You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Welcome to the Doctor Wendy
Waalh' show. Oh my goodness, here we are kf I AM six forty
live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. And it's Christmas Eve. Are you with
me? Yeah? Christmas Eve? I know. So I'm going to assume
that a few of you are listening at home because you're either alone or your
family's busy, and you're getting ready for the big day tomorrow, and maybe
Christmas Eve is not the big day to you, or you're listening to this
show later on the app. I always find that time between Christmas and New
Year's is where I catch up on my books, my media, my year
end accounting. There seems to be so many, so fewer phone calls and
interruptions and emails that it's my time to just kind of relax and get things
done. So maybe you're doing that. Maybe you're just listening to the show
if you are alone on this Christmas Eve. I have some suggestions coming up
in the show of things that you can do over the holiday season, and
also at the very end of the show, I want to talk about ways
to cope if you are alone on Christmas. Some things that you can do
to really honor yourself and the beauty within you. I'll be honest. I
was raised Roman Catholic, and I didn't even realize my parents were as religious
as they were until I started meeting Catholic lights. I didn't know that every
single person did not go to church every single Sunday morning, and if you
were going to miss it, that you would go Saturday night instead, and
that everybody went to Catechism classes and everybody did first Communion and Confirmation. I
thought everyone just did that. I didn't know that was only for the deeply
religious. I look back on it, and although I don't identify as Catholic
now because I think they would kick me out because I was divorced. Producer,
Kayla, why did you roll your offe? They have rules? Well
yeah, well you made it seem like you know you you quit them.
I think it was a mutual break. I quit them. I just don't
know. Like I like the rituals like you sense, I like the robes,
I like the lighting, I like the songs. I like getting on
your knees and then standing and then sitting and down again. You shake hands,
are you being sarcast No. Part way through you actually have to shake
hands with everybody around you. You make new friends to Baptist Church, you
do, okay, So I miss all of that. You know, Julio
and I are getting married in twenty twenty four. Is it going to be
a big Catholic white wedding. No, No, it's gonna be at a
vineyard some wow. But I reached out to a quaint, little historic Catholic
church in the town near where I am, and then I went on their
website to find out like how to get married in the Catholic Church. And
can you believe in this day and eight, I'm not bashing you Catholics or
the Catholic Church. You're welcome to have your rules. That's why I think
you kick me out. That's what I think. In this day and age,
you still have to take a Catholic marriage preparatory course for a few months.
Can you imagine at our age we could teach it, and then if
you were married before, which both of us were, you have to go
track down your ex spouse, get their signature and get it annulled. Come
on in almost twenty twenty four. Yeah, wow, it's crazy. So
that's why I think they pretty much kicked me out. But let's talk about
why I'm really bringing this up. We had the best Christmases. I don't
think anybody can beat the Catholics. Okay, New Christmas Eve. So here's
what we do. We'd sit around the fireplace when we were little kids in
our jammi's all warm from the hot bath, and they would my parents would
light a fire. My dad, of all weird traditions, would make milkshakes
a cold thing. But we never got homemade, real milkshakes with real ice
cream, and so that was a new a Christmas Eve tradition. And then
he would open the Bible and he would read the passage from who is it?
Is it Genesis or something where he says and then the Lord came under,
heth the baby, and there's a star in the day to bed.
I don't know the whole thing. And so he would read the whole little
passage to us and we would sip our milkshakes. But what we were really
waiting for is we were allowed to open one gift before Christmas morning, and
we spent weeks as the little gifts were piling up under the trees because I
meant Santa hadn't come yet, but the parents had put a few things there
and we would shake them and rattle them, and we would try to guess
which one we were going to open for Christmas Eve. And let me tell
you, there were some years that that was a big ass disappointment. I
remember my brother Chris one time he saw what was clearly wrapped a record album
and my little brother and I are looking at him as he's grabbing it,
and he's like, oh, I want to do the album because he was
into like heavy metal and rock or something at that point. And our eyes
were so buggy, like, don't do it because we knew it was Elvis
Christmas Carols. What was my mother thinking? Maybe she thought because it was
Elvis he would put up with it. Elvis Christmas Carols. Anyway, that
was a disappoint Christma see for him. Sorry. How do you guys celebrate
Christmas when you were growing up? Kayla, Oh, Christmas was the best
time ever. We did get to We went to actually midnight Mass, so
we went, oh, yeah, we used to do that once we got
older. Yeah, midnight Mass and then have breakfast after Mass in like the
middle of the night. And then too, yeah, and the Baptist do
that as well as a Catholic. No I had. I had Catholic family
members, so we celebrated Church Christmas the Catholic way. And then me and
my siblings would all sleep together in the room and we wake up together and
run downstairs and to wrap our gifts. But my mom was always still rapping
gifts at that time. She would send us back to bed, so she
was done rapping gifts because she said Santa dropped him of afully, I'm still
rapping. So yeah, oh, I know. We watched the movie were
little. It was so hard to stay up late and do all the work
you had to do after and then the kids wake up super early because they're
so excited, much earlier than they usually. The parents are so sorry.
