Bah, Ho Ho Ho: or, Christmas by any other name….

Walhydra wonders if she would be mistaken for one of those people waging the mythical "War against Christmas" dreamed up by Bill O'Reilly and his fellow culture terrorists, but when every store or restaurant she walks into is playing Christmas music, she really wants to scream, "Just BE QUIET!!!"

The issue is a simple one—and not the one you might expect for a grouchy old Pagan. The true grace of the season is so important to Walhydra that she doesn't want anyone, from any side, telling her what Christmas should mean to her.

To some extent, this is just Walhydra's usual rant against mistaking the pointing finger for the moon.

"For goodness sake," she complains. "Every human tribe has some sort of lore and ritual about the rebirth of the winter solstice sun! Our minds might be able to read the calendar, but our guts fear the earth is dying. And our mammalian brainstems are shouting, 'Get fat and hibernate till spring!' "

She shakes her head. "All this fuss, sanctifying animal reactions to the seasons!"

But, of course, there's more to it than that. There is, for example, the whole matter of inspiring—and enforcing—blind loyalty to the tribe.

"I hate it that someone can push my sentimental buttons with just a song or an image or a smell. I don't know how we got from 'In the Bleak Midwinter' to 'Oh, by Gosh, by Golly,' but either one of them sets off a flood of culture-specific feelings, memories and expectations for me—whether I want them or not.

"And pine boughs, red-and-green, gingerbread…. Jeez! It's like I have no control if someone wants to make me react—or to feel guilty or resentful for not doing so."

Walhydra remembers well the words of Anne Rice's ancient Taltos character, Ashlar: that all war is tribal, and that all war is about extermination.

"Huh?" you ask. "Christmas is about war?"

"No," Walhydra replies in her best deconstructionist voice. "The christmasization of secular culture is about enforcing the dominant ideology upon all who want access to the benefits and protections of the post-modern, debt-based, consumption-driven christianist hegemony."

*Ahem*

Or, as Robert J. Elisberg put it in a comment appending his War on Christmas spoof: “I thought the Chamber of Commerce won the war on Christmas long ago when they turned it into a holiday based on shopping rather than spirituality.”

Walhydra’s concern is that modern holidays are all about appearances, about presentation. About so arranging things in the outer world that one can have a certain feeling—and a feeling of certainty—regarding one’s participation in the tribe’s “dominant ideology.”

“It doesn’t go to the core,” she says with regret. “It’s about fitting in pleasantly, not about being.”

Walhydra remembers an old friend, Nell, a solidly-built, snappishly comical “birthright” Quaker from North Carolina. Nell steadfastly refused to sing carols or exchange cards and gifts. When asked why, she would reply in a tone which was at once a parody of the Quaker elders of her childhood and a heartfelt statement of faith.

“Quakers aren’t supposed to observe Christmas. If Jesus isn’t reborn in your life every single day, it just doesn’t matter!”

This is the faith Walhydra strives to practice, in her own begrudging way. Just waking up each day, each minute, to the marvelous awareness that this life—not some imagined afterlife, but this life—is the Kingdom of God.

Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner captures it well in his retelling of the shepherd’s story in Luke 2:8-18:

Night was coming on, and it was cold,...and I was terribly hungry. I had finished all the bread I had in my sack, and my gut still ached for more.

Then I noticed my friend...about to throw away a crust he didn’t want. So I said, “Throw the crust to me, friend!” and he did throw it to me, but it landed between us in the mud where the sheep had mucked it up. But I grabbed it anyway and stuffed it, mud and all, into my mouth.

And as I was eating it, I suddenly saw—myself. It was as if I was not only a man eating but a man watching the man eating. And I thought, “This is who I am. I am a man who eats muddy bread.” And I thought, “The bread is very good.” And I thought, “Ah, and the mud is very good too.”

So I opened my muddy man’s mouth full of bread, and I yelled to my friends, “By God, it’s good, brothers!” And they thought I was a terrible fool, but they saw what I meant. We saw everything that night, everything. Everything!

