CHRISTMAS TIME

Not to be taken too seriously by the devout.

I’m net normally a cynic during this season when children’s voices ring out in happy song, I promise, I’m as happy with the joy of Christmas as much as any man. Or woman. don’t forget the women even though I believe that the book that all the turkey and wine parties are based on did. Though I suppose the heroine was a young woman, it’s been speculated that she was a mere teenager on whose frail frame pregnancy was difficult and even dangerous. But that didn’t matter because she had her man with her and he had a donkey.

But what, you say of all those angels? Didn’t some of them have sweet soprano voices when they raised them to carol a baby’s birth? But no. There weren’t. It seems that angels were exclusively of the male persuasion. Maybe some had their spheroids chopped off whilst young so that it was with castrati voices forever uplifting and sweetly chorusing that they created praises in the treble key? Or maybe they were all blokes with wings and dulcet baritone and the odd tenor that they heralded the birth, because women were despised unless they were called Mary. Anyway, the macho name Gabriel must be a give-away of sorts.

So this is the origin of the simple ceremony of Christmas set in a stable with shepherds and kings in attendance and all illuminated by a brand new star. Surely this unique image, a tableau replicated in every corner of the Christian world as proof that something special happened, something that must mean more than the seeming impossibility of a virgin birth? Surely there aren’t any of those lurking in fact or fiction?

But wrong! There have been a plethora of virgin births recorded, and the spooky thing is they’re all tied to religion. Take the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis. She was almost identical to the good virgin Mary, images of her were plagiarised by early Christians in order for them to have something to look at, but she supposedly lived centuries before Mary was even a twinkle in a carpenter’s eye.

But go back further in the Old Testament and there are other virgin births. It seems that something unnatural, like a woman not being soiled by sex even with her legal spouse, gives religions of all kinds the sort of boost they might benefit from. Purity, it seems, is everything, and to the twisted mind of some devotees there’s nothing less pure than carnal sex.

So let me pass the virgin birth bit because it’s plainly impossible. The state of virginity is probably used to emphasise the sweet innocence of the teenage Mary, or it might have something to do with draconian punishments for fallen women, even young ones, back then. Stoning to death, for instance, is advocated in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. Now, any young women who finds her stomach swelling and yet she is unmarried might well fear the worst even if the father-to-be promises to help her, so it should come as no surprise that she decides to run away, possibly with the aid of a donkey, rather than face a host of puritan elders.

Let’s move on from the biblical account of a birth that may or may not have happened, but if it did was certainly very different to the cosy stable with its manger. The future of the baby can be left to other bible-based holidays, notably Easter.

Fat men in red suits. That’s the next jollity associated with Christmas, and we teach young children that if they’re good they’ll get presents from Santa at Christmas. The poor bloke hurtles round the world at the speed of galloping reindeer and visits every child in a single night, scattering goodies wherever he goes. Based loosely on Saint Nicholas of Myra about whom little is known because nobody thought of writing about him until centuries after his death, it is almost certain that he never wore a red suit trimmed in white.

Like the baby in the stable, Santa Claus or Father Christmas, is total fiction with a tiny thread of uncertainty stretching back in time to events and people who may or may not have ever lived but who have left a mark on the raised voices of little ones the world over.

There were, of course, parties and celebrations long before Christianity was brought to our shores. It’s always been cold and wet and miserable here, during the winter months at least, and the ancients who trod where we now tread needed no excuse to party like it’s 1999BC. The early Christians needed a birth date for their inspiration and a party time, and there must have been nothing easier than taking over mid-winter (eventually December 25^th) for their hijinks.

Some people never accept the fiction element behind the holy birth, but it’s probably a darned good thing we don’t spend all of our lives chasing fat men in red coats. That would never do. It would be jut too scary.

© Peter Rogerson 24.12.19