"...the secular meaning of Christmas"

"A few years ago, I spent some time thinking about the meaning of Christmas. I am afraid I shocked my Christian neighbours when they realised I was looking for the secular meaning of Christmas, not the story of the baby in the manger. I think there is a wider, nonreligious meaning to the holiday, which I thought I would share....

"People are a value.

"This is important. ... [W]e have an amazing standard of living. And we have it because of the millions of people — in our country and around the world — who are putting in a small, medium, or large effort to create values in the world. Some of these values are products or services we happily buy because they make our lives easier, or more productive, or more meaningful, or more enjoyable. Some of these values they just put out into the world, such as their funny cat videos or 'how to' videos for the gadget you just purchased and can’t get to work.

"So, I see Christmas as a time to celebrate the good in the people around you and in the world. To be grateful for the best within them and to recognise the value of that to you."

~ Jean Moroney from her post 'Goodwill to Man' [hat tip Gus Van Horn]

"Underneath all the pretence, that is what Christmas does celebrate."

"Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate — and really, underneath all the pretence, that is what it does celebrate."

~ philosopher Leonard Peikoff from his timeless article 'Christmas Should Be More Commercial'

15 YEARS AGO (LIBERTARIAN SUS ): Let's make Christmas more commercial!

Here's another topical post from the archives, this time from old friend Libertarian Sus who was once a regular poster here at NOT PC back in the good old days. I haven't seen her for many years (let me know if you have her current details, I'd love to catch up). In any case, I trust she's beaten us all, once again, to the first-to-get-up-the-Christmas-tree prize this December ...

I love Christmas. I love everything about it, from shopping to decorating to singing carols. It’s my favourite time of the year, as it is for millions around the world.

There’s something about putting your tree up. I put mine up earlier than anybody I know, with the exception of my sister who occasionally pips me to the post. I usually aim for the last Sunday in November, complete with my favourite festive music. My youngest sister, a mother of three, somewhat violently swears the two of us to secrecy, lest my nephews and niece pester her to get their tree up ridiculously early, too.

The music is important, because it simply wouldn’t be Christmas for us without it. The first is from Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters, originally recorded in the 1940s. My late grandfather was a huge Crosby fan and he and Nana had the record. We played it every Christmas until it quite literally warped – and even then we still played it. Several years ago we discovered it on CD, thereby preserving the tradition for the next generation, who I’m delighted to report know all the words of 'Mele Kalikimaka.'

The second is a relative newcomer, Aaron Neville’s Soulful Christmas, introduced by one of my brothers-in-law, a musician. Aaron might look like a criminal – and he does - but he has the voice of an angel. I defy the hardest heart to not be moved by his rendition of “O Holy Night” in particular. Occasionally we will permit an interloper on Christmas Day itself, but generally it’s just Aaron and Bing.

Perfect.

Anyway, back to the tree where my decorations are like old friends who visit once a year. Some were picked up in my travels in the days when the offerings in New Zealand were severely limited, but now, thanks to globalisation, we are spoilt for choice. No matter the size of the tree, though, or the quality and quantity of the decorations, they come alive with Christmas lights. The lights provide the magic.

Retailers love the Christmas season and for good reason. For many, it’s the busiest time of the year with December sales representing a healthy portion of their turnover. The big annual spend-up on Christmas gifts is an example of the market at work. Stores are stocked to the brim with goods to sell, employing thousands of staff in the process. Students are gainfully employed as much-needed additional staff to help offset the costs of their next educational year, or to just get through the summer.

Manufacturers work hard to complete orders on time and freight companies are flat out with seasonal deliveries. The livelihoods of many depend upon the Christmas season, and yet every year we hear the same cries that Christmas has become commercialised, as if it is a bad thing.

But why is that so?

To answer that question, it is worthwhile to explore its origins. Here’s a quick look. Christmas is a Christian holiday and like other Christian holidays, it has its origin in paganism.

Saturnalia was a Roman festival in honour of Saturn, the god of agriculture. It began on 15 December and lasted for seven days of feasting and revelry, just prior to the winter solstice that fell around 25 December on the Julian calendar. The solstice included glorification of Mithra, the god of light who several centuries later became known as the god of the sun. The Roman Catholic Church had the habit of absorbing pagan traditions into Christendom, converting the holiday commemorating the birth of the sun god into a “Christ Mass.”

However, Christmas-time celebrations prior to the 1800s still featured much pagan revelry among the British commoners, at times little more than wild carousals. It is believed that this drunken revelry had much to do with Oliver Cromwell – never much of a partygoer – going so far as to outlaw Christmas in the 17th century, forcing it underground for a time. This ban was extended to many of the early North American colonies where “violators” were fined five shillings. After its reinstatement, Christmas still bore much of its earlier debauchery, but some of our current traditions started to appear. For example, caroling began with groups of individuals visiting houses in the community singing songs in exchange for eggnog. Gift-giving, however, was still extremely limited, and virtually unknown within families.

