Seasons & Ceremonies

I have always been glad  to live in a land  with a proper four seasons.   And as Nature thus orders and segments the year (which our pagan ancestors did well to celebrate with festivals at each solstice), so too do the civic and ecclesiastical calendars  mark the stately procession of history through each of our lives.   And since (with a bit of leeway for moveable feasts like Easter) these latter occur with calendric regularity, they reinforce the sweep of seasons:  the Fourth of July and melting popsickles;   Christmas and snow.  In our town this year, the first snowfall came on Christmas Eve.  (Well, ice-pellets and sleet, but close enough.)

The worst of all worlds, in this respect, would be Arabia, with little in the way of distinct seasons (mostly just “hot” and “hotter”), and the religious calendar -- being lunar -- slides around the solar year, with no lasting seasonal association.

In time, I came to admire the crowded calendar of the Historical Church (in which I was not raised), especially the build-ups to a deepened meaning:  not just Christmas, but Advent; not just Easter, but Lent.

Yet now, my own season advancing into that of the sere, the yellow leaf, I mark these occasions less.   The Fourth -- well, by now I’ve seen my fill of fireworks; and as for the patriotism, I do that at my current job (minus the fanfare and rhetoric) every day.  Christmas?   It’s not the same when your child has grown up, and has no child of his own;  it’s a reunion like any other.  

And even the personal milestones.   Birthdays are no longer welcome when you already feel older than old.   For years, Suzanne and I celebrated the day of our first date, and continued to mark the date long after we married;  in time, that fell away, and we marked the wedding anniversaries only;  while now, though we each day  in some sense  celebrate our continued union, the actual date is of little moment:  we’ll take our “anniversary” trips when it’s convenient, not when the calendar demands.  Unsentimental, my wife often volunteers to work on Christmas, so as to give the other nurses a break.  (We’ll celebrate a couple of days late this year, when our son comes down.)

Several factors are in play, in this loosening of calendar-sentiment with age.

(1) A general stretching of the sense of time, leaving you less conscious of what year it is, or even which month.  (Plus no longer having the academic year to enforce the working-season.)

(2) Living more and more in thought, and less in immediate experience.  If you are dwelling on fundamental questions, it doesn’t much matter what day it is.

(3) Memory now plays a greater role (there being  by now  more personal past than prospect), and there is more of it to draw on.

(4) Just plain being tired.

(1) - (3) have their definite up-sides;  not that they are better than the way things worked for you in youth;  but they are different, and, given that retentive memory, the result is a more varied intellectual output.

As for (4), what can I tell you:  it sucks.  But here’s this bit of geezer’s wisdom:  Live with it; go ahead and take naps.