Symbol & Sign 8: Lights of Christmas

 

Light creates.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Darkness - whatever its nature - was over the surface of the deep or abyss. Did Darkness pre-exist the heavens and the earth? What of the Deep, whose surface is covered by the Darkness? What was the nature of the Deep? And how intimate is the relationship between Dark and Deep?
Regardless how we answer these questions, we are still at pre-history: there is yet no day nor night, there is no continuity nor discontinuity, there is no grow nor decay, no warming with the sun and no growing cold with the sunset.

Then God said Let there be Light. Light and Dark were separated, and there was an evening and a morning and there was the first day.
Light did not dispel Dark. They had to be separated by God. Light on it own does not dispel the dark; it requires active involvement of intelligence. This forms a symbiosis between intelligence and light that has creative power.
The patches of light and dark in film create powerful symbols. They are not just artifacts, for artifacts do not inspire the souls of those even yet unborn, whereas symbols have just that very power. A film may be unseen content in a vault somewhere and lay as an extinction of life, but let it be uncovered, let the projector light shine through it, and let it be viewed by an audience, and the symbol rises phoenix-like once again: an artifact becomes symbol and a potential psycho-pomp, a guide to realms of the mind and spirit not thought of before.

Light creates symbolic structures.
Christmas trees are not just artifacts, like lampposts; they create a light-filled area, a halo which we flock to and respond to emotionally, a halo of comfort, goodwill, and peace. The Light of Christmas has something mere light does not, it has a moral dimension which is always focused on the Good.
The lights of miniature Christmas villages on display create a reality which in our immediate physical perception is static and unmoving, but once the patches of color, light, and dark start moving through the body to the brain, once our inborn codes come into play – codes which conform the flow of information to and from the seat of intellect – these inert shows begin to seethe with life, and the geese hung in the Poulterer’s shop begin to squawk and hiss, the pewter horses attached to carriages trot and cottony steam rises from their hot bodies. In each house, there is a holy Christmas feast, from the rich to the poor: the goose is cooked, the pudding hurrahed, and wishes are made on wishbones.

If we were to leave the Christmas village up all year long, the inhabitants would not debase to racism, nor war, nor political squabbling, for they are symbolic creatures of the light! And it is our light and the external light which illuminates this peaceable kingdom.

You see now what we are capable of.

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