The traditions of several countries are involved. The Yule log came from Scandinavian mythology, “Yule” being the Anglo- Saxon term for the months of December and January. After most Scandinavians had converted to Christianity, “Yule” became synonymous with Christmas.

By the 17th century, the Germans had converted the Christmas tree, originally a sign of fertility, into a Christian symbol of rebirth. The Dutch called Saint Nicholas, an altruistic bishop from the 4th century, ‘Sinterklaas’, who was to become ‘Santa Claus’ in the USA. In 1823 the American professor Clement Clarke Moore wrote the delightful poem entitled 'A Visit from Saint Nicholas,' better known as ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.'

But perhaps the greatest change occurred after the publication in 1843 of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, providing lessons on charity and the importance of caring for family and friends. As a result, Christmas became a joyful, domestic holiday focusing on children in particular. It was an illustrator with Harper’smagazine, who first depicted Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole in the latter half of the 19th century, while Coca-Cola ran commercials in 1931 showing Santa as the children’s gift-giver, as we know him today. Rudolf, the much-loved ninth reindeer appeared in 1939 via an advertising agent on behalf of his retailing client, all of which paved the way for the commercialism seen annually for decades.

The festive colour and sparkle brightened the dark days of the long northern winters, with the seasonal sales providing welcome respite during the slower trading months.

But what of Christmas down under, occurring as it does in early summer. Is it not odd to see traditional winter celebrations imposed by early settlers upon warm, sunny days? Christmas cards depicting robins on snow-covered mailboxes? Rugged-up Carolers sipping hot toddies?

Not at all … if that’s what you like. Whether you prefer a traditional roast meal or a barbecue outside, a formal dinner or informal brunch, a church service to celebrate the birth of Christ or a walk along the beach, a large, rowdy family affair or a quiet day indulging your favourite pastimes, is entirely up to you.

And rather than decrying its commercialism, I prefer to embrace it for the wealth it provides and the jobs it creates. It would be a mean-spirited Scrooge who begrudged another his income during the Season of Goodwill. Do some people overstretch themselves financially? Sadly, yes. But the truth is that nobody forces them to do so. Beautiful doesn’t have to be big and bold. It never did. Yes, the Santa sleepwear is tacky. Yes, the reindeer antlers are tragic on anyone old enough to pay full price at the pictures, and ‘Snoopy’s Christmas’ drives me nuts, too—whoever’s singing the damn thing. But it all vanishes in comparison with the beauty of a Christmas tree lit up in the darkness, and the enrapturing melodies of some of the most beautiful music ever written.

May Father Christmas be good to you all.

"...it's very hard to change people's minds."

Tim Minchin on confirmation bias, the science behind why we are becoming more divided, why progressives need to learn that it is improbable that the path to more empathy will be paved with less empathy, and why it's so fucking hard to change people's minds.

Happy fucking Christmas.

[Hat tip Gerry Coyne]

Summer reading

Last week a friend was metaphorically assaulting me for not posting my regular pic of my pile of summer reading. "Fear not!" I played for time, explaining that everything this year takes much longer...

So what are you planning to read over these long summer days of holiday hell?

Christmas: It's thanks to capitalism

"Thanks to capitalism, there was enough wealth to make gifts possible, a great productive apparatus to advertise them and make them available cheaply, and a country so content that men wanted to reach out to their friends and express their enjoyment of life."

~ philosopher Leonard Peikoff, from his op-ed 'Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial'

"One says: ‘Merry Christmas’ — not ‘Weep and Repent'."

“The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men — a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property (though it is supposed to be part, but is a largely unobserved part) of the Christian religion.
    “The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: ‘Merry Christmas’ — not ‘Weep and Repent.’ And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form — by giving presents to one’s friends, or by sending them cards in token remembrance. . . .
    “The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialised. The gift-buying . . . stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And the street decorations put up by department stores and other institutions — the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colors —provide the city with a spectacular display, which only ‘commercial greed’ could afford to give us. One would have to be terribly depressed to resist the wonderful gaiety of that spectacle.” 

          ~ Ayn Rand, The Objectivist Calendar, December 1976

"The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: 'Merry Christmas'—not 'Weep and Repent.'" #QotD

"The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property (though it is supposed to be part, but is a largely unobserved part) of the Christian religion.
    "The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: 'Merry Christmas'—not 'Weep and Repent.' And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form—by giving presents to one’s friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance . . . .
    "The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialised. The gift-buying . . . stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And the street decorations put up by department stores and other institutions—the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colours—provide the city with a spectacular display, which only 'commercial greed' could afford to give us. One would have to be terribly depressed to resist the wonderful gaiety of that spectacle."
        ~ Ayn Rand, in answering the question of whether it is appropriate for an atheist to celebrate Christmas.

Christmas reading

It's that time of year again: that regular annual ritual of weeding out my book stack to fit into my holiday book sack.

What books are you struggling to fit into your book sack this summer?

Or do you just take a bigger sack?
.

