A God Tests Its Followers
Tuesday 23 December 2008 at 11:33 Whatever you may think about globalisation, it has certainly made us all aware and, I hope, more respectful of other people's cultural and spiritual traditions.
Christmas, which falls on December 25th in the Western tradition and at Epiphany (January 6th or 7th) in the Armenian and Eastern traditions, remains the central Christian festival of the Winter Solstice.
It has also become the festival of a relatively new religion, accidentally associated with the Christian Festival only because it is a Western heresy, like its defeated rival Marxism. For this religion, Christmas is a time of conspicuous consumption similar to the potlach practices of the North West Pacific Amerindians.
From its heartland in the West, it has spread around the world, displacing the Christian version and extending even unto the retail malls of Dubai and Tokyo. Sometimes, the message is garbled - who can forget the legend of the crucified Santa in a Japanese Department store.
But spare a thought for its worshippers, facing persecution at this difficult time. Their happiness depends on the accumulation of material entities through the ownership of cash, digitalised (both matter and spirit) within great banking systems.
Without cash, the religion cannot be practiced. Cash cannot be generated through prayer but only through work and yet work is only valuable if someone will give cash for it. Cash is like 'grace' - it can be given and withdrawn and its workings are mysterious.
The mysterious source of cash is an unknowable divinity. It has priests, economists, who seek to explain the ways of God to Man and who have named this great deity, Market. To its believers, some of whom hold to their faith without reason, Market is omnipotent and omniscient.
Market's ways cannot be understood. Market is within all of us as the divine spark of entrepreneurship but it is also all around us as the economy. Market can be appealed to but ultimately its grace is given through faith as much as works. If it exists, it is not as a person but as an immanence.
At certain times in the history of faith, belief is challenged by events. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the story of the trials of Job represent this testing but, more recently, the Holocaust caused many Jews and Christians to ask 'why did the heavens not darken?'
And so the Marketeers are now sorely perplexed. They seek their Maimonides. For out of the heavens, without warning, came the Credit Crunch and their wealth was sorely depleted.
Let us spare a thought for this troubled religion which worships at Malls and Show Rooms and now finds that its faith is being tested. Their God seems to have turned away. They cannot generate cash from within. Market will not grant them cash.
Meanwhile, other religions have either celebrated or are set to celebrate their holidays without the distractions of long services at retail centres, being polite about useless presents or feeling ill because of the never-ending round of parties.
The Muslims celebrated Eid al-Adha on or around December 9th (the date moves around the year according to a lunar calendar but this year it kicked off what might be called a global season of religious holidays).
The Pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice (Yule in the Northern European tradition) as they do every year on December 21st. For Wiccans it is one of their eight days of observance and it is celebrated by the Neo-Druids on Primrose Hill in London and elsewhere every year.
Nor is the Winter Solstice restricted to modern Pagan religions. It is still an ethnic festival of considerable importance even if, in some cases, it has been shifted, as with Hogmanay among the Scots, to the New Year. In Shetland, the whole thing lasts from December 18th to January 18th.
The Jews have celebrated Hanukkah from December 21st to 29th this year (the dates also move around late November and December according to a non-solar calendar).
Whichever way you look at it, this is an important time of the year - a time for reflection, a recharging of personal batteries, an attempt to put aside past hurts and mistakes (a process started earlier by Neo-Pagans in their communing with the dead at All-Souls) and a preparation for New Year and Spring.
It is also a time when the community comes together. Something as apparently silly as the annual showing of the Freddie Frinton sketch on German television benignly unites those who see themselves as one 'volk'. The Queen's broadcast diminishingly does this for those who consider themselves 'British'.
This brings us back to the religion of the Market. It is a time for reflection too for this faith and a time to prepare for what Market wants and is prepared to give in 2009.
The rest of us, fortunately, can find our spiritual succour elsewhere but let us spare a thought, at this difficult time, for the Marketeers and wish them prosperity and growth in the year ahead as we do the Christians, Pagans, Muslims, Jews, Existentialists and everyone else who holds to their own.
[Please note that this will be the final Blog Posting until January 6th, 2009. We wish you all the best from TPPR and Pendry White for an enjoyable holiday season, whatever your spiritual preference, and a prosperous but, above all, contented and happy 2009]
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