When you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.
Abraham Lincoln
As I write this (Dec. 8), rain has been falling for five days as the relentless gloom of December drags on.
The days continue to get shorter. By Dec. 21, the night will last four more hours than the day. This may cause out of whack levels of serotonin and melatonin and low levels of vitamin D.
Vitamin D absorption rates have caused enough trouble already, since melanin reduces the skin’s ability to make Vitamin D from sunlight, an evolutionary quirk that caused skin to lighten in higher latitudes in order to enhance Vitamin D creation. This led to all sorts of confusion we still haven’t sorted out.
If you live in Utqiagvik, Alaska, the northernmost city in the United States, the sun doesn’t rise for 67 days this time of year.
How do people stay sane in such a place? I’d go stark-raving mad in Minnesota, which is 30 degrees of latitude south of Utqiagvik.
On top of the shrinking days this time of year, everything I encounter as I go about my day seems to conspire against happiness.
I opened FB this morning, and the first thing I saw was a post about Dec. 8 being the 45th anniversary of John Lennon›s assassination.
FYI: Lennon was killed by Mark David Chapman, who grew up about two miles from where I grew up in Decatur. He lived on the other side of Glenwood Road, or else we might have gone to the same high school. And I once worked with a guy who did. I don’t know why growing up in close proximity to a maniac bothers me, but everything seems to bother me in December.
I try to convince myself that Dec. 8 is just another space on the cosmic wheel of fortune, or the Rota Fortunae as fifth-century polymath Boethius might have referred to it: “I know the manifold deceits of that monstrous lady, Fortune,” Boethius wrote in his “Consolation of Philosophy.”
“[In] particular, her fawning friendship with those whom she intends to cheat, until the moment when she unexpectedly abandons them, and leaves them reeling in agony beyond endurance.”
Like the 3,000 people who died in a catastrophic fire at the Church of the Society of Jesus in Santiago during a mass to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8, 1863, entire families were wiped out according to accounts I’ve read.
Ghastly! Or how about 80 years later, when the German 117th Jäger Division destroyed the Mega Spilaio Monastery in Greece and executed 22 monks as a prelude to the Kalavryta Massacre, during which the soldiers killed almost the entire male population of Kalavryta, Greece — about 432 boys and men.
Such disasters and atrocities impacting sacred sites can’t help but test someone’s faith. Why does God let such horrible things happen?
The Greeks have had particularly bad luck on Dec. 8.
In 1966, a Greek ferry sank in the Aegean Sea, killing more than 200. Exactly three years later, Olympic Airways Flight 954 crashed into a mountain, killing all 85 passengers and five crew members.
But perhaps I look for things to be melancholy about. Maybe my own unhappiness has become an old winter habit and a difficult one to break.
In an effort to deal rationally with my disconcerted, precarious emotional situation, *I watched the Jimmy Stewart Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” three weeks early this year. And it worked, because during the scene when George Bailey finds Zuzu’s petals are back in his pocket, I found myself weeping.
“Zuzu’s petals! Zuzu’s petals!”
I felt like a sentimental old fool, but I couldn’t help myself. I was moved by the moment as always.
But that tonic for the blues might not last another two weeks. I usually watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” closer to my birthday when things are bleakest, but maybe I can find something new to tide me over.
Tune in next week to see if I do or not, to see if there truly is a light at the end of the tunnel.
I’ve heard it said that it is always darkest before the dawn. Wel,l I hope so. It’s getting awfully dark in here.
Give me strength.
To be continued . . .
Selah.
*From Emotional Weather Report, by Tom Waits