Can I make you understand, I wonder? Have you ever had this happen to you? You have been working hard all day.... You slump down under a tree or against a rock or something and just sit there in a daze for half an hour or a million years, I don’t know, and all this time your eyes are wide open looking straight ahead someplace.... You could be dead for all you notice.

Then, little by little, you begin to come to, then your eyes begin to come to, and all of a sudden you find out you’ve been looking at something the whole time except it’s only now you really see it—one of the ewe lambs maybe..., or the moon scorching a hole through the clouds. It was there all the time, and you were looking at it all the time, but you didn’t see it till just now.

That’s how it was this night, anyway. Like finally coming to—not things coming out of nowhere that had never been there before, but things just coming into focus that had been there always.

And such things! The air wasn’t just emptiness anymore. It was alive. Brightness everywhere.... And what you always thought was silence stopped being silent and turned into the beating of wings.... Only not just wings, as you came to more, but voices—high, wild, like trumpets.

The words I could never remember later, but something like what I’d yelled with my mouth full of bread. “By, God, it’s good, brothers! The crust. The mud. Everything. Everything!“ (pp.13-14)

Note: Friends who are born to Quaker families and decide to stay with it are called "birthright" Friends, those who join later are "convinced"; the term "converted" is rarely if ever used.

Walhydra's Health Attack

[Note from Walhydra's amanuensis: Here's another story written late in 1997 for the Crone Thread, a private listserv to which Walhydra still belongs. Walhydra and hubby Jim were living with Miso the Cat in a tiny, two-room apartment in Columbia, SC.

Rereading the story over my shoulder, Walhydra observes that she "used to be a lot more preoccupied with astrology than she is now."

"Oh, really?" I reply, ducking....]

If there's one thing Walhydra doesn't like, it's stereotypes about Virgos. All that dull, second‑fiddle stuff about efficient, health‑conscious, analytical, service‑oriented—and, of course, fussy, obsessive, perfectionist, critical....

Sheesh! What's a person supposed to do?

Keep everything she knows and observes to herself and let the whole world just slide on down the tubes? Ignore self‑care, avoid pointing out other people's errors, disregard both ethical principles and pragmatic realities, just because most people can't appreciate the salutary order which Goddess built into Creation and...?

"Hoooold on thar!" as Quick Draw McGraw would say.

Okay, so the Moon's been void of course since four‑something this morning and it's gonna stay that way for the next...oog!...32 hours.

Walhydra sometimes wonders, stuck as she is for this incarnation in a middle‑aged gay male body, whether void of course is the male equivalent of PMS.

Eek! Every few days?! Suddenly the monthlies don't seem so bad.

Or maybe—returning to the original topic of this rant—maybe it's just that VOC and Virgo don't go together all that well. Especially natal Pisces Full Moon Virgo.

Granted, there is an obscure orderliness to the pattern of VOCs. And, if one could through practice and discipline...ugh!...attune oneself to the timetable....

"But it doesn't suit my timetable!" Walhydra whines—having by now completely forgotten what she set out to tell about in this story.

Oh. That's right. Health.

One of the things for which Virgos are infamous...grr!...is "obsession with health and purity." Virgos, we are told, are highly sensitive to the esoterica of diet and nutrition, medicine, environmental integrity, etc.

"So...?" Walhydra challenges. "It's just that my whole body—including the astral parts—is one big homeostatic device. If conditions are healthy, I am. If conditions are unhealthy...."

She glares at her audience of average mortals.

"Actually, your bodies are, too. The difference is I notice. A real pain in the [bleep] it is, too." She tries to unkink her [bleep].

"Every food additive, every suppressed emotion, every solar storm, sets off some sort of bodily alarm. And if we don't pay attention, the noise and static build up until we can't ignore it anymore...but probably have forgotten what the alarms are about."

Glumly she stalks away from the podium and sits down, hoping that in her next life she can come back as a full‑tilt, sensual Aries—or at least a Taurus, if she's gotta be stuck with Earth signs.

Anyway, all last year Walhydra was way too busy saving the world, raging against the system and cursing her luck to notice. Until around Samhain, when the corporeal rebellion became too chronic for her wonder chiropractor to unkink.

