A whack on the top of the haid

While loading my laptop and lunch into my car yesterday, the wind somehow caught the rear door of my station wagon and whacked it down on my head - the sharp cornery part of the latch housing dug into the top of my skull. It was so cold outside that the tears froze on my face in the bitter, bitter wind.

Commence tiny violin solo.

Interestingly, it set off a frenzy of creativity. I spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about the awful holiday music we're force fed at this time of the year, and started hatching a bit of a scheme to do something to fight the pablum. So the question to me is, WHY do most people write sappy, stupid, awful holiday music? Why does it have to have saccharine melody and ridiculously cheery harmony, and what is UP with the jinglie bells? Bad and wrong people.

Let's dig into some holiday history, shall we? Celebration of the winter solstice has been going on since some observant early early early humans noticed that the sun moves in the sky every day. One morning you wake up and step out of the cave and the sun is over there, and a few days later you wake up and it's over there. Well, surely, the Sun is a God, and hey! God! Where are you going? Why's it so cold? Build fires to get His attention! Do something! Oh look! It's working! He stopped! Hey! Let's party!

That's the impulse that sends a little shiver down my spine at the first sight of snowflakes, the first whiff of evergreen, the first touch of bitter wind that reaches down from the North to freeze heart and soul. But I can think of very, very few holiday songs that celebrate that - truly embrace that older, wilder side of the season. The life-or-death drive to survive it, to stay warm enough and have enough food laid by just to keep waking up every day until winter loses it's grip and things start to thaw. That's some powerful and (seemingly) completely untapped mojo that our modern world could use about now.

We have been feeling that a bit here in the Midwest lately. Damn it's cold. Ten below overnight with raging, howling winds that take your breath right away. During the long nights we feed the fire and pile on the blankets. Going out is exhausting. Staying in is little better. We tread lightly over the ice that now covers much of our daily Universe, braced against the wind that threatens to knock us right off our feet.

So why don't we embrace the fact that we DO it every year? Most of us don't tell the tale we live to tell. Especially not in song. I think maybe it's time to change that.