If you want to know why people start putting up their Christmas decorations in October, some of the answers are in this picture. I took this on a random day in early December. Here we see Luna sitting in one of her favorite sunny spots. In the background, unwrapped Christmas presents for our family are piled on our dining room table. It’s daytime, so the doorway garland isn’t lit. She and I are enjoying the calm and quiet typical of this part of the day.
There is chaos on that table. Some of those presents were hard to find. Some were more expensive than we’d hoped. Some I feared were insufficient to the sentiment they were intended to communicate. Some of them suck and I know they suck and that’s just how it goes sometimes. The best ones aren’t even on that table.
Let’s move closer to the foreground. These decorations take a long time to put up. Krystal considered every single detail of our display with the care and attentiveness you’d see from a curator at a niche museum. The person who arranges the exhibits at the Museum of Dollhouse Furniture isn’t in that business because they want to drive a Ferrari one day. The effort is the reward.
The table itself is where our family Christmas dinner takes place. That meal starts being planned in mid-November at the latest. Many lesser meals were consumed while reviewing the components of that greater feast. No detail escaped consideration.
We do all of this because we love the planning, love the people we’re planning for, and love the idea that joy is something you can cultivate. It’s not an immutable element of the universe that can only be located and then hoarded. Joy is a compound that can be mixed by hand. With Christmas joy, there are are more supplies.
One of the great go-to messages in Christmas music involves wishing for “peace on earth”. The implication is complicated, as the idea seems to exist in a liminal space between something God is supposed to take care of, and something we’re supposed to generate ourselves. Krystal and I are atheists, so for us waiting on God is a lot like depending on Santa to fill that empty spot under the tree. In our house, if peace on earth is to be found, we’re going to need to make it ourselves. So we start early.
Peace is a tricky concept to nail down. Sometimes peace is sitting in an empty room enjoying the simplicity of nothingness. That’s a 25-50Hz sort of peace. Low frequency peace. Nothing in, nothing out, everything is in balance. No one takes pictures of that kind of peace. There isn’t anything to photograph. Might as well leave the lens cap on.
On the other end of the spectrum, imagine a picture of a doctor asleep in a darkened exam room in between busy emergency room shifts. That’s peace in the 40,000Hz range. This is the sort of peace that only intense and sustained effort can produce. The peace after a war. Eyes of storms. Empty apartments after a move. Hard peace sorely won. Loud, joyless peace, pitched too high to hear comfortably.
In this picture, you see midrange peace in the 1000-2000Hz bandwidth. This is peace with great tone. A little grit, a little character, but not overloaded with chaos. That’s why our tree is up by Halloween. More peace and joy, please. We’ll take as much as we can lay our hands on. The more optimism and whimsy the better. More fun hats and cookies and having a good time simply because you’ve chosen to. We’re working hard and enjoying the atmosphere that work generates. I love these moments of peace in the joy factory. Actual Christmas is just the pageant at the end.