You know. My brother does now. Uh. He has a tradition that
he adopted somewhere along the way in his life. Breakfast on Christmas morning is
Bailey's Irish cream and coffee, so he starts drinking like seven am. Perfect
Christmas anyway, Lots of families have different ways of celebrating this holiday. When
we come back, I have a very special guest who is going to share
with us. She's a professor of religious studies and history at Loyola marra Mount.
She's going to share with us the various ways that people have found meaning
in the season through holiday celebrations. You're listening to The Doctor Wendy Wall Show
on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're
listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy
Wall Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
On this very special Christmas Eve, my guest doctor Darnise Martin. She's
a professor at Loyola Marramount University specializing in all the Abrahamic religions and history,
and specifically African American religions. Doctor Darnise, thank you so much for being
with us. Thank you, Wendy for having me. I'm happy to be
here with you on the holiday. My question is does every religion celebrate some
kind of holiday during the darkest days of the year. Ah. Well,
when you say every religion, pretty much every tradition, I think I can
I feel confident in saying that every tradition at least notices the seasonal changes.
So broadly speaking, every you know, folk religion, every spirituality, they're
at least going to have some celebration or sacrilezing of this time. If we
talk about specifically the Ibrahamic religions, then yes, we can see, you
know, that this is a time where time becomes sacred, and we can
see among the religions how they do it. And what do you think is
this associated with the seasons and the darkness and the weather or is there something
else in the doctrine of these religions And we're talking specifically about Jewish, Christian
and Muslim that makes this time of year a time to be celebrated. M
hmm. Well, again, we're talking about people of a certain kind of
faith, so there's always going to be the larger like, yes, there's
something holy about it. You know, we we acknowledge that there's a divine
presence behind the things that we see. So the mundane world isn't quite so
mundane after all. And you know, religions, one of the questions that
religion seems to answer is what is the meaning of it all? And so
when you have this time where yeah, there's a drastic change in the length
of the days, and we spend so much more time in the dark,
and it can be very scary, especially to you know, previd our people.
It's very scary to be in the dark. And so you start contemplating,
right like what's out there and what is the meaning of it all?
And contemplating the stars and you know, seeing you know, now some people
are experiencing, you know, a lack because you know the food sources have
dried up, and so what do you do? Well, let's get sort
of you know, you could say projected out right or you're internalized from the
divine. When people are trying to make sense of the world, what does
all of this mean? What do I do with our deepest existential fears?
And so then we sort of call upon the divinities that call upon the stars,
call upon something that's bigger than us, to say, what do I
make of this? Right like, I'm sitting in the dark and I'm terrified
of what's over there? Exactly make of this? And comfort and answers exactly.
I always teach that, you know, there are certain questions that religions
help humans with. What is the meaning of life? What is my place
here, what happens when I die? They are these huge questions and we
don't really have answers to them as humans, and so we've looks for answers.
And one of the ways where we look for answers is we contemplate what
else is there? And so in the contemplation of what else is there,
we connect to this divine right, the ground of all being behind what I
can see, right, if I can see the cycles of nature doing what
they do, and in the spring life comes back. You mean there's a
resurrection that happened. Yeah's life resurrect right? And then in the winter,
Oh, things die, right, they kind of go underground and there's a
hibernation period. And so when I say there's a sacrilezing of the of the
cycle of the seasons, you know, you can look at it secularly and
as that, or you can recognize, like, but there's something behind this
when we really contemplate, because where did we come from? Where do we
go? What's the meaning of it all? You know? I was raised,
as I said earlier, I was raised Catholic. And the Catholic version
or the Christian version of Christmas, is that there is this hope of new
birth coming. This baby, this the light, the star in the sky.