It only took a couple more months for her to make the necessary connection. "Oh," she said around New Year's Day. "I'm not paying attention."

(That tends to happen when one is busily fixing everybody else.)

Fortunately, Walhydra has finally learned a few things about "moderation in all things"—even Virgo things. So...she did not make any New Year's resolutions. She just went back to work "mindfully."

(She loves that word. It's so...mercurial.)

First thing she noticed, to her delight, was that she didn't want to drink coffee on the job any more. Not "decided to give up coffee," but "didn't want coffee."

She took to carrying a coffee mug of water around all day. Decided to "reframe" (good social worker jargon, that) all those extra trips to the restroom as "improving health" rather than "leaky plumbing."

(Although, you know, this middle‑aged male body thing about the last drops always going in your pants, no matter how many times you shake "it"…?)

Then chiropractor said, "I've adjusted everything obvious. I think your aches are maybe congested liver, expressing as pain elsewhere. You ought to try this herbal kidney and liver cleansing program."

Time for today's Virgo Lesson #2: Virgos are simultaneously the ultimate skeptics and the ultimate believers.

They will approach any new theory or fad with an utterly pragmatic, "show me" attitude. What's more, if the new theory involves new effort—like, shall we say, ten pages of detailed instructions about how to mix and use a recipe of eleven hard‑to‑find ingredients prepared through a complicated, multi‑step process and consumed daily for six weeks—they will wonder if maybe there isn't a simpler way.

Like reincarnation, maybe.

All the same, Virgos are...shh!...closet idealists, and they long for there to be some process whereby they can finally get themselves (and the world) perfectly and once‑and‑for‑all cleansed, realigned and on the way into the Kingdom of God. Or Goddess.

So, after a month of humming and hawing and grousing about how everyone from the FDA to the Gnostic Pleroma was trying to keep her from finding chopped gravel root (not extract, please!), Walhydra finally called the 800‑number her chiropractor had given her at the start (Virgos don't take easy advice till all else fails), got all the stuff, and settled in for a Saturday of kitchen witchery.

"Hmm," she said, as she started to hunt for a place to store the eleven bottles of herbs, vitamins and mineral supplements. "There's too many old bottles—oh, my goodness, unlabeled old bottles—of herbs and seeds and condiments on this shelf."

"Hmm," she said, as she rummaged through the containers on top of the cupboards over the sink (this is a tiny apartment). "These mason jars have no lids. And these other jars still smell like artichoke hearts or kalamata olives...or something."

Returning from the hardware store with a dozen pristine pint‑sized mason jars (ever try to buy just two?), "Hmm," she said. "I don't have enough quarters to dry the laundry I started two hours ago."

Several hours later, the whole herb and spice shelf had been reorganized and relabeled. The smelly jars from three years back had been recycled.

The last three day's worth of Crone Thread emails had been replied to.

And Walhydra was in Virgo heaven, measuring and stirring and brewing and measuring again and bottling and refrigerating and freezing.

"Ahh," she said, tucking the last freezer box of elixir away for the night. "I've put the universe back in order. I feel better already."

Sunday morning. This is where Hubby Jim comes in. Jim is Cancer‑on‑the‑cusp‑of‑Leo.

"But with Virgo rising," Walhydra jibes.

"Hopefully," Jim leers.

[Brief intermission.]

Jim and Walhydra have a marriage based on teasing. Pretty good for two utterly nerdish sissies who were teased beyond repair all through childhood.

Walhydra sometimes thinks that the main reason for astrology is to have something to tease each other about.

It's also important for the reader to know that, while Walhydra's mother was not at all obsessive about house‑cleaning (she's a Sagittarius), she was, after all, Swiss/German Lutheran—a sort of alternate universe Virgoism.

Jim's mom, on the other hand, was Southern Baptist with a vengeance, and had a fervor about house‑cleaning that went so far as to include covering the bathroom floor with newspaper (except for guests) to catch the water spills.