Happy Christmas -- from Frank Lloyd Wright and us!

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright used to send out his poetic Christmas message every year. So I do too. 
He called it “Man the Enlightened Being.”  “The herd disappears and reappears," says Wright's message, "but the sovereignty of the individual persists." What better time of year to take time out to reflect on that.* 

 Literature tells about man. Architecture presents him. The Architecture that our man of Democracy needs and prophecies is bound to be different from that of the common or conditioned man of any other socialized system of belief. As never before, this new Free-Man’s Architecture will present him by being true to his own nature in all such expressions. . .
    With renewed vision, the modern man will use the new tools Science lavishes upon him (even before he is ready for them) to enlarge his field of action by reducing his fetters to exterior controls, especially those of organized Authority, publicity, or political expediency. He will use his new tools to develop his own Art and Religion as the means to keep him free, as himself. Therefore this democratic man’s environment, like his mind, will never be style-ized. When and wherever he builds he will not consent to be boxed. He will himself have his style.
    The Democratic man demands conscientious liberty for himself no more nor less than he demands liberty for his neighbor. . .
    Whenever organic justice is denied him he will not believe he can get it by murder but must obtain it by continuing fair dealing and enlightenment at whatever cost. He will never force upon others his own beliefs nor his own ways. He will display his social methods to others as best advantage as critic or missionary only when sought by them.
    His neighbor will be to him (as he is to himself) free to choose his own way according to his own light, their common cause being the vision of the uncommon-man wherein every man is free to grow to the stature his freedom in America under the Constitution of these United States grants him.
    Exterior compulsion absent in him, no man need be inimical to him. Conscience, thus indispensable to his own freedom, becomes normal to every man. . .
    Remember the men who gave us our [American] Nation. We have ‘the Declaration’ and our Constitution because they were individualist. Great Art is still living for us only because of Individualists like Beethoven. We have creative men on earth today only as they are free to continually arise as individuals from obscurity to demonstrate their dignity and worth above the confusion raised by the herding of the common-man by aid of the scribes and Pharisees of his time—quantity ignoring or overwhelming quality. The herd disappears and reappears but the sovereignty of the individual persists. . .

Read on here for Frank Lloyd Wright's full message: “Man, the Enlightened Being,” and have a great individualistic holiday season.

And remember this useful advice about responsible holiday drinking: Don’t underestimate when you’re at the bottle store. When there’s serious celebrating to be done, it would be irresponsible to run out.

See you next year!!

__________________________________________________________________________________

* [Note that by the word ‘Democracy’ Wright did not mean “a counting of heads regardless of content”; what he meant by the word was simply: Freedom.]

.

#ChristmasMyths, #7: So why December 25?

 

A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS to all of you, and a Salacious Saturnalis!

Why are we celebrating morning drinking today? There’s a very good reason, and it’s not quite what you think …

---

As every child knows, Christmas falls on December 25th every year. Every year.

But is it because it says so in the Bible? Hell no! You won’t fnid any concept of that there.

The very few early Christian churches who did observe the Nativity² celebrated it sometimes in May, sometimes in April, and even occasionally in January. So clearly they had no clue when their legends had it their Saviour was born.

Nor did they know even which year he was supposed to have been born, the celebrated census causing the one-off visit to Bethlehem being a fabrication found nowhere in the historical literature other than the gospel fictions. So not a great datum bu whic to start a calendar then.

And of you think that today you’re ceberating a birthday, it gets even more complicated the further you drill down.

The authors of both Matthew and Luke suggest the Nativity events happened in the days of Herod, the King of Judea.³  But this particular Herod died in 4BC. The authors of Luke talk too about a census “made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria” (one unknown both to historians like Tacitus and Josephus, and also apparently to the authors of Matthew), just to have their boy born in the City of David. But while this placement gets their boy to Bethlehem in order to please their Jewish readers, they face the problem however that according to Josephus, the only historian to mention anything like this, Cyrenius didn’t become governor until either 6 or 10AD.

Quite a problem.⁴

Put beside that larger stumbling block, the problem of the day, or even month, seems almost minor. (But you do have to wonder what sheep and shepherds were doing out in the fields at night in midwinter where snow very occasionally “blankets the region.” Shouldn't tit have ben them who were away in a warmish manger?)

Now, despite the fact that not one of these authors of festive fiction had any clue about any of the alleged history they referred to, there is in fact a very good reason that fifth-century church fathers eventually did settle on a date of December 25 to celebrate when their divine boy was born. And it wasn’t because of anything they’d put in their book.⁵ It was because folk had been out in the streets for thousands of years already on December 25 celebrating the birth of many other divine boys all born the same day. Boys like these, whom everyone at the time would have known:

And so, rather than fighting the ages-old tradition, the church fathers of what was now a state religion enforced by military arms figured thatr with the full might of the Roman Empire now behind them (red James Valliant’s and Warren Fahey’s Creating the Christ for some of the details)they could simply usurp the heathens⁶ by main force. Usurp them by adopting their rituals, banning their heresies, burning their books--and trying to bury the memory that they had ever existed.

