Halloween magic vs. Christmas magic
Dec. 6th, 2009 02:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sailorstkwrningETA: Thank you for the snowflake cookie, Mme. Anonymous!
My neighbors are having a wild dance party, so I'm staying up to talk about magic.
Basically I was reflecting on the idea this week, in the context of the creative endeavors of Ryan (Mr. Halloween) and Jon (Mr. Christmas). Both of the holidays, or, rather, the secular celebrations of the holidays, are glossed with at least the idea of magic.
Halloween magic is (or can be) a darker, more menacing sort of thing, the echoes of the Wild Hunt rolling down through the years. It can be charming and sweet, too, tiny babies and dogs in costumes are adorable, but the electric charge of the thing, the beating heart, if you will, is in the vaguely hallucinatory swirl of the collective adult masquerade. Where people can be what they want, or who they really are, under the guise of a costume.
Christmas, on the other hand, is more about wish fulfillment and million-to-one chances and happy endings, sprinkled with snow. (Unless you are Terry Pratchett; I was also reminded that I need to re-read Hogfather for his far more bracing take on the tale of Father Christmas.) Christmas is bright lights, shiny wrappers, and romance.
Actually, all things considered, I suppose they are both about romance, just different kinds. Dramatic, stormy, Heathcliff-on-the-moors Romance vs. kitschy, ugly sweaters, embarassing relatives and stolen-kisses-under-the-mistletoe romance. Heavy cloaks and carriages rattling over wet, gaslit, cobblestoned streets vs. apple-cheeked skating on frozen ponds followed by hot cocoa and sugar cookies.
I don't actually have much of a conclusion; I was mainly thinking about how different those kinds of magic are, and how that might (in the abstract) shape the music they make together. Panic's NRWTC stage show is, from what I've seen in pictures and on YouTube (I never saw it live), very much in the vein of Halloween magic. The PO tour, as best I can tell, was mostly a big hippie festival, which may have been dreamy but wasn't exactly magical, per se. And current!Panic! seems to be aiming for Rat Pack-style glamor, which is a different kind of magic altogether.
My neighbors are having a wild dance party, so I'm staying up to talk about magic.
Basically I was reflecting on the idea this week, in the context of the creative endeavors of Ryan (Mr. Halloween) and Jon (Mr. Christmas). Both of the holidays, or, rather, the secular celebrations of the holidays, are glossed with at least the idea of magic.
Halloween magic is (or can be) a darker, more menacing sort of thing, the echoes of the Wild Hunt rolling down through the years. It can be charming and sweet, too, tiny babies and dogs in costumes are adorable, but the electric charge of the thing, the beating heart, if you will, is in the vaguely hallucinatory swirl of the collective adult masquerade. Where people can be what they want, or who they really are, under the guise of a costume.
Christmas, on the other hand, is more about wish fulfillment and million-to-one chances and happy endings, sprinkled with snow. (Unless you are Terry Pratchett; I was also reminded that I need to re-read Hogfather for his far more bracing take on the tale of Father Christmas.) Christmas is bright lights, shiny wrappers, and romance.
Actually, all things considered, I suppose they are both about romance, just different kinds. Dramatic, stormy, Heathcliff-on-the-moors Romance vs. kitschy, ugly sweaters, embarassing relatives and stolen-kisses-under-the-mistletoe romance. Heavy cloaks and carriages rattling over wet, gaslit, cobblestoned streets vs. apple-cheeked skating on frozen ponds followed by hot cocoa and sugar cookies.
I don't actually have much of a conclusion; I was mainly thinking about how different those kinds of magic are, and how that might (in the abstract) shape the music they make together. Panic's NRWTC stage show is, from what I've seen in pictures and on YouTube (I never saw it live), very much in the vein of Halloween magic. The PO tour, as best I can tell, was mostly a big hippie festival, which may have been dreamy but wasn't exactly magical, per se. And current!Panic! seems to be aiming for Rat Pack-style glamor, which is a different kind of magic altogether.
