a day in the week between years
holy innocents' day
This week between years when we think of how we want things to be from the day we toss out one calendar and hang another, I was thinking about recent parallels with a monsterous story so many believed was impossible, that maybe didn’t happen. It was too cruel to contemplate, the evidence was scant and probably not 100% reliable according to people who study that sort of thing, and this morning after listening to so many versions of Coventry Carol yesterday and being ripped in half every time, I look up the history of the song, and learn that today is the feast day of the Holy Innocents1. I am not really affiliated with any religion anymore2 but I did grow up around it and in it, obsess over it, minor in religious studies, and everything is far too on the nose. History or myth or whatever, this is not exactly repetition, but it is rhyming with and amplifying horrific catastrophes.
A mad puppet king, unpopular with his subjects, with the arms, administration, and encouragement of a major ruling power that benefits from civil strife, fears the minute possibility a baby (could have been one of many babies honestly, maybe he was covering his bases?) with arguably a more legit claim to his throne could possibly usurp him, and sends soldiers to violently prevent that from happening. Families flee, become refugees, families who stay witness the brutal massacre of their children. Here we are again, but we see it happening from afar, we are not relying on Matthew’s uncorroborated account3, we are watching Democracy Now! or scrolling MoTaz’s Instagram and it is right there, and our politicians are absolutely useless, either they never bothered to learn about this conflict or they are just cruel or greedy or self-serving, it has been unfolding again our whole lives and now it is ripped open wide. So, now, since we are unable to go back in time, is the best time to stop fucking bombing people, quit crushing buildings on families and sniping their grandmothers in churchyards and humiliating prisoners and blowing the arms and legs off their children, please, stand down, deliver food, water, warm clothes, and medicine, make safe shelter, get everyone what they need, allow the world in to help. Please. Do something about that mad king, call off the soldiers. Stop.
A special candle I reserved for some reason and then forgot about turned up when I was reorganizing a cabinet. It is lovely, a rolled beeswax whorl with a dried orange slice and sprig of cedar tucked into it. I meant to light it Christmas but once again forgot. It now glows in a glass bowl the color of the sea with a little honey on a metal stand in a pottery bowl the color of the sky at dusk, surrounded by apples. May it nourish the innocents on their journey. Entire families are wiped out on both sides of the wall, while mad kings safely direct atrocities from behind armed guards in secure compounds. Be kind to each other, this is a time for solidarity.
I made a playlist last night, mostly themed around “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and am still adjusting it, they always change a little. It is mostly sad winter songs for the week between the years. There are several versions of Coventry Carol because I couldn’t choose, so they are scattered around in there too. It is a quiet playlist for grieving. May there be more clarity, wisdom, and compassion next year than in this one.
for Eastern Orthodox, it’s on the 29th
I’m affiliated with many of them in one way or another, it is more complicated to explain or name than experience, and both a huge deal and not a big deal because it is just part of my weird little day. Connecting to the greatest biggest all-est encompassing-est macro-and-micro-est unit of everything looks different from person to person, and isn’t it nice that we’re all alive for now and existing on literally the only rock we know that can support us? Or could it be? Does it have to be so violent and senseless and fucked up?
16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”[a]
Thank you for this beautiful accounting of this terribly ugly moment. When my circumstances improve, I'll most certainly pay for your fine work.