Which is a nasty enough story for this benevolent time of year, but it still doesn’t explain why December 25 was such a crowded calendar for divine birthdays. 

To a modern ear it might sound strange, but the simple explanation is that this day in December was the best day to celebrate one of the most important moments of every year: the winter solstice.

That’s why virtually every early northern-hemisphere culture in and out of Christendom celebrated it, from China to India, from Buddhist temples to Celtic dolmens, sometimes adding the legends of divine birth to allow their divinity to absorb the power of the moment.

It’s easy to forget this, living as we do in the two-hundred years out of all human history in which the industrial revolution has made it possible for billions to complain about #FirstWorldProblems, but in a superstitous time and place ignorant of causality, , it was only at the solstice you discovered whether the gods had decided to give this earth and everyting on it the gift of life for another roiund of harvests; pre-industrial society the annual harvest was everything—it was literally life or death.

And in pre-scientific stone-age societies, where all these myths and their rituals were born, it’s easy to forget the cause of the returning harvest was utterly unknown. 

So perhaps it was divine?

It was the result, surmised most cultures, of battles between competing gods; between gods of light (“I am the light of the world,” said Attis, Mithra, Uncle Tom Krishna and all) who every year beat back the darkness, to start the cycle of birth and rebirth again.

Since even the cause of the returning seasons was wholly unknown, making of every new solstice a divine miracle brought by Saturn, Sol Invictus or whichever Saviour figure your worshipped, little wonder then that the turning of the winter solstice was a time to get happy and praise your gods – to celebrate that  your gods were beating back the darkness for another year (and remember, most people in these early times wouldn’t see but very few years in their lives, life expectancy being what it wasn’t).

This is not unimportant. Author Joseph Campbell (author of Hero with a Thousand Faces and the Power of Myth) describes it brilliantly when he writes that through rituals like these we are seeking to “feel the rapture of being alive. Rituals and ceremonies help us find the clues to this within ourselves.” Through rituals like this, he says, we celebrate our passage out of the darkness.  This solstice celebration is perhaps the ultimate and most literal example.

So while December 25 isn’t the winter solstice, it was the first day in the Northern Hemisphere that the day begins getting noticeably longer, and this victory begins being noticeably evident. Just the right time then to celebrate the victory against the forces of darkness with all the rituals at your disposal, in the hope (but not expectation, mind) that they will bring victory again next year.

That we still celebrate this victory today, along with all the trees and the stockings, the Santas and sleighs and mistletoe, and all the hugs and smiles and eating and drinking, and all the revelry and other Pagan trappings of being whole and being alive to celebrate another year with loved ones confirms strongly enough that the whole mythic celebration still has resonance today, even down here in the Southern Hemisphere summer, and even though it’s changed its form a little since the days of ancient Horus.

Just like all good myths should. That’s how they stay alive, even when buried.

So this Christmas, and every Christmas, there's nothing in it either an atheist or pagan can't get behind and celebrate themselves: if it's a celebration of anything at all, it's of "the rapture of being alive"!
Could there be anything better to which to raise a glass or six?

So I wish all of you, even the trolls, a very Merry Christmas.

A Cool Yule-Feast.

A delightful Noel.

A wonderful Nolagh.

A corking Capacrayme.

A Great Triple Night.

A very happy Natalus Solis Invicti.

And a sweaty and Salacious Saturnalia.

Enjoy!

And I’ll see you all in the New Year.

READ THE WHOLE #CHRISTMAS MYTHS SERIES HERE:

• #1: Introduction, and The Miraculous Birth
• #2: The Star of Bethlehem
• #3:  The Song of the Heavenly Host
• #4: The Birthplace and Surroundings of the Little Baby Jesus
• #5: So, What’s With All That Frankincense?
• #6: The Slaughter of the Innocents

NOTES:

1. This and later posts in the series rely heavily on Thomas William Doane’s Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions, and Joseph Campbell’s Occidental Mythology and  Thou Art That. 2. Until the Romans made Christianity compulsory in 391AD, at which time they decided on a collection of books for their Bible and banned and burned all the rest, early Christian church rituals would often be based around the regular reading and re-reading of one particular Gospel. So the Nativity would only have been celebrated by those who read either Matthew or Luke (since the unknown authors of neither Mark nor John had added this allegedly all-important stgory to theirs--which is curious, don't you think?).
3. Yet again, the authors of both the earlier Mark, on which these two are based, and the later John show precisely zerointerest in the subject.
4. Just to further confound things, Josephus expressly states that as long as Herod the Great lived, the province of Judea was exempt from Roman taxation. Ergo Luke's taxation census must have occurred after Herod's death while Matthew requires it to have happened before.
So why add a census to the story?
One reason was to have their hero born in in Bethlehem, and so fulfil scriptural predictions about a Messiah coming from Bethlehem. But they might have plotted it better.
Another might have been that the taxing, for which the census was supposed to be the purpose, inspired the formation of the Zealots, or Nazarenes—with whom some authors speculate Jesus and his brother James were heavily involved. So by associating their boy with the privations involved this was a dog whistle to their colleagues.
5. “…they put into their book.” The Gospels themselves were being subtracted from and added to by copyists virtually all the way up to the fourth century, when Emperor Consantine ordered Christians to stop squabbling and ordered the production of fifty copies of what has become the canonical Bibles, based on the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.
6. It started gently. Writing in about 390AD, John Chrysostom refers to the massive public Roman celebrations for Sol Invictus, and says, “On this day, also, the Birth of Christ was lately fixed at Rome, in order that whilst the heathen were busy with their profane ceremonies, the Christians might perform their holy rites undisturbed.” Within a century, the public and even private celebrations for Sol Invictus were banned, barred and buried from sight, with the new state religion taking over.

