Little Big Things

I don't know about you, but I find it easy to take for granted just how widespread Christmas is as a holiday. There are websites and infographics devoted entirely to how it is celebrated all over the world: the music, the food, the specific person who brings presents to the good children or punishment to the bad. Even places and cultures that were not historically Christian - nor subject to widespread European colonization - seem to have gotten in on the action by now. And nowhere is that clearer, I think, than in global versions of the Nativity . Every year, for instance, the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. puts together a curated display of just some of its hundreds of crèches - figurines depicting the Nativity scene - from all around the world. And while many of these sets have the conventional figures and features many of us will have come to expect, others offer a more culturally-specific rendition, with subtle changes to the characters' faces, dress, or belongings ...

  Monster. What comes to mind when you see that word? Maybe it's some eerie spectre or bloodthirsty creature: the one lurking in the darkness just out of the corner of your eye, yet never quite visible when you turn around to look. Maybe it's the supernatural and doomed Byronic hero: the one you know should repulse you, but who is far too alluring to resist. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the radicalized mass murderer: the one so deeply buried in their online echo chamber that you don't even know they exist until they suddenly burst out into the open, leaving death and destruction in their wake. For me, a monster can certainly be all of those things. Already, in my mind, I can hear some of the names. See some of the faces. And perhaps, given this time of year, you think this is where I plan to go. But it isn't. Not this year, nor any year either before or after. Because for me, when I hear the word "monster", I hear its root: Monstrare.  It's a Latin word ...