Reanimation

Last year this writer was unable to write his traditional happy holidays column. I was in the hospital clinically dead and being “reanimated” by a medical staff that kept telling my wife she had better get prepared to make the funeral arrangements. However, as has happened from time to time in my life, I fooled the experts and am still here, a tribute to Ukrainian medical science and maybe because I am simply too cantankerous to die just yet. In other words, the outgoing year was a good one for me in that I feel lucky to be anywhere except pushing up daisies. Being told that one was clinically dead has a wonderful way of concentrating one’s mind as a reminder of the fact that death indeed comes to us all and that all those things we keep putting off may never be done unless we do them now.

The rituals and holidays we grow up with change imperceptibly from the Santa Claus and Easter Bunny of childhood into more mature libations and finally into the thoughts about what the holidays actually mean. The joy of being with those one can celebrate with becomes mixed with the pain of missing those one cannot be with as the mobility of the modern world tends to separate us as much as it serves to bring us together. With a son in his teens and a mother in her nineties thousands of miles away, this writer always views the holidays as a mixed blessing, the rewards of being with those he loves here and the pain of being away from those he loves so very far away.

Ukraine usually looks upon Easter as the main holiday, while the West is more focused on Christmas and New Year’s Day. Maybe this is more in the mercenary capitalist vein: all those Christmas presents keep the countless merchants merry far more effectively than any high jinks or strong drinks that might accompany seeing the old year out and ringing the new year in. Yet, we all have some much needed time off and something worth celebrating: a new year with its eternal hopes for being better that the last, and the birth of Christ that holds the greatest promise in human history.

It is a time for generosity and to define ourselves in terms of how and with whom we choose to celebrate. Every nation has its own holiday traditions, and sometimes every family has its own that differs just a bit from what is observed by the family next door. It is a time to come together, to miss those one cannot be with, and to, well, make merry. Life becomes a little easier with the holiday spirit that rejuvenates — one might even say reanimates us all. It allows us to celebrate life both individually and with those we love. In celebrating life we reaffirm our own, and that, after all, is perhaps why holidays as such are so very important.