The Darkening

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #184. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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A tongue-in-cheek but also painfully earnest look at pop culture and anything else that deserves to be ridiculed while at the same time regarded with the utmost respect. It is written by Matt Marrone and emailed to Stu Horvath and David Shimomura, who add any typos or factual errors that might appear within.

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And sometimes a scar
marks healing. And sometimes a scar can
only remind you what burned, what was
severed, what had to flee
a body — to be beheld never again.

— Kyle Dargan

The minutes counted down to 10 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 11. We stood in Rockefeller Center, my best friend Steph and I, creating a new tradition:

The Darkening.

Each holiday season, tourists gather from across the globe to watch as the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree – this year, a Norway Spruce from West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, craned into place above the skating rink and the golden statue of Prometheus – is illuminated. The lighting ceremony is a signature Big Apple event, kicking off New York City’s most magical month.

But when Christmas is over, and the new year has begun, the brutal reality of winter sets in. Blanketed by a bleak, unending chill, the Northeast is a dead world of seasonal depression, with a vague promise of spring that feels like a vicious lie.

Is this any reason to celebrate? No. But for miserable SOBs like Steph and me, there is at least a way to celebrate. The way, we discovered, is The Darkening.

What is The Darkening? The Darkening is the night the lights of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree are turned off for good. The night the white spiky star is snuffed out. The night the Norway Spruce, or whatever it happens to be that year, begins its death march to the great tree farm in the sky.

It is a night, unloved and hardly spoken of, when a few ignorant sightseers are urged to snap their photos – quick! – before they too must accept the hard truth.

For Steph and me, this tradition is a chance to reflect on misery. To recite a passage from an awful, disturbing poem called “The Darkening” that I found via a quick Google search (and is excerpted above). To sing our improvised “O Darkening” song (set, naturally, to the tune of “O Christmas Tree”). To discuss philosophy, like whether we’ll go straight to Hell if we die the moment the lights go out – as opposed to dying before or after and having to do a bunch of paperwork first.

This is a new tradition, so, no, we haven’t quite worked the kinks out yet. We just happened to have plans to meet up that night, and when the Wife of the Year told me about the tree un-lighting, I knew we had to be there for it. Steph, and me, and a bunch of soon-to-be very disappointed tourists, and a dirty Santa Claus, his suit surely as dirty as it was because of the soot from all those chimneys. We posed for photos, drank insanely overpriced, quickly cooling hot cocoa, hastily invented the silly rituals above, shivered in our heavy coats, and spoke in menacing tones. We filmed as we counted down from five along with one of the security guards nearby, who in the video can be heard calling it the best part of his job. The Darkening arrived just in time.

Matching the rest of the winter after the ball drops, it was anticlimactic: just a big dark tree standing there, no longer sparkling with cheer. Life sucked once more. It was perfect.

Will we return for next year’s The Darkening? Who knows. It’s time now not for planning but for hibernating. For gritting our teeth and grumbling, for hiding under our blankets and holding our breath, for locking our doors and swallowing our meds, until the great thaw arrives.

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Matt Marrone is a senior MLB editor at ESPN.com. He has been Unwinnable’s reigning Rookie of the Year since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @thebigm.

Header Photo: Erin Stevenson O’Connor