Saturday 28 December 2019

Christmas 2019: Still Salivating At Jingle-Bells.

The Season of Good Sales: “What does it matter?”, sneer the atheists and secularists. “The whole silly story never happened.” It matters because the still-cherished principles of secular humanism may be traced all the way back to the Roman Empire of 2,000 years ago, when ordinary human-beings gathered to hear and repeat the words of a carpenter’s son.  It matters, also, because, to paraphrase Robert Harris, writing in his latest, terrifying, novel The Second Sleep: when morality loses its power, power loses its morality.

WHAT HAVE WE just celebrated? Christmas? A holy festival? Or a bacchanalian celebration of conspicuous consumption designed, built and delivered to a palace or a hovel near you by Global Capitalism PLC? I think we all know the answer to that. What hurts the most is that we fall for it every single year. Proof, if proof is required, that Pavlov’s dogs weren’t the only animals conditioned to salivate whenever the jingle-bell rings.

Consider the fact that Christmas is celebrated in just about every mall on the face of the planet. They’re doing it in Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore and Bangkok. The only part of the world where you might struggle (and, quite possibly, incur some risk) to find Christmas displays and commercial enticements is in the Muslim world.

Now, why is that? The answer is simple. Because Muslims still believe. Islam remains a living and, for the most part, uncorrupted faith. It is still illegal in Muslim countries to practice “usury” – lending out money at interest.

The same was once true of Christendom. Indeed, one could argue that the forward march of capitalism was only finally secured in the British Isles in 1854 with the passage of “An Act To Repeal The Laws Relating To Usury”. The commercial imperative has long since laid low the ancient claims of religion in the Christian West. In the Muslim world, however, the good fight against Mammon goes on.

It would be an interesting exercise to quiz a thousand young people chosen at random from the countries where neoliberal capitalism reigns joyful and triumphant, and ask them to locate the events of Christ’s birth in the broader New Testament narrative.

Would a majority still be able to accurately re-tell the story? Mary’s pregnancy; the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem; the birth of the infant Jesus in a stable; the shepherds in the fields; the Angelic Host’s proclamation of peace and goodwill toward men; the journey and arrival of the Magi; King Herod’s massacre of the innocents; Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus’ flight into Egypt. How many would attempt to place Santa Claus somewhere in the Christmas Story? It’s probably best not to know!

Astonishingly, not even our senior Christian clerics seem to be able to tell the Christmas story correctly. In the NZ Herald of Saturday 21 December 2019, one of them wrote (on behalf of all the major denominations) that: “Jesus, God’s son, was born amongst the animals. He grew up in a family that experienced poverty. He spent the first years of his life as a refugee, eventually fleeing for his life from a wicked dictatorship.”

Ummm. No. He didn’t. Joseph was a carpenter and, like blacksmiths, carpenters in the ancient world were not to be counted among the poor. Jesus had a comfortable upbringing. Nor did the Christ spend the first years of his life as a refugee. Yes, the New Testament has him fleeing to Egypt, but his return to Galilee was not long delayed on account of King Herod’s sudden and mysterious demise. So, quite where this “eventually fleeing for his life from a wicked dictatorship” comes from is anybody’s guess. The Gospel According to Golriz Ghahraman perhaps?

“What does it matter?”, sneer the atheists and secularists. “The whole silly story never happened. The gospels were thrown together several decades after the alleged birth, life and death of Jesus of Nazareth – if such a person can truthfully be said to have existed at all!”

It matters because the still-cherished principles of secular humanism, which continue to inspire the multitude of moral arbiters who police social media, come with provenance papers tracing them all the way back to a peculiar collection of Jews and Gentiles living and writing in the Roman Empire of 2,000 years ago. Ordinary human-beings who gathered to hear and repeat the words of a carpenter’s son: the Galilean rabbi, Yeshua Ben-Joseph. Words that still constitute the core of the what remains the world’s largest religious faith –  Christianity.