It's you know, it's like hit you over the head metaphor that don't
worry in this dark days, there is some brightness up ahead. We just
got to get this newborn baby growth a little bit. You're right, and
so exactly we're thinking about the return of new life and even the idea of
having an evergreen tree, like bringing an evergreen tree into your home and putting
bulbs on it. That's about the continuity of life and fertility. And a
lot of people don't realize that. Who are you know, maybe a lot
of Christians don't realize it either pagan or at least pre Christian rituals that were
seeing as people maintained the hope through the darkest days that yes, there will
be life again. What are the biggest ways we're saved? What are the
biggest similarities between how the Jewish, the Muslim and the Christians celebrate these holidays?
Do you us, of course have Hanakkah? What do Muslims have this
time of year? Well, they have various festivities or feasts, and one
is around the recognition of the prophets. The prophet Muhammad's birthday. And so
you know, Muslims and Jews are they don't have the notion of a savior
right coming into the world to save us. So their festivals are more about
honoring ongoing life without attributing it to a savior figure. Right. So we
have in Judaism and Islam festival season, right, and for Christians it's like,
okay, we're going to have a festival around the birth of our savior.
So what we see across the board and all of them, as we
might say, is this, I wanted to hold on to the continuity of
life. Like we're going to go through this dark time, the skies are
dark, whatever, but we're recognizing that we're not alone. We're recognizing that
we can still come together and like hold on to each other and hold on
to hope in these dark days. And hey, let's celebrate and get together
and then share bread and like we've probably have back our ancestors probably sat around
those campfires. What do you say, do you have a message for people
who have You know, religiosity is declining in this country as mental health problems
are increasing. There actually is a high correlation. I mean, I teach
health psychology, and I'm a scientist, but religiosity is highly correlated with better
health and better mental health. So what do you say to people who want
to celebrate these traditions but may not actually believe the doctrine any longer. Well,
there's lots of ways to do it. I mean, there are people
who are secular Jews, so so well, yeah, I celebrate Hanakah because
you know, Hankakah is really this festival about survival for one thing, and
it's a coming together that it's the desire for humans to come together and celebrate
something into as you said, share bread. So there's should I say,
health and wellness in coming together. And so we don't feel that we're alone.
We don't feel like we're isolated, and that's so important for humans is
to not feel isolated. And in terms of our health and wellness, our
mental health, we need to feel like we're accepted someplace that we are and
we have a home that we're seen and heard and embraced and welcomed. And
we know what happens to humans who are isolated, not good for us.
We went through exactly, it's not you know exactly exactly, and so what
ends up happening. You know, as you were saying, like I'm sitting
around the fire, what do humans do? We're going to tell stories,
right, We're going to lean into these stories and you know, have a
little children ask as the adults and the elders what's the meaning of that star
over there? Or how do we come to live here? And then there's
going to be this great mythologizing, right, I want to use the word
mythologizing and myth making. Some people will say, oh, well, then
it's not real. It's realer than real, it's truer than true, because
it gets that these existential truths. So different cultures, different religions will have
different ways of talking about life and new life and death and rebirth and celebration.
But in fact we're still getting to the same existential issues that humans have
and some answers. Our brains just don't do well if we don't have some
kind of way to make sense of life, Doctor Dennie Smartin, we have
to go to a break. I do want to say that if someone's listening
and they are alone on this Christmas Eve, stay tuned, because at the
end of the show, I've got some coping strategies for you in ways,
how you can have the joy of the the season in other ways. But
when we come back, you wrote a very interesting blog about, of all
people, Beyonce and how she's freeing many young women sexually through her song Church
Girls. Let's talk about this when we come back. You're listening to the
Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. We live everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Welcome back
to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere
on the iHeartRadio app. On this wonderful Christmas Eve, my guest, Doctor
Dearnise Martin, is a professor at Loyola Marra Mount University and she specializes in
African American religions and Doctor darnis you know I talk on the show about relationships.
I usually don't talk about sexuality unless it's in terms of relationships, cultural
pressures on sexuality, relationship dynamics and its impact on sexuality. I'm not a
plumbing expert. However, you wrote a very interesting article that I read online
about Beyonce and her song Church Girls, which we just heard a little bit
as we were coming into this. How is she freeing young women up?