.

The #ChristmasMyths. #2: The Star of Bethlehem

Part of a continuing series looking at the pagan origins of the Christmas Myths, one day at a time. (Introduction is here.) Today, the story of three mendicants and a star.

We Three Kings of Orient are
One on a tractor, Two in a Car
One on a scooter Tooting his hooter
Following yonder star …
~ Fred Dagg, ‘The Authorised Version’

LONG BEFORE THE GREAT Fred Dagg first sang or the Bethlehem Star burst into print, Jesus was born under a star that guided three wise men to his stable door, stopping at Herod’s palace to ask the way. Actually, only the first of these things really happened.

The real story about the last thing however is marginally more interesting than what you’ve heard —especially its real origins; which is infinitely more compelling for being true.So settle back and pull up your star charts.

THE STORY OF STARS and wise men and Jesus is only barely told. For all the amount it fills up space on so many Christmas cards, the story itself only appears in one of the gospels, the one written well after Jesus would have died that erroneously bears the title of ‘Matthew.’ You may consider its inclusion passing strange for a few reasons:

• why this one author chose to add the tale, when the Bible itself was so equivocal on what amounts to astrology; 
• why the authors of the other Gospels choose to ignore the embroidery altogether; 
• why the author(s) of Mark, the earliest Gospel from whom the author(s) of Matthew borrowed most of his, didn’t bother to include any of it; 
• why the three men who we’re told are so wise, and despite being led by this star, lost their way so badly they ended up in Jerusalem instead of Bethlehem; where they very unwisely dobbed in the new baby to King Herod, causing the King to “slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof,from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.”
     I mean, they don’t actually seem to be very wise, do they.

So if any of this sounds in any way wise, or even literarily or historically correct, then I have some gold, and frankincense and myrrh to sell you.


OF COURSE, IT’S NOT INTENDED to be taken as either literarily or historically correct. What idiot would? It was written as myth, based on other myths, to appeal  to a credulous audience who was rather partial to the occasional celestial message from the skies.

The Roman historian Tacitus tells us, for example, that at a crucial moment in the reign of the Emperor Nero,

A comet having appeared at this juncture, the phenomenon, according to the popular opinion, announced that governments were to be changed, and kings dethroned.  In the imaginations of men, Nero was already dethroned, and who should be his successor was the question.

Indeed, popular opinion also had it that brilliant stars were also seen at the birth of every Caesar, Canon Farrar declaring in his own Life of Christ:

the Greeks and Romans had always considered that the births and deaths of great men were symbolised by the appearance and disappearance of heavenly bodies…

Frankly, the credulous Roman people were prepared to accept that a sign from the sky would indicate either a coming coup, or the coming of a great man.

This then was the audience to whom the authors of Matthew were talking when they wove their tale—one to whom it would have been passing strange if his story of this new Messiah did not contain some sort of clear cosmic sign.

SO WHY DID THOSE authors need to add the Three Magi from the East who were following what they told Herod was “His star”? Perhaps because it was from “The East” that this tradition of the “cosmic herald” derived.

Consider the birth of the Buddha, which was supposed have been announced in the heavens by what was called a “Messianic star” rising on the horizon. “Wise men,” known as “Holy Rishis,” were informed by this that their Messiah was born.

Famous births in India also enjoyed their own celestial shining light. The Indian Nakshatias divided the astrological field into 27 constellations, any one of which could direct your life—any unfavourable signs needing to be assuaged by a ceremonial S’Anti. When Crishna was born, “his stars” were said to be seen in the heavens.

In China too, the same astrological influences predominated, and the birth of Yu the legendary founder of China’s first dynasty, was said to have been accompanied by a star, as was the birth of the Taoist sage Laotse.

In the Muslim world, a star and several other celestial signs were supposed to have appeared at the birth of Ali, Muhammad's great disciple.

According to Hebrew legends, a “brilliant star” was also supposed to have shone at the birth of Abraham, and the star at Moses’s birth was so bright it was supposed to have been seen and reported by Egyptian Magi to their king.

In Egypt too, tables were kept with tables of the constellations and their movements for every hour of every month of the year—all of which were supposed to have influence on human beings, and to herald forthcoming events—not least the birth of a Pharaoh.

