2020: The Year With and The Year Without

 I had a dream, which was not all a dream. 

The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars 

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day

--Lord Byron, 1816

The year without….

With a little more than forty days left, mercifully, in the year 2020, I’ve begun to think about how future historians might look back on this oddest and hardest and cruelest of years. How they might name it, portray 2020. To fully understand a given time in history, two things have to happen: we have to be well past it and I’d say by at least a decade. And we have to name it, capture it somehow, with a pithy or easy to remember catchphrase, that somehow perfectly reflects the times we lived in.

Think the roaring twenties, a decade of radical change in the United States. The Great Depression, a term that captures ten years of the worst ever economic downturn in the industrialized world. We remember specific days when history turned and everything changed. December 7, 1941: Pearl Harbor is attacked and the United States roars into the Second World War. November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy is gunned down in Dallas, Texas and that most violent and fractious of decades, the sixties, really begin.

But years?

Individual years that marked a pivot point, a macro shift? 1776: a nation is born. 1865: a nation torn in two by its bloodiest war ever, lays down its arms. All good, but I wanted to find an actual named year, a year clearly and dramatically described in just one elegant phrase and I found it, tucked away in America’s attic.

1816: the year without a summer.

It’s mostly forgotten now, but in 1816, because of a massive volcanic eruption in what is now Indonesia, the world’s atmosphere was choked by huge amounts of dust, lowering the temperature worldwide and blotting out the sun and its warmth for millions of people around the globe. It led to massive crop failures and starvation. New England was plunged into the dark and cold as it had never, ever been, in what was supposed to be summertime. One Massachusetts historian wrote: “Severe frosts occurred every month; June 7th and 8th snow fell, and it was so cold that crops were cut down, even freezing the roots....Breadstuffs were scarce and prices high and the poorer class of people were often in straits for want of food.”

1816: the year without.

Maybe tomorrow’s historians will also call 2020 a “year without”, as well. When I think of this year that’s what most strikes me. All of the things, all of the rituals, all of the norms, all of the activities that were curtailed or just cancelled. The year without Thanksgiving or Christmas. The year without crowds. The year without live theater or live music or choirs or going to the movies. The year without human touch. The year without going to church or mosque or synagogue. The year without crowded malls or full school buses or packed restaurants and bars.

It has been a year without, absolutely.

But being a person of faith who needs to find some good, some hope, history redeemed, I also see that its been a “year of”, too, in 2020. A year of record breaking voter turnout, the most active and robust exercise of our right to vote since 1908. The year with amazing human adaptation, millions of us learning new ways to live and work, being forced by circumstances to adapt and then doing so amazingly well. The year of courage and wisdom: from doctors and nurses and teachers and store clerks, first responders and scientists and researchers. The year we remembered the importance of all of the intimate and social connections in our lives: how easy it is to take these for granted. How much these face to face relationships are missed right now. Remember hugs?

No matter how we remember it in the days and years to come, 2020 will always be a year. A YEAR. The year, at least in our times and in our memories. Of that there is absolutely no doubt. 

2020. The year with and the year without.

That works.