Well, you know, miss Fiance is doing all the things. And one
of the things she's doing in her message her music is she's centering women,
not She says to me, women as being empowered, autonomous, making our
own choices and resisting a lot of the cultural baggage. That's been a sign
to us. As we know, girls and women are sexualized from a very
young age by the society itself, by the patriarchy itself. But heaven forbid,
when a girl or woman decides for herself who she's going to be,
and in her song Church Girl, she really is. It's just upsetting a
lot of Christians terribly because she really is giving permission to women to dress the
way they want to say. I can move my body, I can go
out to a club, I can do things that I that's in which I
celebrate my body and that and God is not mad, right, So it's
this, it's this double edged thing because when you're a good Christian girl,
you're expected to behave in a certain kind of way and be a godly woman.
Girl up to be a godly woman, and yeah, we should actually
talk about that. I remember when I had you on as a guest on
my podcast Mating Matters, and we were talking about how religions often control female
sexuality as a way to control their membership. In other words, they tell
you you should only have sex with somebody of your religion. You probably shouldn't
masturbate because that's a waste of sperm. You probably shouldn't be gay because you're
not going to procreate that way, and we need to just so. They
make all these rules traditionally around sexuality, and female Christian girls carry the brunt
of the pressure. Talk about that pressure. Yes, yeah, so black
girls are. I'm in a lot of traditional or conservative Christian churches there.
They're police right, like how you sit, what you wear. If you
are a girl or young woman and you're in church and your skirt is too
short, meaning when you sit down your knees are showing. Well, you
might have an older woman from the church come and give you a lap cloth
to cover you, and she may say something to you or not. She
may just put that lap cloth over you. And even if she is whef
she says it or not, it's she's saying your skirt is too short,
and you are a distraction to the men. So if it's somehow our fault,
they are our fault that men get erections. Yeah, exactly. And
so someone is the men are preaching, or the beacons are up on the
and then there you are. They can see your knees. So you're being
policed. You're being told, you know, don't show this, don't show
that, or maybe your skirt is too tight, your dress is too yea.
Our culture at large is sending the message that women should, you know,
be beautiful and show it all on Instagram. And so they're living in
this state dual economy if they will. But what has Beyonce done with her
song? What is the message she's saying to these girls. She's saying,
I can be a well one, I can have autonomy over how I look,
what I wear, where I go, and God still loves me.
And she's resisting the institutional church is sort of hyper policing of a girl and
a woman's body to say, you are not the Bossamie, right, Medie,
you can't exclude me from having a relationship with God because I choose to
wear this dress or have sex outside of wedlock, right, I just have
sex more pleasure, right exactly. So she's giving women a voice to say,
yes, this is actually okay. You can you can have autonomy over
yourself because you know, as we were just saying, otherwise, you're heavily
policed, and you don't think you have a right right. You don't think
you have a right have rights to your own body. You don't think that
you have that you can speak up for yourself, like if someone is,
you know, crossing a boundary towards you, somehow, it's your own fault.
And in the song, Beyonce is saying no, I am in charge
of me, And just that alone is enough to make a lot of conservative
Christians mad. But I think it's also freeing up a lot of young women
in America and giving them some sense of relief and restoring their self esteem.
Doctor Darnise Martin, always a pleasure to have you on our show, professor
at Loyola Marramount University, specialist in African American religions and histories. Have a
wonderful, one wonderful holiday season. Thanks, thank you, and thank you
you, thank you. When we come back, I have another very special
guest, the executive producer of the new Van Go Immersive Experience. How going
through an immersive experience might actually reduce our stress when we come back. You're
listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty.
