messages in their various traditions that they’re supposed to love others and take care of the poor.  

Here’s a radical suggestion for a cure to Winter Whining. We could all celebrate the season, whatever season we celebrate, by trying to live up to the noble aspirations of our ancestors to do good, even if we no longer practice the religions that prescribed them. My spiritual adviser Jon Carroll has preached the Untied Way for years: Go to an ATM, take out enough twenties that it hurts a bit, and hand them out to the first people who ask you for money. If that’s too radical for you, how about at least speaking kindly to beggars while putting serious money into the Salvation Army kettle? Many paths to enlightenment…