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No matter what you believe or don’t believe, no matter where you live, you can’t get away from it, and it’s here again. Even if you don’t want it to be. It’s that pagan winter festival conceived in order to cheer folk up in the midst of the shortest days and the longest nights. A time to get drunk and eat the remainder of the grain and smoked meat before hibernating like a bear until the sun rears it’s head again. It’s Xmas.

When the Christians took over, and redirected the celebrations towards their Saviour’s birth rather than the Winter Solstice, they did manage to hold on to the old Norse tradition of "Yule" as in yuletide, and even took Santa (orginally the Norse Goddess "Hertha") along for the ride. It’s funny how no one in the Bible or the New Testament celebrated the birth of their King of all Kings, still I’m sure they had their reasons, even though most of it was written many years after the event. December the 25th used to be the "birth day" of the sun-god, "Sol Invictus" or "Mithras" and  was actually the concluding day of the pagan winter festival called the "Saturnalia". Still I’m sure you don’t want to hear any of that, it’s Christmas after all.

Besides, something rather special is happening this year. Ever since the Coca Cola company stole Christmas away from all affiliated religious factions, and replaced it with a time for higher consumer spending, the rest of retail business followed suit, and we in the privileged West have ever since been digging ourselves into deeper and deeper debt with every generation. However, for a change, this year we can celebrate in frugality, we can buy nothing at all, and simply enjoy each other’s company. It doesn’t matter if you’re religious, I know i’m not, but I do believe that the world needs to take a day off now and again and learn to reflect, and this year we’re all going to have to do that. Many of us won’t have the distractions of all the latest gadgets or the opportunity to fly off to warmer climes, and even a popular ski resort is out of the question. Everything everywhere is far more expensive now, and the people of the world have really started to get the hang of this non-materialistic lark.

Shops are panicking, well obviously not the shops, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a shop in panic, just the people in it. Usually those over-excited people in question are shoppers, but now it’s the retailers turn. They can slash their prices all they want but I feel a collective surge coming on, almost Marxist in flavour, hmm, tastes good. It means we’re forced to enjoy what we have, and who we’re with, and why we’re here. We are starting to talk again, the TV maybe on but it’s not a brand spanking new ginormous flat screen affair, and it isn’t hooked up to all the latest Wii games, it’s the same one we had last year, and all that’s on are repeats.

Conversation is starting to look a lot more attractive option too. Corporations don’t like conversations. Conversation results in the development of more informed minds, and informed minds like to discuss and debate, be it the pros and cons of retail conglomerates, or the failings of government, or the pointlessness of the latest ad campaign for some new fangled widget or other. People with time on their hands, people with accumulated feelings and thoughts gather memories of past interactions, and worst still, questions for those who bear down authority on their lives

These people are no good for the high street, they don’t fit the statistics of blue chip ad agencies, they don’t buy the latest "anything". In fact they use the old one, and keep using it, whatever it is, and if it breaks they try and repair it, and if they don’t know how they ask someone who does. Before you know it people are talking to all sorts of other people, sharing ideas, sharing skills, passing the time with more and more intellectual pursuits, striving to both understand and hopefully, finally, control their own destinies.

My Christmas isn’t religious, and it isn’t sold at the supermarket, my Christmas is sitting here at 5am and waiting for the hustle and bustle of commuter life to fill the street outside, to slam the doors of nearby houses and cars, to roar the engines for an early start so the boss will consider handing out a promotion, and yet it doesn’t, it stays slient, and the sun slowly rises, and all I hear is a faint dawn chorus and the tapping on my keyboard.

Rest you merry people, you need it, for soon we will all be fighting to survive again. The New Year may not be a happy one, but it will definitely be new, and far different than many before. Materialistically, we are all poorer now, yet now we are all communicating together, on a world wide scale, and that is worth more than anything on offer at the January sales. I have a feeling within another year we may find that we not only won’t look back, we will never want to again.

Peace to you all…

This post is tagged Christian, Christmas, corporate, corporation, materialism, Norse, pagan, political change, recession, Solstice