Wishin’ and hopin’ and prayin’

Well, that’s it for another year: the holiday season officially comes to an end. But we make New Year resolutions, and hope that the spirit of Christmas will extend well into the New Year.

Fat chance. As carols sounded, as ‘Peace to all men and women’ rang out, as people attended church and felt their hearts touched by softer emotions, beyond the church the hatred, the torture, the killing continued without pause. Those supplying weapons to Israel (and Ukraine) saw no contradiction in , at the same time, warbling about sleeping in heavenly peace as their murderous instructions were being carried out. George Orwell spoke in his novel1984 of doublethink, the ability to hold two contradictory concepts in mind at the same time, His only mistake was that he thought it would be necessary to have a totally different kind of state for that to happen. At ease, George. We have it every Christmas.

As for the New Year,  many get very excited and/or very drunk, as they peer into the months ahead and express the hope that all will be well or better than last year. We raise our glasses, we hug our neighbours, we bawl the meaningless Auld Lang Syne and wish each other well in the year ahead. Wish. We’d like it to be sunny and filled with happiness and success, but we content ourselves with wishing.”Good luck in 2024!” we call to each other, as if wishing for something made it more likely to happen. If wishes could be horses, all the beggars would be riding.

Never underestimate the human capacity for self-deception. With tears in our eyes we sing of a babe in a manger who brought peace on earth, even as we plan the next step in the slaughter of our fellow-humans. With eyes sparkling in hope,  we assure our neighbours and ourselves that we expect a better coming year, because…well,because we wished it would be better.

Nobody can deceive us as fully as ourselves.