It’s just shy of 3:30 p.m. on a mid-December afternoon in Great Barrington, and I am driving my son from Housatonic to Stockbridge. A jet plane is glimmering bright yellow-white in the blue sky as it passes by the moon. The moon. It is just shy of 3:30 p.m. The moon is up? The sun is making the planes glimmer as it goes down? “That’s crazy,” I think, and then land on a new theory. Our days have decided to boycott this time and place and are heading down a permanent rather than six-month-long path to shortening. In small increments and day by day, they are just going to keep leaving this messed up world behind so that on New Year’s Day, at 3 p.m., I will look up to discover the moon up and both it and the sun at the same places where they were on December 12 at 3:30 p.m. So on and so on that pattern will continue, until six months from now there will be no more daylight left and we will be left with nothing but a peek of brightness on the horizon sometime around lunch, before it dips out of sight forever.
I am feeling this way even though I know the day-shortening process will reverse shortly and time will once again be on the road to glorious elongation. Our days will reach their full length six months from now, when we are swimming in abundant light, warmth, and color. But will they? Today doesn’t it seem impossible that we could be headed in the direction of a June? The whole world is in a rainy December place at the moment, and it is a moment that seems quite pleased to stick around. Doesn’t it seem natural that the natural world will at some point begin to change over its patterns to match the tone and spirit of our manmade one?
Just look at what we have contended with—globally and locally—in the last quarter of 2024. International conflicts which seem to be building toward something ominous. A presidential election revealing the remarkable depth of our political divisions. A human-set wildfire tore through the hills in our New England town and threatens to burn down our ski area. As accustomed as we are to the closing of beloved businesses, the news of Simon’s Rock imminent abandonment of their 275-acre campus in the heart of Great Barrington was a terrible shock.
Then there is the story that is establishing new lines of cultural division. A health insurance CEO and father of two is assassinated in the still, quiet hour before rush hour in front of a New York hotel, but the assassin, it turns out, is not an enemy of the American state with a thick accent and a foreign boss. He is the handsome alumnus of the private boy’s school in Baltimore that my cousin’s sons attended. He has a charmingly Italian name, a name I would use in a Beginning Italian pronunciation lesson. (PSA: It is not pronounced man-gee-o-nee. It is pronounced man-gee-o-nay.)
When Jon Stewart announced on his show that the handsome Italian assassin had been caught and then paused, it sounded to me like the appropriate time for some warm applause. But no. The entire audience booed. I have sat in Jon Stewart’s audience. I laughed and booed along with everyone else. We did not disagree among us about what to laugh at and what to boo.
Was the booing and the online fan-girling and boying for Mangione a harmless catharsis we didn’t know we needed, or did it create two cohorts of people we didn’t know existed: the fine-with-murder people and the murder-is-bad people? In the news: Emerson College just released a poll that has 41 percent of young people believing that the murder of Brian Thompson was “acceptable.” Is this an example of rooting for the guy who finally got off the couch to start the revolution?
That explanation sounds plausible. If our politics were not so taken up with self-absorbed in-fighting we might still turn to it for recourse. As it is, it would be ridiculous to suggest that the new Congress and cabinet might tackle our healthcare crisis, for which insurance companies alone are not responsible.
There is no suggestion of change in the air on that score, nor on any of our other big scores that matter, like preventing the next school shooting. Here in South Berkshire County people can’t afford to live, our bridges have been left to rot, stalwart institutions are closing, and our Christmasses are now reliably rainy instead of snowy. Things are hard all around.
And yet, I remembered when I abandoned this sad essay and went for a walk with the dog: Hope is also all around. In my own house, it is literally all around. I haven’t counted, but there must be 200 Christmas presents in my bedroom. They are not for my own teenagers, for while specific letters to Santa are helpful, there is something demotivating about being instructed to purchase items in exact colors, makes, and models.
No, the presents in my room are going to kids all over the county whom neither I nor the gift-buyers will ever meet. Each year the Department of Children and Families sends me a list of kids they work with who might not receive presents without their involvement. I put out the word, and volunteers buy the gifts these kids have wished for. The givers deliver the gifts to my house, and for a few days I am the fortunate keeper of growing piles of selfless generosity.
The dozens of donors come from all walks of life. Several, like the wonderful Rabbi Jodie Gordon of Hevreh, can’t turn down the chance to do good. Lots of people can’t get enough of Christmas shopping for little kids and appear at my porch with massive boxes full of gorgeously wrapped gifts, all for one child. Other people, like me, have big ambitions, but then life interferes and they scramble to put something together at the last minute.
Today, I will happily relinquish the gifts so that they can serve the purpose for which they were intended, and I can once again access my dresser drawers. After they are gone, I will hold in my heart the givers who gave even though they might be folks who would qualify to be on the receiving end. The woman who said to my husband, “Blessed be,” as she dropped off her large bags two weeks early on her way to her job at an assisted living facility. Or the young mother of three with her own newborn at home who provided for a stranger’s newborn and then asked, “Does she have any siblings? I’d like to do more.” Or another young woman who requested as many names as I could offer, on whose Facebook page is posted the meme: “We look out for kids no matter who they belong to.” They didn’t know, as I didn’t know, that they were giving me what I needed for Christmas. I had expected to use this essay to reflect on the state of this miserable world. I did not expect to end up crying in gratitude at the state of some beautiful people.