That’s a lot of stars to have appearing and disappearing in the cosmos. All these appearances on cue would have demanded many more “special stars” and astrological events than even the ancient heavens could have provided. But as we said, they were al a fairly credulous lot.

For his story, Matthew chose to hook directly into the Persian tradition of strangeness in the heavens, where from ancient times they looked to the heavens for guidance, and to the stars for divination. Astrologers were said to have “swarmed throughout the country.” And according to Matthew’s addition to the Gospels it fell to what seems to be three Persian Magi, the Zoriastrian priesthood who followed the god Ormuzd, to distinguish “his star” and announce to the world—or at least to Herod—that the newborn had been granted divine sanction thereby.

A strange tale indeed. (Or an interesting one, if you consider all the sources.)

But if you want to sell your man as a Messiah to an uncritical world ready to believe that the great men of myth and history already had stars to their name, and misguided astrologers to guide them, then evidently that’s a tale a budding Gospel writer decides he has to write.

Well, one of them at least.

READ THE WHOLE #CHRISTMAS MYTHS SERIES HERE:

• #1: Introduction, and The Miraculous Birth

This afternoon: “The Song of the Heavenly Host.”

* * * *

* This and later posts in the series rely heavily on Thomas William Doane’s Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions. Unless otherwise attributed, all quotes are sourced from there.

.

The #ChristmasMyths, #1: The Myth of the Miraculous Birth

 

TIME FOR A SHORT STORY.

A story about the Christian Christmas stories,

A story about where that some of that stuff of legend and mythology came from – what the myths really mean, why early Christian authors wanted to borrow them, and why in some form or other they are told and retold. So …

Q: What’s mythology?
A: Someone else’s religion

Q: What’s the Christian Christmas story based on?
A: Someone else’s stories.

The Christian Christmas story is based on Mythology borrowed from elsewhere. I’m going to look at the pagan origin of each of these myths and legends one day at a time: the miraculous birth; in a humble place; of a youngster of impressive genealogy; accompanied by a tremendous star; and (in Luke) a heavenly choir; recognition of the divine child by passing vagrants wise men; their presentation of gifts; and the slaughter of innocents by a king fearing the child might displace his crown.

The early Christian writers did well in writing their story but, rather than being made up out of whole cloth, it was woven together from earlier myths and legends and the stories of other religions, with most of which they and their readers would have been familiar, to tell the bigger tale those writers wanted their readers to embrace.

Stay with me as I tell the stories.

Today, the Myth of the Miraculous Birth . . .

Far from being unique to the Christian Christmas story, the Virgin Birth Myth is so common in world mythology as to have been the leitmotif of any god anywhere--it's almost like it's a prerequisite for any god that the story appear in his biography if he (or she) is to be taken in any way seriously. So no wonder those early Christian authors wanted it for their own.

The tale appears in American Indian mythologies; in Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology; in Asian and Indian mythologies of every kind -- and even in Maori mythology here in New Zealand. It’s ubiquitous—and not just because everyone copied, but because, like all mythology, it reveals some fundamental truth.

LOOK AT SOME OF the places and times that share the tale.

It appears in ancient Indian myth in the figure of Heri Chrishna, or Crishna the Saviour, who is born of the chaste virgin Devaki, selected on account of her purity, begotten by the deity Vishnu, and said to be “the very person of Vishnu himself in human form.”

Thai mythology has a virgin-born god and saviour called Codon, his mother, a beautiful young virgin, was “impregnated with sunbeams” while out praying one day.

In Buddhist mythology, The Buddha was born of the Virgin Maya, or Mary, after the divine power called “The Holy Ghost” was said to have descended on her in the form of a white elephant! (A little like the session with a white bull enjoyed by Pasiphae, the mother of the Minotaur, but with seemingly more pleasant results.)

Like someone else we could mention, it was said of the Buddha, “He in mercy left paradise, and came down to earth because he was filled with compassion for the sins and miseries of mankind.”  From the time of his birth however, Maya’s womb was sealed up “like a casket in which a relic is placed” and she lived thereafter as a perpetual virgin. So it didn’t all end well for her.

The Hindus have a Lord and Saviour call Salivahana, a “divine child born of a Virgin, in face an incarnation of the Supreme Vishnu.”
China too has the demi-god Fo-hi, conceived when a virgin tasted the divine lotus, and at whose birth a rainbow appeared.

Laotse too, the founder of Taoism, was said to have been “a divine emanation incarnate in human form,” born of a virgin out of his mother’s side. The sages Yu, Hau-ki, Xaca, Confucius were also said to all be god-begotten and virgin-born.

Stop me if any of this is sounding at all familiar.

NOW IT MIGHT BE argued that all this was a bit distant to early Middle Eastern authors. Maybe. But the Middle East of the time was one vast trade route. In any case, there was plenty of virgin-born action closer to home.

