Seasons Come and Go

I stole the title of today’s post from a song by Steven Delopoulos, one of my favorite singers I discovered in the last several years--actually about 10 years ago, but that’s really not what this post is about, as inspiring and talented as the man--and Burlap to Cashmere (his band) are.

Today is the official end of the Christmas season.  Some may quibble that it isn’t even a “season” or that it perhaps begins at Thanksgiving and ends on Christmas Day, but I will go with the designation of the Catholic Church that the season ends with the Baptism of Jesus, which we celebrate today.  For me, it is important because tomorrow I will take down the Nativity scene at church and change the seasonal color of white back to green the signatory shade of “Ordinary Time.”  For most people all this is rather irrelevant or of some limited significance--certainly not on the radar of very many folks, except maybe priests, liturgists and church decorators--of which I am one of the latter.

Right now I am in my living room, with my brittle and dying Christmas tree lit for what is likely the last time.  I do not mourn the end of the season--God knows it is rife with a thousand reasons to stress out, get upset, get depressed, withdraw from the joy and the holiness in the face of the added demands, most of which we put upon ourselves.  Still, the days from December 25 to the second Sunday of January are perhaps my favorite days of the winter season.  The gifts that were sometimes  such a pain to  acquire, wrap. set under the tree, agonize over whether they would be well received, or satisfactory or enough are unwrapped, used, enjoyed hopefully--and by now, put away.  Right now all that remains under my tree is a bucket with a few ounces of water that was supposed to be a reminder to water this dying pagan symbol of a season all jumbled up with odd meaning and lasting significance.

I have just recently returned to my house after bringing my third son, Aron, to the airport.  He is returning to college in northern Michigan to tie some loose ends in his educational as well as personal life.  Living in Alaska, it seems, many of us are familiar with both the hellos and goodbyes that are integral features of our local airports.  Still, the heartstrings are tugged, tears brim at the edges of our eyes, an ache catches in our throats.  The hope of hello is always wrapped in good-bye.

Seasons come and go, children grow, we all change as does our world, our lives, our hopes and dreams.  Seasons teach us that even though we often cannot control very much in this rapidly shifting existence we call life, we can celebrate, we can return again and again to the familiar, the remembered, the comfort of what we have known, whom we have loved, how we have lived.  If we are blessed with long life we dance the circle of seasons many times, with both new and old steps.  If we are blessed (or simply recognize it) we don't get mired in nostalgia or rigid tradition, but embrace what is meaningful, what is valuable, and let go of what we cannot control, time and change themselves.

So we return, again, to a season the Church calls “Ordinary”,  not because it is routine or boring, but because like its signature color, green, it reminds us of new growth, of the common beauty and  perennial nature of grass and leaves and living things, and especially of hope, which as we know, does spring eternal.