The giant figure of a fat redfaced old man in a red suit dominates
the world again. There is no place we can go to escape him.
Children are lied to about his benevolence and generosity. He is
the great father figure of the present time.
There is a grim similarity here to the images of Stalin, Mao Tse Tung
and Hitler that were everywhere in those societies ruled by fear.
Unlike these monsters, Father Christmas is not the incarnation of
power, he is the incarnation of greed.
"I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want" is a phrase
that reaches right to the heart of our contemporary obsession with
consuming. We want it all and we want it now.
Did Father Christmas emerge from the collective unconscious
like so many figures in children's fantasies? No he was created
and sold by advertising men working for Coca Cola about a hundred
years ago. The jolly, red-suited, white-bearded, bell-ringing
figure crying "Ho! Ho! Ho!" has remained unchanged after all
these years and has his home in shopping malls where he creates
consumer demands amongst tiny children defenceless against his
powerful presence.
Christmas as a festival has been with Christendom a long time.
Who cares about celebrating the much more important passion of
Easter any more? Good Friday has now become just another day
devoted to the god of shopping. Christ himself has faded away.
Mammon and her fat impotent stooge have taken his place.
Until Coca Cola led the way to transform him, Saint Nicholas
or Santa Claus was a dark haired and slim Christian Saint of
the Eighth Century who, like the Czech King Wenceslaus, cared
for hungry children.
A hundred and fifty years ago Charles Dickens brought back the
legendary figure of the Spirit of Christmas who transforms the
hearts of miserly Scrooges who can only think in terms of
economic benefit and who don't think workers should have
statutory holidays! He is not a fat fraud but a powerful
Dionysian reveller who loves fun.
In the Arthurian romances Yuletide is celebrated in a similar
way. It is not a shopping orgy but a communal Feast for lords
and peasants together. At the risk of special pleading I would
like to point out to readers that Arthur was joined at the
table not only by bishops but by Merlin himself.
Other examples of post-modern wizardry can be found on the
Wizard's Home Page.
