“Black Friday” is an interesting social phenomenon, the product of intense advertising throughout the year leading up to an orgasmic release the day after Thanksgiving. I can only speculate on why people behave this way, but the psychologists who are at the center of every successful advertising agency surely have insights worth sharing. I wish they would do so.
“Christmas” is more rational and less manipulative than Black Friday. It is a celebration of the beginning of return of the sun after the solstice. On the 21st of December it will reach its lowest level on the southern horizon, and for three days it appears not to move. On the 25th of December, barely perceptible, it begins its return. (Should not “on the third day he rose again” be “fourth”? What am I missing?)
Our ancestors, having lots of time, paid close attention to the sun, the moon and the stars. Lacking scientific knowledge, they worshiped them as gods. The sun (Zeus or Ra, Greek and Egyptian, and “Yahweh, from some Jewish tribes) became the supreme god over all, and the female moon Meres (Mary) and male Apollo (Paul) tagged along. The word “son” is used to describe the modern sun-god, Jesus. How can that be coincidental?
The returning sun-god means that crops will grow, and water used to grow grapes will again become wine. Solstice is a time to celebrate cornucopia – successful harvest past, and anticipate new life as light replaces darkness. They used the dark times indoors to repair tools, make new clothing and enjoy the warmth of family and fire.
I think it odd that modern humans, our minds so filled with advertising manipulation, think it necessary to express love and friendship by buying a commercial product for people. Most of these products see little use and become part of landfills. Shopping is hard work, too, so I quit doing it. The people I shopped for did not need anything. I am “hard to shop for” – I don’t need anything.
The news in the coming weeks speculate on the Christmas shopping season – is it profitable for merchants? Somehow we have a stake in their success. So shopping becomes not just a chore, but also a patriotic duty.
Back when we made our own goods in our own factories there might have been some logic behind commercial shopping manipulation instead of solstice. But now most of the products are made in other countries, and the domestic jobs that result are retail clerks paid minimum wage.
With passage of time I have better understanding of the origins of the solstice celebration. The Unitarians are merely honoring ancient traditions, long since supplanted by the Christian mythology put in place by a Roman Empire in decline. There have always been virgin births and arisen saviors. The Romans put human faces on the gods, creating the popular figures of Christianity out of ancient mythology. But it was still sun worship and astrology (the latter accounting for the frequent appearance of the number twelve in the myths, as in tribes and apostles). Ancient writings were destroyed, the library at Alexandria burned, perhaps the greatest tragedy in the history of Western civilization. What we have is left is only what survived. After Nicaea, old texts were re-written and revised to supplant those destroyed, and the gospel of the New Testament came into being. Then, over time, Christianity violently suppressed competing religions, murdering and terrorizing any who did not go along with it. Christianity was more than a religion – it was thought control backed by violence.
(Of course they knew that Galileo had it right. But they did not want that information to get out.)
Christianity was born of terrorism. All things considered, I find the ancient rituals of sun worship; the repair and replacement of tools and clothing, family reunions and cornucopia celebration far superior and more intelligent than our modern festival of commercial excess. I don’t think the Unitarian ritual is weird anymore. The modern ritual of excited children and once-used-Chinese-made-landfill-bound toys will never go away. I can only hope that someday American factories will produce those goods and that we are not so weak economically that we have to use credit to buy them.
Piece of Mindful 
Thanks for the reminder of how humans try to make sense of things. It seems that it’s time to come down to earth and embrace the rituals that bind us together and not tear us apart. Thanks to the Occupy movement for shining a light on the shenanigans of Black Friday. Also Adam Curtis’ “Century of the Self” offers up the birth of the 20th century of Me where marketers pushed people past their basic needs to their desires. It had happened before in history, but the scale and success of pushing wants over needs, as your picture of Friday frenzy shows, has reached its crest, we can only hope.
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Hi FC! You read this while it was a work in progress – I’ve tried to fix it up. Glad
toyou ‘get it.’ I enjoy your comments elsewhere on the blogs.LikeLike
After reading this one, and feral cat’s comment, I can’t help singing to myself Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Pretty much sums up the “groove” we’ve been stuck in since Eisenhower. Please pass the landmines, and tear gas.
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You sent me off to look for the lyrics to that song. Now, explain yourself!
When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead And the white knight is talking backwards And the red queen’s off with her head Remember what the dormouse said “Feed your head, feed your head”
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Alice in Wonderland (1865 Britain) presents the baseline for so many of life’s contradictions. So it is with the repurposed subject in the J.A. song, which I accepted as a young listener (and to this day), as abstractions of similarly nonsensical events which seemed to recur in my own “real” life. I suppose I remixed my own mashed version of the book, and the song, to feed my own head with creative thoughts unaffected by what I was supposed to be thinking, what I was being fed (metaphorical “pills” from the lyrics) by others. How does one resist propaganda exploding all around you. I cannot deconstruct the song, or the book, into chaper and verse, or line-by-line analysis. But like a great painting, or another work of art, it has impact and presence, and it’s own life, but no “rational” or “logical” explanation. It just is. For me, one of the Great Ones.
Alice did not fear the Queen’s order: “Off with her head.” Alice, challenged the Queen’s very existence (ie. the King has no clothes). She was awakening. Feed your head is good medicine. Awaken you sleeping masses. Create, innovate, experiment …because you can.
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The literature that survives over time carries timeless messages, and this is true of the bible as well. As they picked and sorted through deciding which writing would survives and which perish, they did seem to have a complex agenda, as there is so much of value in that book. But they also needed to plant the seeds of their new religion, and so the book contains the roots of papal authority, or at least what they used to justify it.
And of course substance “abuse” plays a large role. It is the source of new insight, and jumbled nonsense that sounds like a message is embedded. Ergo, Come Together.
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I’m reading David Graeber’s “Revolutions in Reverse” which is available on line. http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=284
Between 1880 and 1914 was the height of radical social movements. Anarchism was the “vital center of the radical left”. Anarchism was exploring the alternatives to becoming cogs in the machine. Artists were at the center of these alternatives to industrialization. The powers that be finally got scared and did what they always do, started a war and used Freud’s nephew to sell it as “making the world safe for democracy”.
The gist of Graeber’s 6 essays that a Greek activist put together last year is that there has been a war on the imagination and we are presented with TINA – There Is No Alternative.
But you are right. There are alternatives if we just “Feed our heads”. Occupy is showing us the way. Here’s a link to some of the graphic art coming out of OWS. http://www.occuprint.org/Posters/Posters
I’m working on some thoughts on Graeber and would love to have input. Reading him is ls like taking a very hard grad course by the most popular professor on campus.
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One last thought. The subconscious plays a role in all this. Most people I know either deny its existence, or fear accessing those portions of the human brain. Living a life that constantly explores and develops the subconscious adds perspective and texture to thoughts and discussions, especially when the subject turns to morality, spirituality and death. Best I can tell, moving freely between the conscious and the subconscious, creates a reasonable facsimily of “living on the edge.” Everybody has the equipment to explore the infinite, few, however, leave the comfort of what could be described as popular, institutional reality.
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Most excellent comment. Some psychological types according to Jung (and his interpreters Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs) are more interested in exploring the unknown and their shadows. But pills help loosen stubbornness. But good fiction, science fiction, and movies can also loosen up institutional reality.
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Ergo the authoritarian state seeks to ban access to mind-altering drugs, but allows those that dumb us down – alcohol, tobacco, TV and sports.
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Like this. It good. I steal.
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Consider it a permanent loan
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