At some point in November (or - god forbid - maybe even October these days), the first Christmas advert comes on television, the first lights go up somewhere on Oxford St, and some keen bastard has already erected a Christmas tree.
You are surely right to call out the deep strangeness of the rite of Xmas (that so few thiink it strange for one), the repeated investiture of hope in the light of experience, the eliciting of anticpatory feelings that are rarely met, the fusion of a myth with the engine room of capitalism ('wanting'), the emptiness of it all (where is the promised nourishment?) and the sense of having been duped somewhere along the line. that we have lost touch with the core of something rare and precious...., But perhaps we can touch that core when, head bowed, we join another to share a bowl of parsnip porridge where none of the above hold sway.
You are surely right to call out the deep strangeness of the rite of Xmas (that so few thiink it strange for one), the repeated investiture of hope in the light of experience, the eliciting of anticpatory feelings that are rarely met, the fusion of a myth with the engine room of capitalism ('wanting'), the emptiness of it all (where is the promised nourishment?) and the sense of having been duped somewhere along the line. that we have lost touch with the core of something rare and precious...., But perhaps we can touch that core when, head bowed, we join another to share a bowl of parsnip porridge where none of the above hold sway.