I posted this exact song a year ago this week – hard to believe the same sentiment applies a year later and it’s worth a repeat post of the same song.
Here’s hoping I’m not starting a new blog tradition and having to post it again at the end of 2022! 🙁
“Hell of a Year” – Parker McCollom
The origins of the day are uncertain – is it when wealthy gave their servants a box of gifts and a day off to enjoy them after a busy Christmas season? Churches placing boxes outside to collect money for the less fortunate? – but it’s pretty clear that Boxing Day has become one of society’s few purely secular holidays.
Now the fact that it *has* become about unbridled consumerism and capitalism instead is a totally different discussion… 🙁
In keeping with how shitty this year has been, the Shit Fireplace folks have truly outdone themselves with the latest edition of this important Christmas tradition.
So nice to have this streaming on the TV on Christmas Eve bringing joy and warmth to all… 😉
(And bonus, the co-creators of these videos have both worked at Regina Public Library in the past!)
It’s been a tough end to the year.
There are some fairly major changes happening at work that will affect myself and numerous other supervisors in the new year. One of those supervisors, a friend and mentor, died unexpectedly at the start of December – quite young but also getting very close to retirement, having been a “library lifer”. There’s some other stuff happening in my personal life that I know will end up being happy but right now is stressful and uncertain.
Oh, and we’re in a never-ending worldwide pandemic where the fast-spreading Omicron variant seems to be racing to spread as widely as possible, even as we all countdown the days to Christmas.
Christmas is usually one of my favourite holidays of the year. But this year has just felt heavy and blue.
Which somehow got me thinking of the first time I heard of “Blue Christmas” (in the church context as opposed to the Elvis context) a few years ago from an Anglican priest I know.
He was delivering a Blue Christmas service in the lead-up to Christmas and explained to me how it was a way his church tried to reach people who didn’t find Christmas joyous because they were grieving or had bad memories of Christmas or whatever.
I remember thinking “That’s a great idea. So nice religious people have that available.”
Then I carried on with my life.
But then this past weekend, even though I’m a pretty outspoken atheist but feeling particularly down, I found myself searching for “Blue Christmas Service” on YouTube.
There were a number of videos I dipped into and though none of them were enough to make me feel like I had to race out to rejoin the United Church of my youth, they did touch me a way I didn’t expect.
What a strange fucking year! 🙁
“Another Silent Night” – Megan Nash & The Best of Intentions
Not my usual “Saturday Snap” photo today but instead, a screen shot of someone on Reddit saying they had a good experience at my branch getting their booster shot and also picking up a box of rapid tests.
So strange to hear stories from Ontario of people lining up at liquor stores or other weird distribution glitches in other provinces when libraries are the absolute perfect place to distribute rapid tests – they’re one of the few places that specializes in giving out high volumes of things for free to a wide assortment of people across all socioeconomic classes, we generally have more space than pharmacies or other retail outlets so people don’t have to line-up outside, we have evening and weekend hours, we’re a trusted, neutral (well, “aspiring to neutrality” I always say which is a separate conversation) institution that doesn’t have the commercial or social issue overtones like you do when using pharmacies or liquor stores (though of course, having as many distribution points as possible is good too.).
(I guess also strange to see a nice comment on Reddit without any references to weird inside jokes, bitcoin or Bernie Sanders!) 😉
