Hanukkah begins tonight, a minor Jewish Holiday morphed into a major one in cultures competing with the magnetism of Christmas for children’s souls – or for consumers’ wallets. A story of a light lasting beyond its life span, a miracle celebrated, and one of civil war, conveniently ignored.

Before we settle on sarcastic, let’s celebrate what these holidays during dark times – both by calendar and by historical era – have in common. They do bring light and its cousin, hope, to our lives. Hope for what could be, if enough energy, faith and grace can be mustered or bestowed. Survival, peace, redemption, all on the list.

I thought it would be appropriate to look at light, then, to brighten our day. Much to chose from. Here is an installation that I like watching because it has historical roots in the history of the whaling community of New Bedford, the city of light given that its port harbored the whaling ships that provided the blubber for America’s lamps for centuries. Hope for survival is surely invoked by the art work, given the fate faced daily of the seamen (many escaped Southern slaves among them.)

Here is a light installation that in some ways expressed for me the hope for peace. Peace AMONG us, in mutual aide and recognition, an effort to build community.

Marinella Senatore’s neon colored installation at Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi’s open-air courtyard provides uplifting pointers. We Rise by Lifting Others, draws on the popular southern Italian luminaria or ‘artist’s lighting’ tradition. Comprising hundreds of LED lights, the ten-metre-high installation becomes the monumental heart of the palazzo’s Renaissance courtyard. The words she chose remind us of community and participation: ‘The world community feels good’, ‘Breathe you are enough’ and ‘We rise by lifting others’.The installation will be up until 7 February 2021. 

And in case you already heaved a sigh of relief – no politics today! – fooled you. Here is the video of a light installation that speaks to the truth, and the lies, of our times. The work was erected, in timely fashion, on election day.

Stefan Brüggemann‘s project’s detailed evolution and commentary on its goals can be found here.

The artist insists that ‘the intention is not for the work to offer a conclusion, but to open up a question and place a doubt.’ Still, given the choice of location and the extent to which immigration has been politicised in the US, it is difficult not to read this as an indictment of the Trump Administration. One can only hope that, by the time the installation is taken down – shortly after Inauguration Day in the US – our society will have begun to move on from the gaslighting that Brüggemann has so succinctly decried. (Ref.)

One can only hope…

Hope for redemption, I tell you, has to start with our very own acknowledgement that it will not come from above. We have to earn and fashion it ourselves.

Happy Hanukkah!

Photographs today of my favorite source of light. Music by Max Richter on the nature of day light.