With last night being the first night of Hanukkah and with Christmas just ten days away, the delightful topic of gifting has come to my mind. And with my having minored in Classics as an undergraduate, my mind has wandered from the Judeo-Christmas gifting tradition to the mythological one.
Has there ever been a creature more literally gifted than the first woman of Greek mythology? And by “first woman”, I mean the “Eve” of the ancient Greeks. When the most powerful gods on Olympus got together to create her — by committee! — each of them gave her a special gift. Athena gave her wisdom, Aphrodite gifted her charm, Apollo’s contribution was musical skill, and Hermes provided her with a seductive voice.
Since our Judeo-Christian Eve would be the source of all future life, Adam named her the Hebrew Chavah or “life-giver,” which in English became Eve. And because of all the presents given to her by the gods at creation, the Greeks named their Eve “All-Gifts.” With Dora being Greek for “gifts” and Pan for “All”, she was called Pandora.
Many of our English words still retain the prefix Pan- for “all”: panorama for all views, panacea for all cures, pan-American for all 35 countries comprising the Americas.
Sadly, the Ancient Greeks — the creators of tragedy as we still know it today — never let a good thing stand for long. As soon as that committee of the gods gave their First Lady her lovely gifts, they dumped upon her just the opposite, with a temptation eerily similar to Eve’s apple.
They created the most beautiful gift box in all mythology and put inside it the ugliest of all evils — sickness, death, war, sorrow, and strife. Pandora was instructed never to open the box. But when her insatiable curiosity got the better of her and she peeked, out flew all the demons that have been with us ever since. And, of course, the consequence of her weakness gave us the word for “all-demons”: pan-demon-ium.
Even though Pandora’s myth does concern gifts, we can hardly compare the myth to the beauty of both Hanukkah, which symbolizes hope in the candle of the menorah oil lamp that was supposed to burn one night but lasted for eight, or of Christmas, celebrating the hope that the birth of Jesus brought to all Christians.
And yet, Pandora’s Box does indeed symbolize that same glorious hope for all mankind. If you were taught the famous story in its entirety, you remember that after all the demons escaped from the box, one tiny creature remained within. There at the bottom was Hope: frail, ever so delicate, but everlasting as compensation for all the evils we might ever encounter.
We who read English have such a moving definition of hope from Emily Dickinson: “Hope is the thing with feathers which perches in the soul.” As beautiful as a tiny bluebird, it silently warbles encouragement within us when we most need it. Hope comes in only one tense: future. We can remember our past through rose colored glasses, and we can view our present optimistically. But hope can only sustain us for a time yet to come.
Thus, it is appropriate that our two current hopeful holidays have gift-giving at their core. Truly, gifts aren’t as much about the recipient as about the giver. As much joy as the perfect gift might bring to its recipient, it can’t match the joy that we who purchased it feel as we wrap it and imagine the future delight of our loved one, who will soon gleefully own it. We live in buoyant hope of that future moment when it is opened.
In times when worldwide hope is at a premium, placing some hope in finding perfect gifts for those we most cherish seems charged with special meaning. Those gifts we give in December are all symbols of the greatest gift that was bestowed upon us at birth: the gift of our infinite ability to love others. Or as my two yellow labs taught me as loving puppies over thirty years ago: ‘tis better to give than to retrieve.
Darian and I hope that you retrieve the happiest of memories from your holidays this year.
Email Elliot at huffam@me.com or click here