An aspect of Christmas that is pretty much entirely missing is the eschatological one. Advent's main theme is 'the Second Coming is about to come at any minute -- we must repent and prepare for this. But since not knowing when he will return will just result in huge blue balls, we're going to have to have some celebration of the first coming of christ, and isn't that a sort of 1.5th coming?'
Since we're on a web 1.5 platform, this is a perfect place to bring up the zombie apocalypse.
the zombie apocalypse isn't christmas, of course -- it's halloween! I was thinking this morning about how it might be a good idea to try to unite all souls/all saints, and Christmas, and new year, and the epiphany into a general darkling Gothic Season. I thought of some vague ideas:
The problem with Christmas, the reason why people hate it, is having to buy gifts all at once, because it is a signifier of everything. This appears to come down particularly hard on women, who end up having to do the work of buying presents for pretty much everyone, and it is very fucked up to create such pressure. In the Gothic Season, each of the high points is associated with a particular set of relations, and so the gift-giving pressure is spread out from November to January. This could make things worse, or better. I see halloween as the part of the festival in which gifts are given among friends.
b) Christmas is Correctly reduced to a minor, but important, part of the festival. It is the part where the zombie apocalypse is fought back again for another year. I see Christmas as being really about the children, who get to fight back the monsters who came into the world during Halloween and have been haunting it for a month. All the halloween decorations come down at Christmas, and the children take over for a while. Hopefully because it is just a smaller part of a bigger thing, people don't feel obliged to shoot their wad and drown children in plastic as a result.
c) after christmas, the festival becomes relatively sober (so to speak) and it is the turn of the adults. intimate partners give gifts at new years, and there are the usual parties and drinking and so on.
d) epiphany closes the festival -- the post-halloween, christmas and new year decorations come down in one last fit of High Culture. Epiphany is the time that monarchs give addresses to their nations, that companies make statements wishing people prosperity for the new year, that bosses give gifts to their employees and so on and so on. the underlying conditions that result in a zombie apocalypse inevitably re-emerging 10 months later reinstate themselves.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2018-12-21 09:06 pm (UTC)Since we're on a web 1.5 platform, this is a perfect place to bring up the zombie apocalypse.
the zombie apocalypse isn't christmas, of course -- it's halloween! I was thinking this morning about how it might be a good idea to try to unite all souls/all saints, and Christmas, and new year, and the epiphany into a general darkling Gothic Season. I thought of some vague ideas:
The problem with Christmas, the reason why people hate it, is having to buy gifts all at once, because it is a signifier of everything. This appears to come down particularly hard on women, who end up having to do the work of buying presents for pretty much everyone, and it is very fucked up to create such pressure. In the Gothic Season, each of the high points is associated with a particular set of relations, and so the gift-giving pressure is spread out from November to January. This could make things worse, or better. I see halloween as the part of the festival in which gifts are given among friends.
b) Christmas is Correctly reduced to a minor, but important, part of the festival. It is the part where the zombie apocalypse is fought back again for another year. I see Christmas as being really about the children, who get to fight back the monsters who came into the world during Halloween and have been haunting it for a month. All the halloween decorations come down at Christmas, and the children take over for a while. Hopefully because it is just a smaller part of a bigger thing, people don't feel obliged to shoot their wad and drown children in plastic as a result.
c) after christmas, the festival becomes relatively sober (so to speak) and it is the turn of the adults. intimate partners give gifts at new years, and there are the usual parties and drinking and so on.
d) epiphany closes the festival -- the post-halloween, christmas and new year decorations come down in one last fit of High Culture. Epiphany is the time that monarchs give addresses to their nations, that companies make statements wishing people prosperity for the new year, that bosses give gifts to their employees and so on and so on. the underlying conditions that result in a zombie apocalypse inevitably re-emerging 10 months later reinstate themselves.