Happy Holidays
All the holidays! Whichever ones you celebrate, and the Spangler family celebrates a lot of them, I hope you’ve had the best of times.
I didn’t do my usual song blogs this year, and I know some of you missed them. I sort of missed them, too, but I didn’t have it in me this year. However, now that I’ve told a few people that, I worry that I might have given folks the wrong impression. It’s not that I didn’t celebrate Christmas or that the world was too dark and sad for me to find the joy of the season. The world is dark and sad and scary, which is why we particularly sought joy this year. We clung to it. We fought for it. The holidays, like much of our year, were almost an act of defiance for us. We did all the things, we went to all the places, we reached out to all the people, and we celebrated all the blessings, because that’s what we needed.
As one of my favourite Christmas songs reminds us, “God is not dead, nor does He sleep.” Christmas is Emmanuel, God with us, even in the darkest times. The voice in the wilderness, the light in the darkness, the joy amid sorrow, we are pressed but not crushed, persecuted not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. And this year, instead of just writing or reflecting, we went out and lived and loved with abandon, partially because that’s what Christmas calls us to, and partially because when the power structure wants nothing more than to break you, queer joy is a revolutionary act.
So with that in mind, here’s the 2017 Spangler year-end review. It showcases some ups and downs, but mostly a whole lot of things to love.
