Soon some Christians will celebrate an important birth. I've tried to capture the festive spirit with some cracker-pulling dialogue for your enjoyment. You can find it at the end of this ramble, which is best treated as a comedic warm-up act.
When creating this piece, I found myself digging into how Christmas acquired its name. As rabbit holes go, it's a deep one...
Tim Minchin's song 'White Wine in the Sun' was my eccentric starting point for this historical forage (be warned: the lyrics are cunningly woven to bring a wistful tear to any doting father's eye with every rendition). Yes, it's cynical. It jabs at our hypocrisies. But it also puts family bonds above crass commercialism. It shows how parental love for a child should be undiluted by distance. It's a Xmas message for our times (I'm going with the 'Chi' version now, partly out of idleness, but also in deference to... well, you'll find out later).
He also points out that the birthday Christians celebrate is that of a male Palestinian Jew. Which may be disquieting news to many of his more recent followers. But it did lead me onto some further musings of my own, ones of a more practical nature:
- Joseph was undoubtedly a tolerant husband, given his wife's reasoning for her pre-consummatory pregnancy.
- There must have been sufficient sociological research conducted by YHWH's spirit to recognise that, even if parthenogenesis was the easiest method for procreating a human de novo, Mary's first-born then being necessarily female wasn't going to cut the mustard in Biblical times (although they didn't obviously call them that back then). Creating a custom Y-chromosome remains an unmatched feat of bioengineering.
- Upon reading its first chapter, early biblical scholars, particularly those of a genealogical bent, must have had a dreadful time with a pencil and eraser trying to draw a family tree for the first bunch of 'begats'. I'm guessing that implying we're all born out of an initial frenzy of serpent-induced incest doesn't create the right impression in RE PHE class.
- Last but not least, there's quite a few million unsaved souls from the CBE . But no-one seems bothered. I guess you can only walk the talk for a brighter future.
So it's problems and questions like these that still fail to keep me awake at night, despite attending both Sunday school as an unbaptised infant and church services four times a week as an un-Confirmed, but outwardly conforming, teenager.
Then I recalled a way out of this unholy mess: The author's tool of last resort, wielded with omnipotent power over their written world, and especially useful when their favourite characters are in a tight spot. Yes, even higher, higher beings. What about having a literally literal 'deus ex machina'? Or, to be more accurate, several of them? Because pantheons chocked full of gods for every human need and suffering worked just fine for a good few thousand years before all this monotheism business started. Or maybe they didn't. There is, after all, that bureaucratic quagmire we call a 'committee'...
Terry Pratchett was a master of pointing out similar quirks and foibles in human society, albeit in a more subtle manner, via a magical world full of characters wrought by his vivid imagination. The rich pantheon in his short novel 'The Last Hero', superbly illustrated by Paul Kidby, triggered just the scene I needed in my head to start rattling off the dialogue-based piece below. I hope it provides you with a seam of wry humour to enjoy at the end of this most difficult of years.
I'll conclude what is likely to be my final post for twenty-twenty by wishing all my readers a safe Xmas, within whatever size bubble your government has mandated on a statistical whim. Let us hope - or even continue to pray - that the world becomes a happier, more liberating place to be during its next orbit of our closest star. (And I do hope we're all now aligned on this concept. Even in Rome.)
It was rare for the pagan gods to gather in such numbers but, from previous experience, unusually large problems required a commensurate amount of discussion. They’d been talking for three days now and, being gods, pretty much continuously since the latest stella novum had first appeared.
Chairperson Optimus cleared his throat. “Are we all agreed then that there is a problem?”
There was general head nodding from the mixed pantheon of major and minor deities arranged around him.
“Can the working sub-group on new god inductions please report out to everyone,” he intoned.
The god of Fatal Reckonings stood up.
“Myself and my fellow deities have given a great deal of thought to this pressing problem and, following a considerable amount of discussion amongst my esteemed colleagues, we have come to the…”.
“For gods’ sake, get to the point!” said the god of Prompt Offerings.
Reckoning took a deep breath. “It involves the creation of Anointing Day. On December 25th.”
“Not very catchy,” said a voice from a high wattage light source suspended near the ceiling. No-one deigned to look at Sol.
Optimus turned expectantly towards the columns on his left. “What do the Greek gods think?”
“Well, we could use one of our spare letters – chi, for example, is currently unused,” suggested the god of Unpronounceable Letters.
“Christ,” muttered one of the more scholarly minor deities.
gUL visibly brightened. “Exactly!”
A distinct cough was heard from the Latin quarter to the right. ”If we could include ‘missa’ or, to descend to the vernacular, ‘maesse’,” the god of Variable Decisiveness proposed.
Optimus raised an eyebrow.
“For either balance or democracy. If you want to be Greek about it,” gVD added. There was a spluttering noise from the columns.
“So, we’ve got ‘Christos missa’ or ‘Xmas’ ”, Optimus intoned. “Any objections or comments?”
“What if this date changes?” piped up the god of Planetary Conjunctions (Lunar Faction).
“What on Earth do you mean?” Optimus said, literally.
“Well, there might be a change of calendrical system. We’ve only just solved the Babylonian versus Sumerian problem.”
“Julian and Gregor in Pagan Operations can be assigned that monitoring task. Create a sub-committee or something – standard terms and conditions, thousand year’s duration, sits on a Woden's Day, etc., etc...“
It was getting late, even for eternal beings. Optimus signalled a terminus. “Anything else?”
Silence met his question. At least one of them was listening.
Sighing with relief, he signed over the paperwork. It looked as though the Palestinian problem was now finally settled. Thank the gods.
