Have Yourself A Merry New Religion

So we’re getting to that time of year where the world is bombarded by Christmas carols and Capetonians are bombarded with upcountry cousins.

How many of them, Capetonians or their guests, will pass a thought on Christmas Day as to how the holiday actually came about?

A lot fewer, I imagine, than would tear open presents ostensibly delivered by some guy in a red snow-suit before beginning to set the table. Then it will be lunch with lots of wine, cracker-pulling, turkey and stodgy pudding, followed by a recovery nap under an umbrella somewhere.

I wonder how long it will be until the myth that has stolen Christmas swells to the status of fully-fledged religion.

It’s happened before, you know.

Exhibit One: Easter. Occurs roughly at the time of the northern hemisphere’s vernal equinox, ages ago celebrated by people waving rabbits, eggs and chickens about to celebrate the coming time of fertility before painting themselves blue. We may eschew – some of us – the blue paint these days, but we still teach our kids about the Easter Bunny, and then allow them to gorge themselves green on chocolate eggs and chickens.

Back then, the pagans were probably blown away by stories not of birth and new growth, but of a man who came back to life from the dead. Put that in your fertility pipe and smoke it. And then dare not convert, especially if there were swords and pointy sticks involved.

Exhibit Two: Christmas. Occurs roughly the time of the northern hemisphere’s winter solstice. Major symbol: an evergreen tree, which even halfway through winter retained its greenery and, hung with the remnants of dried fruit and other vaguely edible foodstuffs, promised our pagan forefathers that the season of ice and snow would soon be over. Telling these poor misdirected souls that your champion is the Son of God, born by immaculate conception, signposted by a star, must have been even more astonishing than Miley Cyrus twerking on YouTube is today.

In both examples, the stroke of genius lies not so much in the imposition of the new myth but in the commandeering of the dates. It’s said that the way to boil a frog is to do it by turning up the heat in small increments, so it surely could have taken no longer than a few years to infiltrate the older festivals and to increase the presence of the new religion a little more each time. The locals didn’t even have to choose to become Christian – they unwittingly slid across the line because over time they simply forgot how to be pagan.

I haven’t read a page of the Bible since I was eleven, when the local Catholic priest told me that my ailing dog would not go to heaven because animals didn’t have a soul. But to the best of my memory, I don’t recollect fir trees or glass baubles featuring in the Gospels, or Mary Magdalene planning a jolly Sunday Easter egg hunt on Good Friday.

Things change, and with them people’s mythologies and belief structures. I’m sure the pagans stole symbols and dates from whomever preceded them, just as the Romans stole gods and architecture from the Greeks and China manufacturing capacity from the USA.

I’m suggesting that, in time, Christianity as it was will be appropriated by the Next Big Thing, this time featuring a fat flying fellow in Coca-Cola colours with an indulgent view of gluttony and a flat-out endorsement of greed. Its Bible equivalent will, no doubt, consist of bound discount catalogues, its greatest prophets will be Dolce and Gabanna, and its most revered poets will include Bing Crosby and Boney M.