Aggravated Subarborial Giftery.

Last week at work I was discussing Christmas traditions with one of my co-workers, and I innocently mentioned that my family had always fallen back on its British roots for the holiday season.  

"Oh, that's nice," she commented.

"Yeah, I have wonderful memories of putting up the big holiday menhir, listening to the local druid invoking the tree spirits, putting someone inside the big wicker man and then setting it on fire...ah, nothing like a good old-fashioned holiday..."

All joking aside, the whole Santa Claus/birthday of Christ thing is just a thin overlay over a tradition that must go back as far as the roots of civilization, if not intelligence.  What we're really celebrating is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the deepest point of our descent into cold and dark - but also the end of that descent.  From here on it gets brighter and warmer, and every day there's a little more sunlight, and a little less night.

It's interesting that virtually every society and religion in the northern hemisphere has acknowledged this dividing line between dark and light, between cold and warmth, between the end and the beginning, and chosen to commemorate it in some fashion.  The current Christian holiday is the end of a millennium-long process of amalgamation and consolidation which combined the birth of the Saviour with the Slavic Karachun, the Sarmation festival of Kaleda, the Welsh Lá an Dreoilín, the pagan Yule, the Norse Jól, and a score of other celebrations that marked the turning of the year. 

The sad part is that, as often tends to be the case, it's left to science fiction to point out the inevitable "what if" of the situation.  It took a thousand years for the celebration of Christ's Mass to gain ascendancy; less than a hundred years for the religious aspects of the holiday to be lost under the commercial ones; what does logic suggest will happen next?

Well, obviously, as with any unregulated profit centre, someone will want to take complete control...

...it was a peach of a prize.  An invitation to a special, licensed Christmas™ party in the centre of London, run by YuleCo itself.

When I read the letter I was shaking.  This was YuleCo, so it would be the real deal.  There'd be Santa™, and Rudolph™, and Mistletoe™, and Mince Pies™, and a Christmas Tree™, with presents underneath it.

That last was what I couldn't get over.  It felt so forlorn, putting my newspaper-wrapped presents next to the aspidistra, but ever since YuleCo bought the rights to coloured paper and under-tree storage, the inspectors had clamped down on Aggravated Subarborial Giftery.

China Miéville, 'Tis The Season

And a happy Meán Geimhridh to all - half way out of the dark, my friends.

- Sid