What is a tradition? Going strawberry picking every summer and
celebrating Christmas are both considered traditions. Both traditions involve
going to a certain place at a certain time of the year, they both have
distinctive feel, for example the Christmas sprit or that summer time feeling
we all miss in the winter, why would these be different?
Well to start we must ask the reason why these have become traditions.
Strawberry picking is a seasonal activity that comes about because people enjoy
strawberries, making jam and cakes and because strawberries only grow naturally
in the summer. They become special, something that comes once a year and
becomes distinctive of summer.
Christmas on the other hand is a religious celebration of Jesus’ birth,
which is meant to be on the 25th of
December, and for the good Christian, is a time of great joy and celebration,
but for others a time of gift exchange, drinking and togetherness.
But an immediate difference becomes clear, while those who go strawberry
picking do so because they wish for strawberries, most people do not celebrate
Christmas because of Jesus. It
boils down to a desire to have fun with friends and family. Yet also the
economy has warped this good feeling in a exchange of cheap gifts and a red
Santa tall tales.
The origin of this tradition of Christmas is religious and a form of
corruption has grown, fastening itself to the belief structure of the priest
and Christian alike. This is the
origin of Christmas and all other religious traditions, a belief structure
based on a species of faith, inherently subjective. for what creates the faith
itself is that what you believe, exists outside of the subjective realm and in
the objective world, it is the jump from subjective to objective.
Here is the major difference between picking strawberries and Christmas.
Strawberries grow in hot sunny weather, this occurs in summer as the earth is
closer to the sun, providing the soil is fertile, the strawberries will grow,
it is not a matter of faith, I am not imposing a faith in the
strawberries growing, that’s what they do and while this is inductive in nature
(i.e. just because the sun has risen everyday the earth has been spinning
around the sun, doesn’t mean it will tomorrow), I am not imposing a subjective belief
structure on the world; the structure was
put in place in nature and I believe it will maintain this structure,
the origin of the belief starts is sourced from the objective into the
subjective.
In regard to Christmas, the exact opposite is the case. It is a clear
case of logic that Palestinian winters are too cold of Shepherds to be herding
sheep and so the three wise men wouldn’t have been there in the first place,
for example, but many other flaws in the Christmas story have been proved. No solid evidence for these events
exists really stands to reason and so loses objective validity. In fact the
notion of the Christmas story as simply a fantasy story adds to the element of
faith, the less proof you have means more faith must be used, to maintain the
belief as still worthy of such esteem.
This however, the imposing of belief structures onto the world is an
unhealthy one, much like pushing a triangle through a circular hole - it is a
violent act. If we believe that
just because we have faith in what a tradition like Christmas stands for, the
birth of the saviour of humanity, we base it on repetition enforced by
generations of gift exchange and commerce, on midnight mass and the queens
speeches then this tradition has no objective quality but what we choose to
imbue into it.
What we have imbued Christmas with shows the corruptible character of
those who enforce it. Christmas is about giving not receiving, of religious joy
and family bonding in theory, but in application has become a tool for the justification
of selfish purchases; most who celebrate Christmas revere Santa Claus more then
Jesus. So what should be a holy
and humble day, giving praise for the one who gave us intangible freedom from
sin, is now a brash melee of materialism.
But this power of imposing our will on the world leads to dangerous
realms of insanity, for what is insanity then to see the right choice and
choose the opposite, to see clearly what can and cannot be and choose to
believe the cannot be. It is
frustrating trying to push a triangle through a circle, when a friend shows
them that it cannot fit, they become angry at the friend, trying to help him
understand why the triangle wont fit:
‘How dare you, of course it fits, I was raised to believe it fits, and you dare question that. I just believe it will, you just
can’t understand’…that’s absolutely correct. Sadly though, no matter how much someone protests, the
triangle will never fit the circle.
This sense of desperation that stems from this species of faith, is not
contained within the tradition of strawberry picking. There is no faith
involved and what better way to spend a summer day picking strawberries with
family and loved ones, amongst golden sun and rolling greenery. While strawberry picking has this down
to earth feel, Christmas has a material feel to the masses, while some still
have the religious element, this is simply because they have absorbed the
tradition into the subjective and impose it back on the world, this being the
Christmas story. This is how a
tradition like Christmas has taken hold: It starts with one person, who
inspires a group (expresses his belief), that grow (taken in and enacted),
until it has become a “fact” (because enough now enact it, for it to resemble
objective fact, but is a ‘Argumentum
ad populum‘ - argument of popularity) in the eyes of those who practice
the tradition.
So this is a tradition, the imposing
of a belief such that it is taken as fact, regardless of what is actual, this
denotes a insanity at the core of our culture. Christmas is a major holiday,
around the world. It is a
burlesque of what it would want to be and a sham to believe otherwise, yet it
is still believed. Christmas is a
rigid tradition, with rules and
practices, yet nothing is so rigid that it lasts forever, a diamond will change
eventually, and when it does, it shall become something different. Not even
Christmas can escape change, much like a stack of cards, the taller it becomes
and longer it stands, the weaker it
becomes and the more likely it will fall.
Like everyone else, when we see the
twenty generation tall and strong stack of cards, see also see how weak it is
and the temptation of tapping one card, just to watch it fall. This is the only
truly human response, because religious traditions are unnatural practices,
that grate against the human that go against reason because it is enforced
by almost war-mongering faith, as
unyielding as insanity, but as corruptible as a politician at a BP convention.
This being the case, picking
strawberries loses its mask of tradition and reveals a ritualistic face, based
on seasons and biology, not on tall tales and faith. While this species of faith, enforced by religious
traditions, is akin in the level of insanity of that of Kierkegaard and
Abraham, it shares no resemblance to it. Faith is a purely subjective matter,
there is no belief structure to impose. Faith, for Kierkegaard was infinite,
structure-less, with none of this
imposing onto the world. It is the
imposing on nature that is unhealthy, it is a violent act against her, trying
to make her look prettier but, for nature, she needs not the lip stick of
commerce or the blusher of religion.
She is beautiful as she with her strawberry red lips and golden hair and
the make up only services as a vice, a homage to our arrogance. To summarize:
Christmas is an unhealthy tradition,
so I think we should all go pick strawberries.
By T.C.R.Moon