It matters, also, because, to paraphrase Robert Harris, writing in his latest, terrifying, novel The Second Sleep: when morality loses its power, power loses its morality.

Meaning that, with every passing Christmas, the stuff we’re conditioned to buy will amount to less: and the Carpenter’s story we no longer remember will count for so much more.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 27 December 2019.

21 comments:

Simon Cohen said...

Mary’s pregnancy; the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem; the birth of the infant Jesus in a stable; the shepherds in the fields; the Angelic Host’s proclamation of peace and goodwill toward men; the journey and arrival of the Magi; King Herod’s massacre of the innocents; Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus’ flight into Egypt"
Unfortunately Chris most of what you have written here is as much a myth as Santa Claus.
It either does not appear in the bible or only appears in the most unreliable of the gospels written over a century after the events described.
Just one example will suffice.According to Luke [and most often quoted by modern Christians]Jesus was born during the census called by Quirinius the legate of Syria in the year AD 6-7.It was this census that necessitated Joseph and Mary travelling to Bethlehem from Nazareth as Bethlehem was the birthplace of Joseph.The calling of the census and the date of it are not contested by any authoritative study.
Unfortunately for the other myths Herod the Great died in 4 BC which means that he could not of ordered the massacre of the innocents or met the Magi.
One could go on pointing out the contradictions and outright untruths in the bible's depictions of the life of Jesus but if you are interested there are many modern studies written by reputable historians which will give you a better understanding of the life of one of the most remarkable human beings who ever lived.

Brendan McNeill said...

Chris, Grace and peace to you this Christmas.

You are right to point out that as a culture we are becoming increasingly theologically illiterate, and that ignorance of Western civilisation’s animating religious story has consequences.

Enlightenment thinkers, in putting belief in God behind them, chose instead to believe that human beings were essentially good, and didn’t require redemption; just lawns to mow and malls to shop in. That our existential angst could be satisfied with the imminent, the material.

As the transcendent shrank to meet the horizon, we pushed the ‘political’ into the space the transcendent once occupied, exclaiming earnestly ‘we can do this!’ or (insert preferred political slogan here).

There are many things we can do of course, but ‘new creation’ (2 Corinthians 5:17) is not one of them. For this redemptive work we require the grace of God as revealed through his son Jesus Christ, whose birth we celibate throughout the world today, and until the end of time.

Trev1 said...

"In the Muslim world, however, the good fight against Mammon goes on." As former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed pointed out the other day, not one Muslim country is considered "developed" by the UN. Any connection? There is strong evidence Jesus lived and Christianity, along with the Greek philosophers, has given us many of the values that built our civilization. We are now in danger of losing them along with our faith which is under constant attack. The growing vacuum is being filled by hysteria-driven, fundamentalist cults that seemingly spring up from nowhere like Extinction Rebellion. A bleak outlook indeed if they prevail.

Mike Grimshaw said...

The central story of Christianity is Easter and this is the story of the death of God: God stops being God separate from humanity and joins with humanity to the point of death.

Remember too that many Protestants refused to celebrate Christmas - seeing it as a pagan story and festival. Perhaps the modern commercialized Christmas is really the full and true return of the pagan festival?

On the other hand, to attempt to live 'after Christianity' is different from trying to live so as to negate Christianity; it is interesting that many thinkers (from Habermas to Zizek) on the left have re-turned to co-opting Christianity as the basis of a value for humanity not to be found in either economics or biology.

Anonymous said...

There is also nothing in the Bible about celebrating Christmas (which for Puritanical types like Oliver Cromwell meant banning it) - the celebrations themselves are a case of Christian tradition latching onto the pagan winter solstice.

Christianity is much, much more interested in Easter.

Bill Wright said...

About the retailer's annual festival and orgy, it never ceases to amaze me that people are so gullible as to answer the siren call of advertising which appears frequently and repeatedly in every kind of media, even down to personal mobile telephones. People flock obediently to spend money they don't have on things that they don't need.