We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You know, I am obsessed with
immersive experience and virtual reality and anything that makes my eyes and ears and sometimes
even smells get activated. We love to have our senses stimulated. Now,
that doesn't mean that I don't love to go to traditional art galleries where I
can be calm, I can breathe, I can read the nice little plaque
beside the painting, and I can have a moment where I can go back
for you know, three hundred years and imagine this artist's life. But if
you haven't been there yet, you need to go check out the new Van
Go Immersive Experience in Montebello. It's about ten minutes drive from downtown and I'm
thrilled to tell you that we have the executive producer of the exhibition right here,
John Saylor. How are you fine, Doctor Wennie, Thank you so
much for having me on. And I think that we will fall into the
previous category of immersive experiences in br but we do have a wonderful subject matter
in Vincent Bango. I'm sure. Now make sure I said your last name
correctly. Is it zaloralor Salar John Zalor? There we go, So just
so you understand, he's not only the executive producer, and he's a curator,
a distributor of world renowned immersive experiences that include you might have seen Titanic,
the Artifact Exhibition, Gires World Exhibition, Bodies the exhibition I love that
One Star Trek the exhibition. You have been around the world creating these kinds
of experiences for us. But let's talk about why Van Go of all the
great artists, Well, Van Go is the rock star of the art world.
And when you create an immersive experience, or when we created our first
immersive experience, we really wanted it to be focused on digital art, and
we wanted there to be a clear storyline, and we wanted to have a
great body of work, and mitzen Bango's work progressed incredibly through his really short
period of pain ten years to a finale that was bold, brilliant colors with
thick brushstrokes that had all this implied motion in them. So with the immersive
elements, the digital animation that we can overlay onto his paintings, we're able
to actually bring those paintings to life in a way that I think van Go
would have done had he been able to. So he was just a natural
choice from that regard from the art itself, but also his story is well
known by all of us, so many of us, and it's a story
that also is really relatable to us of not only a struggling artist, but
a person trying to find themselves, which he really does through his art.
Near the end of his life. Yeah, it's no secret that van Go
suffered from all kinds of mental health issues. I mean, you know,
I don't know what diagnosis he would have been given today. I would suspect
it might be something like bipolar mood disorder or borderline personality disorder, you know,
yeah, depressive episodes. But a lot of his struggles actually made him
a better artist. Would you agree with that. It's really it really is
true, and you really hit on a lot of those diagnoses. He had
postmoredom as well as epilepsy and alcoholism and insomnia. Wow, so he strugged
with a lot. But he wrote over seven hundred letters to his brother Theo,
and in those letters he really talks about his struggles, but he also
talks about how he takes those struggles and he channels them into his artwork.
So what you find is a lot of times the more pain he's in or
the more stripe he's going through, the more perfectly beautiful in this new way
his paintings are. And then you also see him expressing himself on the canvas
in the like in the version of Starry Night where the stars in the sky
are very turbulent. There's incredible turbulence in the sky, which is a reflection
of what's going on within him. So he really was able to channel those
works, that those feelings into his artworks. Yeah, you know, it's
I think when we have uncomfortable feelings as humans, we do what we can
to try to discharge it from our bodies. You know, like if you
have a bad meal, you go on to yelp, and you put a
bad review, right, we want to get rid of negative feelings by getting
it out. He obviously had this talent. I'll say, I'm certainly no
artist. Words are what I work in and the only time I write poetry
is when I'm sad and crying, So that must be a thing that we
do. We certainly know that journaling, for instance, for the average person
can be very cathartic for them. But van Go, he had this brilliant
visual visual intelligence, uh work, His craft of course was inspiring. What
would you say is your favorite van Go in relation to knowing about his struggles,
Well, you know, for me, one of my favorite Bengo paintings
is his iris Is painting, which he painted near the end of the time
when he was he had committed himself to you know, essentially a monastery or
a mental health you know, asylum or sanitarium that was in a monastery and
he was in the south of France, and as he started to find peace
within himself through this this time that he was he was recovering come really what
was a psychotic break, he painted these incredible flower paintings, and the Irises
is one of those paintings that has these brilliant blue colors and also has these
wonderful sharp brushstrokes in the foreground that show his in the influence of Japanese art
on his work. Japanese arts used a lot of wood cut techniques and then
Go really included those to create more depth in his work. And then really,
the more I get to know him, the more I like these these
quieter paintings that are just these beautiful paintings of nature because he was so he
found his solace in mere walking in fields or enjoying a bouquet of flowers or
a garden of flowers. So really it's a kind of a It's one of
my favorites because it really connects me to him as an artist. And the
good news is that you are bringing his work in a new way to a
new generation. John, can you hang with me when we come back.
I want to talk about the Van Go immersive experience and what people can expect.
I'm hoping I can improve my mental health by going there. So we'll
be back after this world. We'll be back after this. You're listening to
the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on
the iHeartRadio app KFI AM six forty on demand