In Egypt there was the Saviour Horus, god of vengeance, sky and protection and the second emanation of Ammon, conceived in bizarre fashion out of the virgin Isis and said to be born on December 25; the god Ra, “born from the side of his mother, but was not engendered,” and the sons he himself divinely “engendered”; the god-king Menes likewise.

By the rivers of Babylon (where they sat down) they told stories of how their god-king Nebuchadnezzar was created by the god Bel, engendered by the god Marduk, “and deposited himself the germ of [his] life in the womb of [his] mother.”

Zoroaster in Persia too—who Plato says the Persians considered to be the son of the Supreme God Orasmasdes--was “born in innocence, of an immaculate conception, of a ray of the Divine Reason.”

As was the Indian/Persian angelic divinity Mithras, said to have enjoyed a virgin birth, 12 companions and an ascension into heaven, and around whom the Romans built a religion that at the time of the Gospels’ creation was among the most popular going around—the Pagan Christ—the sun-god ‘Sol Invictus Mithras’ said to be the “favourite deity” of Asia Minor whose “mysteries” had “permeated the Roman Empire and extended from India to Scotland”—and whose birthday just happened to be on December 25.

If they were to be successful, this last was the main religion the early Christians either had to knock off or usurp—or absorb.

Justin Martyr to Emperor Adrian: “The story of Jesus’ divine birth ‘says no more that what you
Pagans say of those whom you style the sons of Jove.’” Picture shows birth of Dionysus-Zagreus,
first son of Jove to a mortal woman, who was was torn apart by the Titans 
before being resurrected and ascending to heaven. Nice story. But who would ever believe it?

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITER who revelled in the unlikely name of Justin Martyr relied on all this and more when he wrote to Emperor Adrian arguing that the just-written story of Jesus’ divine birth “says no more that what you Pagans say of those whom you style the sons of Jove.” True enough. Jove aka Jupiter aka Zeus was, if you recall your cursing properly (“By Jove!) not only “omnipotent” but also the first and the last; the head and the midst; the giver of all things; the foundation of the earth, and the starry heavens.”

So he was a divine and all-powerful fellow. And so were Jove’s sons, by Jove!

Among the divine sons of Jove aka Zeus we can find Hercules, the son of Jupiter by a mortal mother Alcmene;Bacchus (aka Dionysus), delivered by the mortal mother Semele “by a lightning-bearing flame” (which must have hurt the poor woman); Amphion, by the mortal mother Antoiope; Prometheus, the deliverer of fire to humans, and a deity uniting divine and human nature; Perseus, by the mortal virgin Danae; Mercury, by the mortal mother Maia; Aeolus, by the mortal mother Acasta; Apollo, delivered under a tree to the mortal mother Latona; Aethlius, by the mortal mother Protogenia; Arcas, by a mortal mother; Aroclus, by another mortal mother.

The legendary founder of Rome Romulus was said to have been the son of God by the “pure virgin” Rhea-Sylvia

That’s a lot of begatting going on. So it seems that if any bogus Messiah were to be taken at all seriously around these parts, he needed as a minimum some kind of supreme being in his bloodlines and maybe a bit of virgin-birthing to kick his story off.

Roman and Greek rulers themselves were not immune to having their stories so embroidered. The legendary founder of Rome Romulus was said to have been the son of God by the pure virgin Rhea-Sylvia. Julius Caesar was supposed to have a God for a father, as was Augustus. Alexander the Great was said to have been the son of either Jupiter/Zeus or Ammon (depending on who was telling the story) by the mortal mother Olympias, who was impregnated by a divine snake, all of which no doubt amused his warrior father Philip. His general and partial successor Ptolemy Soter (Ptolemy Saviour) was also said to carry the divine afflatus, as was Cyrus, King of Persia.

Alexander the Great was said to have been the son of the mortal mother Olympias, who was impregnated by a divine snake

Plato too was believed by many to have been the son of God by the pure virgin Perictione, and his father Aris was said to have been admonished in a dream to leave her bits alone because she was pregnant to a god. Plato’s story, and Aris’s, is shared by the mother of Apollonius, and the father ofPythagoras. Aesculapius, “the great performer of miracles, was supposed to be the son of a god and the worldly mother Coronis.” She supposedly -gave birth on a mountain (it’s a long story), with the help of a passing goat-herd, to a child whose head was “encircled with fiery rays.”

Even closer to the Middle Eastern home was Simon Magus, a Hebrew hero contemporary with Jesus who performed miracles and was believed to be the son of a god.

And that’s not to mention the various offspring of Odin (who, because of his predilection for wandering the skies delivering gifts, was said to be one of the forebears of the Santa story), including Baldur and Thor; or the various virgin-born gods in the ancient South America that helped the Spanish so much in selling their own version of the virgin-born story to a fearful population—god-king-saviours like the MexicanQuetzalcoatl, the Mayan Zama, Bochica of Colombia, Manco Capac (offspring of of the god Peru), Votan of Guatemala, and Zome of Brazil. Meanwhile, North American Indians celebrated the divine birth of Wasi, if you were Cherokee; of Qaagagp if you were an Edue of California; of Tarengawagan if you were Iroquois; and Michabou if you were Algonquin.

