Harvey Milk - Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men (1996)

I probably have a lot of favorite Christmas Albums, but it is entirely possible that my most favorite Christmas Eve album of all time is Harvey Milk's Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men, which captures something completely unique to the pitch-darkness, the cold and barren world of expulsion, mass emigration, slaughter of innocents, imperial overreach and the eruption of hope that will only come to pass much later on. Christmas Eve is about the space made where hope can find purchase to grow unnoticed and unremarked-upon until it is capable of altering everything, seemingly all at once. If I have anything to say to anyone who reads this here, it would be to allow yourself that, not hope, but the space for hope, a place where it can flourish undisturbed for as long as it needs to, even if you yourself are unaware of it. In general, I try to live without hope. I try and live among that which is, and that knowledge of the past which guides us. I am entirely against efforts to implement utopia, but I nonetheless believe in the utopian impulse, the belief that things do not have to be as they are, that we can change them, no matter how difficult it seems. Hope is something that lives for a time until it is inevitably destroyed, often brutally and with a great and ravenous malice. The terror and wonder of hope is that it is inextinguishable. No matter how bad things are, no matter what efforts are made to eradicate it, hope always returns. Along with hope, what we have is the power to say no, the power of refusal. We can affirm that which matters to us, what is meaningful to us no matter what is said or affirmed by others. We can also always say no, we can reject a proposal, an agenda, an ideology, a protocol, an atrocity. We can say no to it, no matter what our refusal may cost us, we can say no. If you are scared to say no, and sometimes it surely makes sense to be afraid of what might happen as a result, ask yourself if you are willing to live with the sort of person you would be if you agreed to something you know to be wrong, and what that agreement would ultimately make of you. All of us have failed ourselves and others at some time, have taken the path of least resistance, bowed down to power, committed atrocity, betrayed ourselves and our neighbors, our families, ourselves. This does not mean that we should give up. It means that perhaps we will have another chance to say no, to affect meaningful change, to make someone's lives better, to resist. One thing that tyrannical regimes often do is attempt to convince us that we are all corrupt, that we are all motivated by venal, short-sighted selfish purpose. What is important to know is that this is not done really as a weapon against us, but as a means of confirming to the tyrannical regime that their assessment of human nature is accurate, that their theory of governance is sound. Prove Them Wrong. It will hasten their undoing. I got to see Harvey Milk live in 2009 at Churchill's in Miami. It was one of the best nights ever.