Media Occupation: Silent Night

by Tom Siebert, Dec 21, 2006, 7:30 AM

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Shhhhh. Let it all stop for a moment. All the noise. All the voices. All the input grabbing at your mind share, your attention, your heart, your soul.

It gets so loud sometimes that it drowns out the sacred whispers tugging at your cloak against the winter wind. They remind you that this time of year has been hallowed for more than millennia, back to the Mesopotamian celebration of New Year's over 4,000 years ago, through the Roman winter festival Saturnalia and other pagan holidays. A time before their traditions were co-opted by Christianity in a brilliant marketing move that belies the actual likely March birth of Y'Shua of Nazareth.

But that's just historical dissonance.

This holiday column isn't about marketing or chronology or Jesus, be him the savior or just a cool, progressive guy. It's about beauty and silence, and how this time of year provides those few, precious moments when things almost come to a stop, when the stores (mostly) don't open, when the streets (almost) stop moving. When there seems to be some final primal lingering memory in the collective unconscious, if we all pipe down for just a second.

There is still a murmur reminding us there is still true beauty and hope in the world for all of us--no matter what we believe.

Truth and beauty don't need to shout. They're self-evident. In these days of never-ending input, they can be waylaid, but not forever missed.

Years and years ago, I read a poem in The New Yorker that captured the truth and beauty of the season for me. I've kept that issue--March 20, 1995--oddly enough. And every year, I take it out and read it around the holidays. At the risk of getting sued, I'd like to share it with you.

A Winter's Night

Outside, where the snow

Is softly and soundlessly

Falling (there is no wind

Tonight) has brought its quiet

Into the house that was noisy

All day with TV voices,

The telephone ringing,

And the happy shouts of children

Romping from room to room.

Now, except for me, sleep

Has overtaken the house.

I bring the silence of the dark

Outside into it. I wrap that

Around my cares. Soon I, too

Will be sleeping.

--James Laughlin

My last words will be a plug for the great American publisher and poet James Laughlin, who, as described in his 1997 New York Times obituary, was "fiercely independent [and] published many of the most consequential and revolutionary writers of his time." If you'd like to consider buying some of his books, you can learn more about them here.

Enjoy your time off. May it be a true holiday.

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