“Christmas is a bridge. We need bridges as the river of time flows past. Today’s Christmas should mean creating happy hours for tomorrow and reliving those of yesterday.” – Gladys Taber
Holiday glitz and glamour have a way of sparking the distractions and frills that are necessary when the year gets bogged down at the beginning of winter. All the darkness of the shortest days requires some incandescent thrill to combat the somberness inherent at the turn of the calendar. Yet Christmas has never been about the glittering bombast or flashy bravado that seeks to hype up this most wonderful time of the year. For me, the true essence of the holiday is in the natural wonder of the world. In the prismatic light of the sun, glinting through the dried petals of a hydrangea bloom. In the crystalline wonder of an icicle. In the meandering curves of a river.
IT’S COMING ON CHRISTMAS
THEY’RE CUTTING DOWN TREES
THEY’RE PUTTING UP REINDEER
AND SINGING SONGS OF JOY AND PEACE
OH I WISH I HAD A RIVER
I COULD SKATE AWAY ON
It would be impossible to top Joni Mitchell’s original version of ‘River’ but Sarah McLachlan gave it a glorious effort in this previous post. Here, we return to the first rendition as this year is about getting back to basics. And so the typical hype and hoopla that has so often personified this site, and my own lifestyle, gets a revision, inside and out.
BUT IT DON’T SNOW HERE
IT STAYS PRETTY GREEN
I’M GOING TO MAKE A LOT OF MONEY
THEN I’M GOING TO QUIT THIS CRAZY SCENE
I WISH I HAD A RIVER
I COULD SKATE AWAY ON
There is escapism in this song, in the idea and image of a river itself. A way of journeying out by going through ~ through the water, between the light, among the shadows ~ framed by sun and moon ~ and it’s a journey to see us through the holidays, when the typical stress and tension of what they have become suddenly demands escape and relief.
There is less of a need to get away in this year when we’ve all been away and isolated for so long. And so I look to this song as a way of reconnecting. Perhaps this can work as a way back to where we once were. The river runs both ways if you know how to look at it. And a frozen river stills its wet direction to allow such passage.
