Now that it's all over, the presents unwrapped, the feasts eaten, and in some houses the Christmas tree already stripped, it seems appropriate to look back on the season we've just weathered, some joyfully and some not so much.
What is the nature of this festival we celebrate each year? Despite how secular our society has become, it is still a major driving force in the economy, with people, especially the poor, rushing like lemmings each year to immolate themselves on cliffs of debt. Of course it's the poor; we are the ones who exist in this society to be milked, like cows.
So, the nature of Christmas. To a few die-hard Christians, Christmas is our second greatest feast, the celebration and reliving of Christ's miraculous birth, the beginning of the long, beautiful path of our salvation. To many people now, however, it seems to be the occasion for celebration of all that is worst in us: our greed, our gluttony and pure selfishness. I'd like to think that this is a catharsis, leaving us cleansed and improved for the new year, but sadly, this kind of thing doesn't work - like orgies of gluttony or drinking before embarking on a strict diet or regime of sobriety, what it really does is undermine our moral fibre and render it impossible, in the short term, to rise above the mire.
Of course, there is a great deal of lip service paid. 'Joy, peace and love', proclaim the banners, as beneath them hordes of shoppers elbow each other out of the way. People who couldn't be bothered giving one the time of day for 50 weeks of the year suddenly realise their entire life will be ruined if they don't get to have lunch with us in that particular week. In workplaces, there's a lot of hugging and kissing; people who spent their year stabbing you in the back and sometimes even sabotaging your work slobber all over you as if you were their long-lost mama come back from the wars. It's all about as real as tinsel, and as useful, although perhaps not quite so pretty.
This whole shitshow is exemplified, like most productions, by its leading characters. Just as Dr Zhivago was the poster boy for the film of that name, as Bruce Willis represents the Die Hard films, we see at the head of things the leading man of the day. Once, long ago, this role was filled by Our Lady, by the Holy Family as they trudged their way to Bethlehem, by the Baby Jesus. Now, however, they have been relegated to the status of extras, and the leading role is filled by Santa Claus.
One of the Native American peoples, I am told, has a legend that inside each person are two wolves, one good and one evil. They battle each other for dominion of your soul. Which one will win, asks the querant. The one that is stronger, goes the answer. The one you feed.