As a measure of mass gullibility many of the advertisers cite price reductions of fifty, even sixty, percent on the original price. Yet, one may be assured that even at the reduced price they still turn a profit – so why the high original price in the first place?

Unfortunately Chris, Islam is not the paragon of virtue that you suggest, nor is it a religion of peace. Today, the faithful are picking up on the injunction contained in the revelations at Mecca to expand across the world and kill those who do not willingly accept the faith. Usury is the least of it.

Geoff Fischer said...

Kia ora Chris.
One reason why Muslims hold more tightly to the Abrahamic moral system may be that their primary scripture, the Quran came through a revelation to a single individual, whereas the Christian scriptures were written by many. The diversity of the Christian scriptures allows ample room for revisionism, re-interpretatio,, ambivalence and selectivity which is sometimes a strength but can also serve to dilute the faith and undermine moral certainties.
Having said that, Muslims can stray from the narrow path just as easily as Christians or adherents of any other faith, and many Muslim states have found work-arounds for the ban on usury which provides means for returns to borrowed capital.
But there is no denying that Islam imposes greater restrictions on capital and commerce than modern Christianity or any other contemporary faith and that to me explains why neo-liberalism felt it necessary to engage in its current and on-going brutal onslaught against the Muslim world.

Odysseus said...

Mammon? The Saudi royal family's worth is estimated at US$1.5 trillion. Saudi consumerism keeps London's high streets afloat. Yet the Saudis are the guardians of Islam's holiest places.

Roly said...

The example, and most others like it, are as old as Christianity itself and have long since been answered. I leave this here (against my better judgement for engaging on religion in a comments section)
Peace to all : http://www.comereason.org/roman-census.asp

greywarbler said...

If Christianity arises to produce Christmas where families come together and give presents that interest or delight family and others who may be donated to, then that is good. The pressure on people to spend is part of the capitalist society that dominates us, and tries to be beside us with its hand out in everything they do. Don't mistake the good thing that is Christmas for the capitalistic consumer thing that wants to sell us our basic needs as well as our wants, with as much tax on them as possible.

Taking an analogy, capitalism is the tax collector in the Bible story about Jesus. He hid in a tree, knowing that he was loathed. Jesus went to him in compassion and invited him to join the throng. We need to understand that capitalism 'isn't us', and try to build a group of kindly, hard-working people who act to reduce taxes on those with just enough. That would be a good gift, the template of thought and behaviour of a good person, for us all to take from Christmas into 2020.

Zacchaeus... was a chief tax-collector at Jericho, mentioned only in the Gospel of Luke.[2] A descendant of Abraham, he was an example of Jesus's personal, earthly mission to bring salvation to the lost.[3] Tax collectors were despised as traitors (working for the Roman Empire, not for their Jewish community), and as being corrupt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacchaeus

https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Zacchaeus.php4
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-9-10/

Anonymous said...

One reason why Muslims hold more tightly to the Abrahamic moral system may be that their primary scripture, the Quran came through a revelation to a single individual, whereas the Christian scriptures were written by many. The diversity of the Christian scriptures allows ample room for revisionism, re-interpretatio,, ambivalence and selectivity which is sometimes a strength but can also serve to dilute the faith and undermine moral certainties.

One small problem with that... Islam doesn't have a single interpreter. It has many, many scholars debating the minutiae of the text. Christianity, for most of its existence, had a single, definitive authority (the Papacy) on the correct way to interpret scripture.

sumsuch said...

I think we rationalists are way more moral than modern day christians. Maybe the christians who aren't as full on about the nonsense are at our level. And aren't the Scandies the most moral of nations?

sumsuch said...

Are you complaining about lack of common references? It pisses me off certainly. Our fishing deep into our hereditary culture to learn about ,and the modern atomisation. None of our generation thought themselves 'informed' without knowledge of our/British culture. Certainly the lack of the knowledge of our past and culture undermines us. Otherwise the smog of America media will destroy our sense. We need to defend ourself by attacking.

