Solsticetimes

You may or may not be aware that it was the 25th day of the month of December last week, and Christmas was celebrated by a significant fraction of the humans on this planet.

Believe it or not, I've been asked several times why I, a godless heathen, take the effort to celebrate Christmas. I didn't think I needed to clarify, but here's my carefully crafted reply.

The first reason is simple. My family members are nominally Christian, and they celebrate Christmas. They'd like me to participate, so I do. It's pretty passive, really, but that's not the only reason. The second reason is that Christmas really isn't a Christian festival any more.

Christmas is so relentlessly secularised (by way of commercialisation, unfortunately) that any original religious context is virtually absent. Occasionally I go to church on the 24th or the 25th, but it's just observance of ritual. I don't really think that god is up there to care one way or another. But it's nice to observe ritual once in a while, because we humans are social beings, and ritual keeps us together and makes us feel good.

We all celebrate Halloween, even though none of us (well, few of us anyway) actually believe in ghosts and ghouls. The ritual itself breeds camaraderie and togetherness, even though no one actually believes in the things that led to the festival and its rituals. I even endorse burning effigies Guy Fawkes in November, even though he certainly doesn't deserve the hatred that such a ritual implies. It's just ritual - the original meaning, legitimate or not, gone regardless.

And it's not as though the Christians are the only ones who celebrate in midwinter anyway. The date was set because of pre-existing pagan festivals like the Roman festival of the Rising of the Unconquered Sun. The solstice seems like a fitting time to get together and celebrate.

When I celebrate on the 25th of December, I am not really celebrating the birth of J.C. I'm celebrating because why the hell not? An annual time to give and receive gifts and spread goodwill sounds good whatever the justification.

Even in spite of the commercialised nature of modern Christmas and its promotion of consumer culture, I still think it is important. If the feeling is behind the gifts you give and receive, then who is to say that they are illegitimate?

The origins of the festival, and what other people think of it, are secondary to what it represents now, to us as individuals.

Christmas Eve Sunset by subadei

Existential crisis

For a hypothetical addressee.

So you've woken up and realised that in the grand scheme of things, you aren't all that. Congratulations, welcome to the fold and etcetera. You'll be glad to know that you are far from alone.

In fact, what you've gone though happens so often that we have a name for it - existential crisis. Pretty much anyone who doesn't entirely buy into the claims of religion will experience it at some point in their lives, and gradually become aware that their life has no intrinsic worth or meaning.

The vast majority of people are scared by this eventual conclusion. I was one of them. I didn't want to dwell on it - and I dearly wished that I had never opened Pandora's box. You can put off the crisis by distracting yourself, but it grows on you, and demands resolution sooner or later.

Some people, when faced with the prospect of their life having no intrinsic value, turn to religion. They generally resolve the crisis by bathing in the reassuring claims of their favourite faith, and emerge from the crisis a hardcore religionite - utterly convinced of god's existence. They respond to criticism by digging in deeper. To me, taking this path symbolises valuing a reassuring fable above the hard reality. I could never follow this path. I care about the truth too much.

The other path is often taken to be the more difficult to traverse. But to me at least, it was the only real option. As I said, I simply care about the truth too much to take the easier way out.

I resolved my own existential crisis by asking myself a question:

Why is it so important that I be the centre of the universe?

I was unable to answer this question. I still am not. It seems to be a combination of evolutionary heritage and cultural pressures that our happiness (with exceptions like you and me) depends on a belief that we are somehow significant in the grand scheme of things.

I am content not being important. There are things that make me happy in themselves, like writing, being with the people I love, drawing, helping people in need, deep contemplation, music, and appreciation of the natural world outside.

In light of the many gifts we have been blessed with, asking for yet more seems childish. I have enough. I don't need to be the centre of everything to be happy. I'm not that vain.

Once you have conditioned yourself out of the belief that your happiness is tied to you being the centre of the universe, infinity doesn't seem that daunting any more. It's a friend that you've learned to live with.

