The Blackberry Walk

As I've recently discussed, my Christmas was hamstrung with a bout of covid, mostly ruining my seasonal merriment. But even before this ordeal, the Christmas spirit didn't seem to affect me as much as it would regularly. In Christmases past, as embarrassing as it might be to confess, I'd wake up early, excited for presents and the festivities ahead. And before then, the general feeling of excitement and cheer would possess me and I'd feel the 'Christmas spirit' and listen to the classic tunes. Somehow the spirit never reached me last year. I felt the rush come upon me as I decorated the tree, listening to Christmas music, but it felt unsettling. The Christmas spirit's rush had that same feeling as it had in past years, but somehow instead of being a cosy feeling of comfort it had become one of disquiet. It's easy to chalk such subjective feelings up to vague ideas of the corporatisation of Christmas with decorations in the shops from September and every company rebranding with Santa hats, but I think this misses the mark. Christmas has for as long as I remember been a corporate event, stained with business interests - and that is part of the Christmas spirit - but that isn't the taint I felt. I've always had a suspicion that modern Christmas has become a pagan parody of Christ's birth, much like modern Easter too with egg-laying bunnies has become a pagan parody of the Passion; but instead of just thinking it was the case, I felt the difference. What I'd heard about so often as a mere logical difference had become one which was felt in the kind of feelings of the different spirits. While speaking of spirits sounds wishy washy and woo woo, I am sincere and don't mean to sound flippant - the Christmas spirit is real, a kind of geist, a zeitgeist, which sweeps through the people. All people are powered by spirit, and spirit is breath¹, a kind of wind which rushes through people, energising them. Hence the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost (geist) who is a kind of holy wind imbuing religiosity and connection with God. The Christmas spirit is a free spirit with a life and motivations of its own. In fact there are spirits everywhere when you look for them, in different eras of history, different movements of art, different fervours in which people are rapt; the more you look around, the more the spirits make themselves apparent. A good analogy is a flock of birds. You see birds flying wing to wing in a single direction with a single aim, and all of a sudden they move together en masse as if choreographed. People are similar; once the spirit moves in the direction of its choice, the people who partake in that spirit move in tandem. Hence the madness of mobs; rioters, all possessed by the same Shiva-like spirit, attack and desecrate as one. Christmas too, therefore, has a spirit felt by all of us each year rousing us to celebrate. Yet is the Christmas spirit still a spirit worthy of veneration? Supplanting the Holy Spirit on the Lord's birthday is hardly a mark in its favour. And I'm still struck by that unnerving feeling I kept having last year, as if there was an impostor usurping the reverence directed during Christmastide. Undoubtedly these same concerns are ones English Puritans had long ago, with Cromwell cancelling Christmas. Through their Calvinist pessimism, the Puritans could see that all human endeavours will end in sin; even Christmas, the celebration of Christ's birth, will inevitably result in a kind of idolatry revolving around the North Pole. And whilst there's merit in these observations, such pessimism about human nature can leave you hamstrung, unable to be happy and spread joy in life. Christmas parody music and Christmas parody feeling is everywhere around Christmas time, but one simply has to distinguish between the various spirits pulling you in different directions, making you experience different versions of Christmas, and let them influence you according to your will. For whilst the different spirits of Christmas will make themselves known to you through the various advertisements and jingles heard around, only through a kind of worship, a kind of participation, in the spirit are we transformed and affected by it, most apparently through the 'Christmas feeling'. The Christmas spirit, as I've explained as a defined spirit, isn't a necessity for Christmas. I don't see the alienation from the spirit as me becoming jaded as I get older. Rather, a movement from the Christmas spirit towards the Holy Spirit. 1. in ancient Greek means both breath and spirit, and many copies can be found in other languages, like geist in German.