Dark deeds of November

The first part of November always gives me the shivers. It’s not just that we go off Daylight Saving Time, so it seems darker all of a sudden; or even that the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November is Election Day here in the United States every couple of years. It’s that this is the time we acknowledge dark deeds that were done within living memory of our parents and grandparents.

First of all, on 9 November 1938, Nazis attacked synagogues, homes and businesses of Jews all over the Reich in an event that we know as Kristallnacht. I’ve written about it before, and I wish I thought we’d made 77 years of progress in the past 77 years.

(And Kristallnacht marked the 15^th anniversary of Hitler’s first attempt to seize power, what we know as the Beer Hall Putsch. This time just has bad mojo.)

This is also when several of the Allied Powers formed during the World War I remember men and women who have died in the service of their nations during wars. We do it around this time because that particular conflagration came to an end at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. We called it Armistice Day; now Veteran’s Day. To the British, on the Sunday closest to the 11^th, it’s Remembrance Sunday.

To my eyes, this commemoration seems much more deeply felt throughout Britain than ours is here, perhaps because proportionally they lost so much more in the world wars in terms of blood and treasure than we did. The first war rocked the foundations of their empire and the second shattered it. We, on the other hand, basically made our bones in the first one and sealed the deal with the next.

Over there, Remembrance Sunday is an occasion for stepping away from your life and considering what it might have been were it not for the sacrifice of the military. Over here, unless you have friends or relatives in the service, it’s an occasion for retail sales.

The big deal in Britain on Sunday was the ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall—that’s the one attended by members of the royal family, politicians and high-ranking military folk. (The Cenotaph itself was a response to the end of the First World War. Literally an “empty tomb”, smack in the heart of the governance of empire, that was meant to remind all who pass of the cost of war.) At 1100 everyone falls silent for two minutes, and then—beginning with Her Majesty—people lay wreaths, usually representations of poppies, beside the monument.

Here’s a clip of what it looked like this year, courtesy of The Telegraph.

Note how stark it looked at the beginning. And here it was shortly afterwards (courtesy of the BBC):

The ceremony was shorter this year out of concern for aging veterans who’d stand through the November cold. However, the attempt to get pols to save some time by laying their wreaths in groups instead of individually only caused them to squeal and pout like adolescent girls over the notion of being perceived as less important than God.

Some things just never change, do they?

Well—there were other ceremonies in cities, towns and villages around the UK. My friend MLD and her colleagues contributed by ringing half-muffled bells at Holy Trinity in Cookham, and she tolled the tenor for 15 minutes up to 1100. It’s hard work, keeping that slow, steady strike on such a heavy bell, but she’s glad to do it every year.

So, okay—some light in the darkness. I’ll hold on to that.