Impressionism: O, December Misery!

Face it! Late December is not happy time. It’s misery time.

Oh, there is a great, collective thrust of feel-goody glee at this most bleak of times, a mass artifice of lights, bells, whistles and songs, all intended to mask the grim spectre of cold, ice, and dark. O, brutal winter. 

Late December is a misery wrapped in a frosty misery, and no pot-bellied man in a puffy, blood-red coat all festooned ‘round with pure white polar bear fur, laughing his jolly guts out while riding a magical sleigh propelled by flying members of the deer family, is going to change that.

Anytime that a psyche under the pressures of the cold, dark season is forced to be artificially gleeful, it is going to weigh heavily on body and mind.

Here’s the thing about December. First, the gods of the secular world boot our time back an hour so that by the time December comes around it’s dark at four in the afternoon. Thank you, dear misery makers, in all your earthly wisdom.  

Then, the cold arrives and radical adjustment is required. Suddenly, all banal activities go from easy to hard. We are forced to wear restrictive, protective outerwear that feels like a straight-jacket. All movements are restricted.

Even the little things become an effort – driving your car, walking on steps, wheeling the green bin to the curve, picking up after your dog’s business, getting together with people. And that is only the surface stuff, the incidentals.

Deep in the primitive brain, survival instincts kick in and the racing, guttural worries about not having enough food or water, not having appropriate shelter or heat, or the fear of getting attacked and slaughtered by a rival tribe, or of not having a tribe of your own, all are sparked by the onrushing of winter destiny.

In the age of central heating and supermarkets you would think these gut animal responses would have evolved out of the system. But no! They are down there, turning in the guts, showing themselves in weird and modern ways. Why do people hit the bottle and the narcotics harder this time of year? Fear.

Now, layer on top of this misery the façade of lightness, merriment and retail bedazzlement everywhere you look, and the cultural coercion begins to worm its way into the consciousness, commanding you to count your blessings, look on the bright side, sing the traditional songs, bake the traditional tarts, max-out the traditional credit card.

And so, you try to put a smile on your face and say the word ‘merry’ as often as possible.   

But you don’t truly, sincerely feel it. Instead, you feel like such a loser, an ingrate, a bad person, and heathenous tool. And you curse yourself.

And then you curse the season, and all those who are the champions and advocates of it, because they clearly have found the secret of eternal joy and December merriment and have neglected to share it with you. O, foul bastards!

And in the midst of this misery you make the mistake of going to the plaza. All you really need is a warm pair of socks! And the parking lot is packed and the only available space is over in the far corner by the great mountain range of freshly plowed snow.

And you curse all these shoppers because clearly they have more disposable income than you, or they have embraced, free of guilt, the convenience of credit card shopping because, after all, it is better to give than to receive, no matter the size of the debt incurred, or the false hopes that justifies excessive spending.

This is a weird and powerful time of the year – a material/spiritual/psycho wonder. It’s an intense time that concentrates all the intersecting energies of hope and loss, joy and pain, the great expectations of renewal and rebirth pushing against the realities of struggle and decline. Sadness, loneliness, depression, worry, these can so readily rise to the surface.

You hear a lot of people say that this is a tough time of year. And that’s because it is a tough time of the year.

We struggle through and try our level best to wish and hope for peace, good fortune, and compassion for all, for the strength to face all incoming tests and difficulties, and for the capacity to distinguish between true expressions of joy and false ones.

What else are you going to do, be miserable?