Dear Bleaders,
Spring holidays are beginning to begin, next up being St Patrick’s Day, and the Ides of March. One is a day of honoring Ireland, the old country, drink, and the cure of corned beef. One is just a reminder to watch your six. (What? Even Brutus is Brutal?)
I’ve written a little poem that is a list of features that a holiday can have. The idea is that each holiday has distinct traits, which I’m calling their cabinet of culture, containing all a holiday’s traditional doings, and none of the doctrines.
Specific Holiday’s Cabinet
A singular drink, type of meal, kind of sweet,
particular music, special plant, featured beast,
decoration and light, way to greet,
style of dress, featured hue or two,
an outdoor crowd event,
a signature live show, a film, an avatar,
and a quick rebellion where the usually tame
are allowed to be hellions,
or the rich serve food to the poor.
So the cabinet of culture of St. Patrick’s might be
St. Patrick’s Day Cabinet
Guinness, corned beef,
“Danny Boy,” four leaf clover,
dress green, decorate green,
big parade, leprechauns,
and raucous masses
unruly in the streets.
If the holiday is very old, it’s had time to stuff that cabinet. For instance, Christmas, Ramadan, and Passover all have overflowing cabinets, so that for each we’d have to choose from among several representative treats. Many of the details shift a great deal over time and across geography.
If I wanted to make the Ides of March into a holiday it would be a lot of work. Yet it has a lot going for it. It’s got a set date that is its name. It’s a story of betrayal, especially in Shakespeare’s hands. Historically, killing Caesar was meant to save democracy. We don’t really have a holiday honoring democracy and it might do us good to start one. But just naming a holiday doesn’t tell us how to celebrate it.
To flesh it out we’d work to fill its cabinet of culture. We could wear toga-like shirts and dresses, and greet each other with, “I’ve got your back,” and “So have I yours.” We could eat an ancient Roman treat (or Caesar salad, keep it simple), and make it a day to rally or contribute to the cause of democracy with money or phone calls. People could wear toga-white.
St. Patrick’s day is about the idea of Ireland, honoring the old country, and the parade. Looking at its cabinet of culture one sees that it’s missing some of the big features, there’s no set greeting, for instance. Yet it’s wonderful how it gets everyone to wear green. It’s such a delightful passive way to take part. It’s like the whole country doing the wave, quietly turning green for a day. In China, on New Year’s, one wears all red.
People who feel like outsiders often refuse to play these broad-culture games. But what would happen if you had a poem for your each of the holidays that is important to you, so as to import personal meaning to the celebration? I’m a historian as well as a poet and I wrote a big book called, Doubt: A History, on religious doubt and unbelief, all over the world, throughout history. I was invited to give talks and the Q&A sessions often included intimate questions about death, church weddings, fights over baptism or no baptism. I found myself offering poems and telling someone full of guilt that what they were already doing was right and I showed them why I thought so.
I believe that nonbelievers have the same right as anyone to engage with the religion in which they were raised—by their parents and by the culture around them. A lot of atheists feel guilty about partaking in a little religious ritual now and again. People feel it is an empty gesture. It is not an empty gesture. It’s taking part in the poetic sacred. It’s setting us up for a bigger awareness of the poetic beauty of life. Moments of transcendence, ordinary or astounding, need some ingredients. People should only do rituals they choose to do, in my book, but likewise people should be able to do rituals they want.
When I wrote this post on Sunday, the next paragraph took off in a slightly more personal direction, and by yesterday I felt compelled to share the following two paragraphs on Facebook and Instagram. They got a lot of love there, and now stick out even more to me. So I thought I’d give this little intro.
Life can be terrible but also wonderful, but also terrible. You thought you were okay but you walk into a room and friends rush over asking what’s wrong. You look so sad they make you sit down and they announce they’re getting you some water. But until you start sharing your terror with someone, it’s not going anywhere. Writing and talking about how good life is (the trees! the grass!) or how terrible it is (what happened to you) makes us happy, until we stop. The worry returns, the self-criticism returns, and you notice that no one ever brought that glass of water. A lot of us are feeling fear and grief these days and a poem can meet you where you are and keep you company, or make you happy. You can find a poem for grief in many collections on the subject, including Kevin Young’s terrific The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing. Each chapter in The Wonder Paradox talks about a chosen poem from ancient China to today’s Pakistan, and nearly every one (though it’s in a chapter dedicated to decisions, love, sleep, or…) can work for grief. A few chosen poems can change your life.
I’m frankly surprised you are all doing so well, because it seems like every other of you has lost someone dear. There is outrageous courage in living. Life is like a great novel with a terrible pacing problem. So much waiting and trying, so few moments of transformation. And when they come your body takes over and your brain is a passenger, a quiet fella, near the rear of the bus. He just missed his stop, spacing out, and will ride the circuit all the way around again. Even when we finally get behind the wheel again, so much traffic! Mostly the waiting and trying. Life is a musical but we all have our own “I want” song. And look at you, doing so much waiting and trying and singing. (Sing sing you lovely living thing.) Which is to say I’m thinking of you and I’m sorry for your loss.
Whether or not you are Irish, your family likely came here at some point, and missed the homeland, and garbled the memory of it. Whether the Ides of March could be a holiday for democracy, it might be a good idea to create one. The Ides have a solid date, an emotional story of betrayal, a historic event, a Shakespearian version, and a reasonable reason to celebrate democracy.
If you are feeling unmoored, it might help to do some ritual, some small gesture at least, to take part in the dress up and the greetings and the food. It will surely help to find a poem to sit with. At the very least a poem takes you out of your own mind and into the mind of another. This too is meditation. Happy Spring, sing, and Happy Holidays.