Pageants, concerts, TV programming, carols, fancy dress in green and red themes, street and shop decorations, sweet treats and added effort of hustling for cards, postage, gifts and wrapping. It is all a much of a muchness, similar to other years and best characterized is lots of light, but little real heat: a verisimilitude or proxy of imagined well-being, or in Tiny Tim's words from A Christmas Carol, "God Bless Us, everyone." What is to doubt of the season: the haste, the preoccupation, the anxieties all distract and detract from the message. What is the message, anyway? In a word, the message is Emmanuel, God With Us. That message is the point; it should be sufficient to celebrate. So away with the rest of the dross - bah, Humbug to the busyness. Let us be still and calm, give thanks and finish with praise.
Although this tinge of gloominess has been spreading the past 2 weeks, it came into focus during the annual ballet production of The Promise yesterday: some familiar and bigger than life music to accompany the youth company production. Technically impressive, narratively recognizable of The Christmas Story, occasionally artistically in perfect synthesis of performers moving as one and focused on telling the story, rather than merely going through the motions on synch. But between gorgeous costumes, amplified music, awesome lighting changes and audience clapping intermittently for dancers' well executed points, the message for Christmas was ironically in the distant background, even as it figures as the subject of the production.
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