Walhydra alternates now between putting off for as long as possible the big chores, like scrubbing and dusting, and making a meditative practice of her Saturday morning plant watering, laundry washing and tidying‑up rituals.

Jim, by contrast, believes one oughtn't to do any household chores before they are needed. When Walhydra explains that the garbage can needs to be emptied when it's full, Jim's solution is to press down on the garbage.

It should be noted that usually—usually—Walhydra remembers to laugh ha ha ha at this mismatch, which their couples counselor years ago designated as both negotiable and teasable.

One other note, on semantics.

Walhydra, when they go shopping, says, "We need another can of bathroom cleanser."

Jim says, "You mean 'cleaner'."

"No, I mean 'cleanser.' It says so right on the label."

"Yankee!"

Slow burn.

So, anyway...Sunday morning. Jim is cooking Cream of Wheat. Walhydra is taking her first dose of The Potion.

Jim: "So, does the rule apply about 'medicine having to taste bad to be good'?"

Walhydra (frowning): "Well, look what the recipe adds to make The Potion taste good."

"Oh. Black cherry concentrate."

"Yes. Bleech."

"But black cherry is...."

"...I know. Good for kidneys."

Walhydra grins, getting in the mood to tease herself. "You realize, of course, why I got convinced to try this rigmarole after all?"

"Hm?" Jim peruses lengthy instructions and recipe. "Ah. 'Kidney cleanse.' How Virgoish."

"Um‑hmm."

Jim pulls out American Heritage Dictionary.

"'Cleanse....To free from dirt, defilement, or guilt; purge or clean...'," he reads. "'Usage: Cleanse is largely figurative and literary, with special reference to spiritual and ceremonial matters; Clean (verb) is literal."

He gives his best Q.E.D. smile.

"Humph. But that fits anyway," Walhydra says, brightening. "The whole point here is that I've realized I need a change of attitude. It's not just that my physical health has been sliding. I have needed the spiritual process. Deciding to start this herbal stuff is already a healing process."

Virgo touché.

Jim (pensive): "You know. I think that when my mom cleaned house, she was cleansing. When I had to help, she was cleansing—I was just cleaning."

[Scene dissolves. Witchy cackles on both sides.]

The Central Paradox: or, Confessions of a Teacher's Pet

Except that she has the notion she's paid most of her dues by now, Walhydra would be at a loss to know how to get out of this one.

For her fifty-mumble birthday this summer, Walhydra began working her way through a thoughtful book on personal transformation. The part she just finished presents a color-coded, nine-stage, intricately-labeled spiral model of the dynamics of cultural and individual evolution.

Despite the fact that Virgos delight in elaborately charted conceptual models for realities which actually defy rational analysis...

*ahem*

...Walhydra found herself jarred during meditation one morning, when remembrance of these colors brought remembrance of a viscerally profound childhood crisis, one from which she still longs to recover.

Walhydra accepts her parents’ testimony that before the age of five she was a happy-go-lucky, energetic little boy. Her own memories tend to begin with the fussy, reclusive old man of six.

Except that she has fingerpainted evidence her favorite color was once bright daisy yellow.

Yellow is near the top of that evolutionary spiral, representing inner-directed folks who are at ease with paradox and contradiction, who move happily among people at all levels of development, and who have no need for possessions, status or displays of power.

More simply, yellow is joy.

Walhydra can almost remember being like this, so how did she forget?

Tomato juice.

More exactly, spilled tomato juice.

On her favorite flannel shirt. In front of other kindergarten five-year-olds, her first months in public school. Right after her family moved from the only home she had ever known.

They laughed, of course.

For whatever reasons, Walhydra experienced it as laughing at her. Her peers had unknowingly introduced her to shame.

In her personal mythology, that was the moment when Walhydra became self-conscious—in all the blesséd and cursed senses of that term. Before that she was just another playful, undifferentiated kid. Afterward, a social being, distinct and separate, yet at the same time dependent upon the real and perceived judgments of others.

It happens to everyone, of course. That disorienting schism between “I’m unique” and “I’m one of you.” Walhydra figures most of the crimes and sufferings of the human race can be traced to that schism.

