After spending some time in the library I decided to give the Rockefeller Christmas tree another shot. It was crowded, but I was able to walk around and get a good look at it. It got me thinking about how Christmas has become a very dense American ritual. I still believe that the core of Christmas is the birth of Christ, but it has become a very complicated ritual beyond that. I was thinking about rituals today because of research I've been doing on
Joseph Beuys and a show I saw at Gagosian Gallery by
Mike Kelley. The show is a maddening funhouse of video projections, stages, sculptures, paintings, and photographs. Kelley is exploring ritual by taking images he's found in old high school yearbooks and recreating them with live actors. The original photos depict familiar rituals such as school dances, Halloween costume contests, and school plays. But when these things are recreated in a way that you know is fake, the underlying assumptions made by the original rituals are suddenly blown open. We immediately recognize the reenactments as fakes, but what about the originals? They're fake as well, but we never really think of it that way. When someone dresses up as a vampire or is crowned homecoming queen we know we're not dealing with real vampires or queens, but there's still something very authentic about the experience. So authentic that most of us have never stopped to say, "hey isn't it weird that we're doing this?" So, back to Christmas in New York. About 2000 years ago Jesus Christ was born. That's an incredible event which deserves celebration, but the things we do today have very little to do with that. (I remember wondering as a child why Christmas and New Years were six days apart, because if we're really counting years from Christ's birth, they should be the same day. Or maybe a day in between, like my birthday, the 29th). Anyway, Christmas is loaded with ritual. It's more often called tradition, but I think it's more than that. We collectively feel a sense of magic around Christmas time, it's palpable. Everyone reacts to this, either by embracing it, altering it, or rejecting it. So many songs and movies have been made about this phenomenon, it's probably second only to romantic love. And let's not forget that those two go hand in hand, which leads me to the next happening down at Rockefeller center. I was walking around alone, feeling rather cynical. Not about what Christmas really is, but about how much of a production it is, especially in New York. It seemed like it wasn't Christmas as much as it was CHRISTMAS ON TV. I was thinking things like, "This sense of magic we're all supposed to feel is a sham. It's an elaborate ruse put on by corporate America to sell us things we don't need. Look at all these people, they're walking around on the set of a commercial in which they are both the stars and the audience." Suddenly some people started cheering and screaming. I heard someone say, "Is there a celebrity?" People were looking down in the ice rink which is in front of the tree in a depression in the ground, about twenty feet down. You've probably seen it on movies and TV. The ice rink was almost empty because the skating was closing for the night. Unable to resist spectacle, I pressed toward the railing with the rest of the masses until I saw the last two people on the rink: a man and a woman, kissing. They weren't celebrities at all, they had just gotten engaged. I feel weird admitting this, but I actually got a little choked up. Someone actually threw roses down to them! It was at that moment I realized that although many of our rituals are fed to us by the media, that doesn't make them any less real or important. That scene on the ice was just like something from a movie, which you could criticize as being cheesy and unoriginal, but I think that lack of originality made it even more authentic. Everyone there already knew the story, and it's a story that we all love. We love seeing it on TV and in movies and pop songs and especially in real life. People cheered! They're in love! That's exactly how it's supposed to be and we all know it. Cultures have always told stories about life, then imitated them in real life, then told more stories about that, and on and on. We have a collective sense of what is romantic and what is magical, and while I'm willing to admit that these things are cultural constructs, I don't see them as hallow gestures. Believing in these stories and acting them out ourselves lies at the core of who we are. We don't think about it this way very often, but I think that Americans really do believe in magic.
Sorry all these thoughts aren't very organized. It's something I'm going to keep thinking about.
The tree: supernatural?
These blurry people are in love! *cheering*