Nick J said...

Even the hardest line atheist or Marxist would be hard pressed to avoid the imprint in the language, culture and thinking of two thousand years of Christianity. We don't just jump from belief in the transcendent to faith in the rational. The scientific secular faiths like Marxism, market fundamentalism etc attempt to explain everything. Nothing left to mystery, imagination.

To all my fellows on this blog, as an agnostic I wish you a Merry Christmas season, a chance to reflect on eons of humanity taking a pause to celebrate their good fortune to be able to envisage something more than what they could physically perceive. To imagine the transcendent. To be human.

Jens Meder said...

Greywarbler - if tax collecting is capitalism, then is not the tithe for the Lord's work - like helping the poor - also capitalism ?
Do not both require the basic economic action of saving or sacrificing at the expense of hand-to-mouth consumption potential to pay for taxes, building a church, helping the poor, accumulating security reserves and items to exchange or trade and the potential for useful (profitable) investment ?

Has it not occurred to you, that advanced capitalism is the basic function of survival and criterion by which the human way of life is different from the basic biological capitalism in the animal kingdom (e.g. like building up fat reserves for hibernation, or the ample provision of egg-white for the the yolk to consume on growth) ?

Geoff Fischer said...

In reply to Anonymous
It is true that Islam is not monolithic, that it has divided into two major streams and a number of smaller sects, and its scripture, even though coming through one prophet, is still subject to differing interpretations. However, relatively it is more consistent and less given to doctrinal diversity than the Christian scriptures.
I suggested that as one possible reason for the more enduring attachment to a strict moral code within Islam.
There are others.
One is theological. The notion of grace and salvation by faith is not so well established in Islam. Therefore moral rectitude becomes the default path to salvation.
Another is sociological. With the failure of Marxism, Islam has become the ideology of revolutionary resistance to oppression in large parts of the world, and that revolutionary order requires the implementation and maintenance of a strong moral code within the revolutionary classes if they are to defeat and overthrow a corrupt existing order.

greywarbler said...

Jens Meder
Capitalism has over-ridden every other impulse of us up to the present. Maybe a better economic and governance system that puts capitalism to the side as an aid would cut through all the arguments and justifications of it.

The boring circular discussion about it is probably stimulating for those who have done well and enjoy the rationalisation as to why they should get cream on their croissants. For the rest of us we need to keep dusting the bench where the ideas are parked, to keep the ashes floating ex Australia from smothering them. Have your talk about capitalism with them, you may actually stir some more activity over there now they are desperate and in virtual hell. Our turn soon?

sumsuch said...

This column doesn't convince in any way. Are we s'posed to humour you? Like my crazed older born-again brother? It lessens your case like your lack of support for Bernard Hickey and Sue Bradford and all the last of those grown to adulthood under … the old NZ. Our last movement is on as I can clearly see. After us, who?

Jens Meder said...

But greywarbler - as long as you or no one else explains an alternative to capitalism for dealing with all the complaints such as e.g. our socio-economic schism into haves and have-nots, or reducing air pollution by our activities, then is it not justified and natural to explore all the possibilities achievable with the help of capitalism ?

Instead of grumbling and moaning, greywarbler - why not come up with examples and actual action proposals of what to do in order to deal with any existing and foreseeable problems, and to some extent also to be prepared for the unexpected ?

sumsuch said...

On the matter of religion, Chris, you're 7th form. I, a rationalist, support (ed) my old parents physically. I gave away 10s of thousands of dollars to charity from my inheritance on the death of my father, while both my evangelical sibs tried to pull scams. Evangelical (which is to say force, without which there is no religion) Christianity is a full immersion course in rationalisation, which in turn becomes a war on evidence/science.

sumsuch said...

Though thank God for the English evangelical economist on National Radio's Tuesday morning. Rod Oram.