I hope that you will come with me on the second path.

Thoughts under a shooting star

If you don't already know, this past week our little world crossed the orbit of the asteroid 3200 Phaethon (say it FAY-a-thon).

As Phaethon orbits, getting closer to and further from the sun in perpetuity, debris breaks off from the main rock and gets strewn about its orbit. Well, as we passed through this debris trail, some of the objects entered our atmosphere, causing the annual phenomenon known as the Gemenid meteor shower.

Long-exposure of a Gemenid meteor. It's up left.

The Perseid and Leonid meteor showers (midsummer and November, respectively) have been persistent disappointments to me, due in part to light pollution and frequently cloudy skies above the West Midlands. However, this year, I saw my first Gemenid.

They're slow-moving, fairly bright compared to the background stars and can be mistaken for planes if one doesn't look too closely. This was only the second shooting star that I recall observing, and seeing this one reminded me of the first, a few years ago.

I was in Devon on a residential school trip for geography. The place we were staying at, from what I remember, had a garden up front, with a solitary bench, that looked out on to an open, flattish landscape with hills on either side. One night, myself and a friend were on the bench and happened to observe a fantastic meteor pass overhead and trace a nearly perfect vertical path to the ground.

Everything about the scene seemed to conspire to make all the details perfect. The angle of the bench, the exceptionally clear skies, the brightness and vector of the meteoroid, the way the hills framed the sky. All of the variables in play came together with an uncanny synchronisation, that as a whole seemed to suggest that something profound had just happened.

If I had the kind of mind that was prone to invoking an intelligent overseer, I might have concluded that the scene was designed purposefully for my benefit. But of course, it wasn't. Unlikely things happen all the time. In fact, it would be more interesting if odd synchronicities didn't occasionally emerge.

The scene had an air of perfection to it, and in that particular moment, I experienced a fleeting sense of oneness with my surroundings, and awe at the cosmos, that left me in hushed silence for several seconds. Just because I'm not religious doesn't mean that I deny myself spiritual experiences.

Tim Minchin and his Orchestra

So on Tuesday 8th I saw Tim Minchin on the first date of his UK arena tour. Taking care not to overstate, I quite literally loved every minute of it.

Muchos kudos to Katie for coming with even though she was ill. I love ye.

I'd seen a few of his live shows on TV before, and had seen a few of his songs on YouTube, but of course, seeing him live was so much better. Plus there was a 55-piece orchestra present, which contributed to the experience.

This song, especially, was memorable.

I really like how he is able to take skeptical and quasi-humanist principles and apply them in a way that is simultaneously strong and yet still somehow gentle and thoroughly enjoyable (though I do speak as a skeptical sort, perhaps die-hard believers would have a different reaction).

Though he does have a self-effacing and lighthearted stage persona, many of his songs are quite profound. If I Didn't Have You echoes almost exactly how I feel about love, ditto for White Wine in the Sun, which feels like a distillation of my feelings about midwinter festivals.

I would definitely have stayed for an additional hour.

And also I have a bag. I am so fucking rock.

Dots in the dark

We don't have many good constellations here in the north hemisphere. Orion's our best, of course, but there's so much light pollution about you'd be hard pressed to see him even on a clear night.

Last Tuesday, it was a very clear night. I was still awake at about one AM, and by chance happened to look at the sky. Orion and his friends, tiny, brilliant pin-pricks of light against the dark veil of night. I don't know why the stars affect me this deeply, but they do, and I'm glad for it.

Each of those sparkling dots is a mighty ball of searing thermonuclear plasma, as big as, or bigger than, our own sun, perhaps shepherded by smaller spheres, like our tiny world orbits our sun.

I stared up at the stars, dumbstruck, neck craned. I want so much to sail among them.

The sky makes some people convinced of their religion. It makes me convinced of the opposite. I imagine a civilisation riding around one of those distant shimmering orbs, proudly proclaiming 'We're at the centre. Everything was made for us," and I consider how seriously I would take their claim.