What startled her awake, meditating on that spiral, was that she had identified her own particular version of this turn on the path.

“It’s not fair,” she hears herself whining. Starting in first grade, she would frequently come home from some round of teasing by peers or unappreciative discipline by adults to voice that complaint to her father, the Lutheran pastor.

“You’re right,” he would reply. “It’s not fair.”

For years—at least thirty, she figures—Walhydra thought this meant he wasn’t a “good Dad,” because he didn’t go and fix it. Then one day she woke up and realized he had just been confirming her observation of reality.

In her childhood, though, Walhydra’s line of defense was to become invincible.

She recognized quickly that “those in authority” were teachers.

She was an utter failure on the playing field, due partly to non-paralytic polio at age four, and partly to having been shamed by the tomato juice incident into avoiding anything she couldn’t already do or teach herself to do well—without public practice.

This meant that Phys Ed instructors, typical 1950s men who thought “real boys” should be full of competitiveness, athletic prowess and aggression, held no authority at all for her. She already understood—with apparent confirmation from teasing peers—that somehow she wasn’t a “real boy.”

However, Walhydra was gifted with being brilliant, creative and a quick study. The obvious survival strategy was to become a “teacher’s pet.”

This path had the advantage of making her immediately liked and protected by “those in authority.” It had the disadvantage of underscoring the message to her peers: “I’m not one of you.”

Looking back from the present, Walhydra sometimes grieves the various accidents and unintentional cruelties which distracted her from joining the human race through the normal sequence of steps.

While her classmates were learning to integrate themselves into the salutary nurturing and correcting organism of the tribe, Walhydra was whittling her public self down to those things in which she could safely excel. And she was seeking out the companionship lf those few adults and other kids who would appreciate or at least play along with what little of herself she dared to share.

Walhydra now knows—she discovered this at her twenty-fifth high school reunion—that many more classmates liked her than she knew, and that they appreciated much more about her than she had ever let herself be aware of.

"But why didn't they tell me?" she cries, only just beginning to recognize how shame deafened and blinded her for so long.

Invincible secret pride had become her clumsy armor.

Once she caught on to how much classmates hated a know-it-all, Walhydra mastered the perverse art of raising her hand only selectively and feigning uncertainty when she answered—all the while acing every test. The dark side of this was she became convinced other people were, at best, cute and/or friendly, but just not as smart as she. She wanted to be a "genuinely caring person," but what she learned how to be was unassumingly patronizing.

"No wonder," she says now, "God kicked me out of seminary and said, ‘First you have to learn how to be a silly faggot.’ Something needed to put my butt back on the ground with the rest of the human race!"

There have been many more first-you-have-to’s since God gave Walhydra the boot. One of the most important, though, was the twelve years she did in prison.

Granted, she did it as a counselor, not as an inmate. But, twelve years of being her silly faggot self in the midst of a thousand plus murderers, rapists, drug dealers, ex-military security officers and assorted crazies.... Twelve years of being a professional role model for these men.... She definitely had to join the human race.

There are not many places where one is more naked, where people are more skilled at seeing through one’s clumsy armor. But also, not many places where one’s integrity, if honed to sharpness and used honorably, is more respected.

The bonus: it was Walhydra’s job to care about people, and she went about this with as much efficiency and as much soul-searching as any Virgo would.

By the time the abuses of her state’s so-called Christian Coalition government—shipping the whole psychiatric population to a rural prison run by a crooked, for-profit corporation—drove Walhydra to resign, she knew these men, officers and inmates alike, as extended family.

She and they both knew she was unique, not one of them. Yet when she put aside pride and shame, she could share with them the petty, hurtful and delightful moments and movements of life in the present.

So now...here she is, in another state, in another mini-incarnation as a public librarian. What a great job for a reformed teacher’s pet!

She gets paid to know things other people don’t, and they actually ask her to tell it all to them!

Better still, she’s learned to take great delight in saying: “I don’t know. Let’s see if we can find out together.”

And so it is.

Blessèd Be.

"Yellow Daisies" photo © Carol Bailey