These are the opening lines of the Sussex Carol, another wonderful, seldom-heard traditional Christmas carol, but as I close another year of this exercise I'm not simply pointing out one more great thing that you all should listen to immediately (though you should). I had this playing in my (wireless) headphones the other day and one word stood out from all the rest, mirth. It's not a word we use a lot (in fact, all I can picture when I say mirth is Carol Kane in The Muppet Movie saying, “Yeth?”), but I think it is going to be my Christmas wish for all of us this year.
It is important that the writer combined joy and mirth in the same line to show that they are related but not identical (OK, some may say that he just needed something to rhyme with birth). Mirth is a subset of joy, all mirth is joy, but not all joy is mirth. Mirth is the most childlike and boundless face of joy, completely guileless, completely self contained, and completely without self awareness. I picture a child giggling as the face of mirth, overwhelmed by happiness, maybe not even recognizing the reason why.
In these later years mirth becomes a stranger in our lives. We still have joy, but in its cooler faces. We feel satisfaction, which is the antithesis of mirth because it is completely tied to reasonable rationale. We feel ironic amusement that often borders on gallows humor (Donald Trump). We feel Shadenfreude as we watch our real and imagined enemies encounter obstacles. As I examine the past year, I think the joy I have felt most often has been relief that something worked or some bad thing didn't happen. While all of these have their place, all of them are limited and lack the expansiveness of mirth.
So as we move into Christmas (and if you follow the Christian calendar Christmas season doesn't start until tonight) I hope that we all can be given many moments of mirth. Let us all let go of self-consciousness and feel bloody happy that it's Christmas, that it's Friday, that it's life. If there is a gift of Christmas that we all need and one that could benefit the whole world, it would be the gift of mirth. It's too big to wrap (almost too big to feel) but there is enough of it to go around and fit under everyone's tree and to fill everyone's house.
Merry Christmas…let there be peace.
Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/6111312534
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Help! My wife added a new app on her phone of Xmas music and the I HEART Xmas station is playing Dean Martin and some victim singing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Help me before the exploitation is complete.