On the Post-Holidays Slump, Death, and Sports

In the U.S., few things are more melancholy than December 26th.  Shoot, few things are more depressing than Christmas day by noon.  The months long build-up of the Holiday season stretching clear back to October comes to a climactic crescendo Christmas morn and then...that's it.  It's over. Stick a fork in it. Sweep up the wrapping paper, play with your new toys, and see if your material possessions can distract you from the crashing come-down in the pit of your stomach.  

Yes, we still have New Years Eve to look forward to as a sort of consolation prize, the last hiccup of the holidays, but for all intents and purposes the season is over; and the sole, awkward question perpetually left over, year after year after year, is whether to take down the decorations by the 31st, or the 1st, or the 2nd, or maybe MLK Day or even Valentines Day (depending on how pathetic we're feeling).   Perhaps part of why we let the Christmas season last so long nowadays is we're aware of how abruptly it ends--and this despite the fact that this happens every single year, yet we never have a contingency plan for the post-Christmas come-down.  We steadfastly refuse to think of the end.

The irony is that it doesn't have to be that way!  In predominantly-Catholic Latin-America, for example, December 25th is not the end of Christmas but the beginning!  Remember the 12 days of Christmas?  They actually observe it down south, and the 25th is but the first day, which does not conclude till the Enunciation (or Three Kings Day) on January 6th.  New Years becomes just one extra fiesta in the midst of 12 straight days of fiestas.  By the time the 12 days are through, you are satiated, you are glutonized, such that you are actually ready for Christmas-time to be over at last!  Unlike their Anglo counterparts, Latin-Americans steadfastly refused to let Christmas get trimmed down, because they never forget about the coming end.

Remember that Mexico is the one with the Day of the Dead, wherein they openly, explicitly, embrace the fact of their eventual demise.  The worship of Santa Muerte (Saint Death) is currently a growing sect south of the border, because they are keenly aware of how they are surrounded by and subject to death at all times.  Meanwhile, it is considered rude and uncouth to discuss death in the U.S., and though we all secretly know better, still we live our lives as though we will not all die one day (and that often sooner than we think).  That is, I think our failure to account for the inevitable comedown of the post-Holidays is symptomatic of our steadfast refusal to prepare for death itself.

We do the same thing in sports, as well: whereas the Olympics and the World Cup and other non-U.S. sports contests have 2nd and 3rd place awards as consolation prizes, in the Superbowl or the World Series, it's a zero-sum game.  You either win it all, or you are marvelously depressed the next day.  To be clear, European and Latin-American and other global athletes are just as bitterly disappointed in not getting the gold as their U.S. counterparts--but then, the rest of the world is also much more keenly aware of, and much less thoroughly insulated against, the inevitable failure of all things.

Death, destruction, downfall, and failure--of governments, of businesses, of revolutions, of levies, of health--is a much more widely acknowledged fact of life beyond our borders.  Hence, there is always a contingency in place--a Silver or Bronze, a Day of the Dead, an extra-long Christmas holiday--that helps you ease into the inevitable come-down.  In the U.S., death, failure, loss, always come to us like rude shocks to the system, as though it were a strange thing for anything bad to happen to us, as though it never occurred to us that "all things must fail" (Mor. 7:46) even though we know they always do.

Please don't misunderstand, this is not a call for fatalism or pessimism or cynicism or despair or depression in America, no, quite the opposite--this is a call to avoid the depression that comes from the inevitable come-downs, to be mentally and emotionally and spiritually prepared, by remembering to always look towards the final end.