Not to forget the miraculous birth of the trickster      

and miracle-worker Maui, conceived                

here in New Zealand to the divine                 

Tama-nui-te-ra and the mortal mother Taranga          

Not to forget the miraculous birth of the trickster and miracle-worker Maui, conceived here in New Zealand to the divine Tama-nui-te-ra and the mortal mother Taranga, and the hero of many delightfully tall tales.

NOW, IT’S FAIRLY OBVIOUS that not one  of these stories relate actual historical events. In each of them, the story is intended either to be taken as the sort of exaggerated boasting Arabs still enjoy today, or to be taken as a metaphor—a symbol in the most basic sense. According to mythologist Joseph Campbell, the symbol embodied here is that of “the birth of spiritual man out of animal man.” A symbol, in other words, of an important transformation in human affairs --- the coming into maturity of mankind.

This relates strongly to what Campbell calls "the Hero Myth," universal in so many cultures, in which the son is born to a father who is, let’s say, a hero warrior gone off to the wars after conception never to return.  The son’s first quest as a man—his first spiritual journey—is the quest to find his father. In other words, to find himself.

There is then [says Campbell] a whole tradition of mythologies involving the spiritual begetter and the son who must go in quest of his father.
    This is not always a Virgin Birth in the physical sense…

But important to the tale that his thought-to-be father is often revealed not to be his real birth-father – his origins, like mankind’s, being lost in the mists of time.

No surprise then in the Jesus story that his parents fail to understand him when, in the story, the twelve-tear-old Jesus tells his parents “he must be about his Father’s business.”

And note that even in the Synoptic Gospels themselves, when the Jesus stories first appear, we never find Jesus from his own mouth (as told by his take-tellers) declaring himself to be either a god or God, or to be worshipped as one.²

So if you do take these as Gospel, then you’d surely have to believe him.

Understanding the myths is far more interesting than arguing for them being literal or historical fact. Isn’t it odd that instead of enjoying the metaphorical meaning of these myths and stories, so many folk get hung up instead on the literal fiction.

Happy Horusmas!

---

NOTES

1. This and later posts in the series rely heavily on Thomas William Doane’s Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions. Unless otherwise attributed, all quotes are sourced from there.

2.  “If we seek in the first three Gospels to know what his [later] biographers thought of Jesus, we find his true humanity plainly stated, and if we possessed only the Gospel of Mark, and the discourses of the Apostles in Acts, the whole Christology of the New Testament  would be reduced to this: that Jesus of Nazareth of was ‘a prophet mighty in deeds and in words, made by God Christ and Lord.’ ” – Albert Réville
And check out the Question ‘Is Jesus God?’ at the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible site.

.

If you’re going to drink up this Christmas, do it properly

 

My Christmas present to myself this year (thank you, readers) is  these IPA glasses.

While a stubby holder, a pilfered pub tumbler and the occasional stemmed pilsner glass have been my main beer holders over the years, it's now time to up my game. 

So if you have beer and nothing to put it in, you can look at The Spiegelau Store. Fine people. Quick delivery. And they have wine glasses for those unfortunate enough not to drink beer – and cocktail glasses for those astute enough to need them.

Fill your boots up.

.

The best & worst gifts measured

 

If you’re buying an economist a gift this Christmas … don’t.

Or at least don’t before examining why you maybe shouldn’t – because economists reckons what you spend on gifts is generally valued much less that what you paid for them.

A 1993 paper, “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas,” gave the notion its first real academic ballast. The author, Joel Waldfogel, then at Yale University, calculated yuletide waste by asking 86 students to estimate the cost of presents they received. Average answer: $438.
    He asked how much they would have been willing to pay for the same gifts. Average answer: $313. Recipients valued gifts at 71.5 cents on the dollar, a significant economic inefficiency.
    Gifts, Mr. Waldfogel wrote, “leave the recipient worse off than if she had made her own consumption choice with an equal amount of cash.” …
   “The efficiency loss of Christmas presents,” they concluded, “is highest for gifts from grandparents.”

Take that, grandparents! (Although some researchers reckon girlfriends rate as fair;ly useless too.)

[And] a 2009 ‘Journal of Socio-Economics’ paper measured gifts across the holiday catalogue, from books (which recipients valued at 74% of the amount spent) to footwear (92%) and kitchen gadgets (77%).
    “We find no evidence of significant welfare gains in any gift category,” the paper concluded, calling gifts a “considerable market failure.”

Don’t worry. There is hope.

Anyone who has studied microeconomics knows... that an income transfer, as opposed to a gift in-kind, gets you to a higher level of utility," but as WSJ reports, putting theory under the tree is another matter. After years of studying the economics of gift-giving, economists have found that some gifts are valued more highly than others, and that some gift-givers seem to be better than others...

Turns out that pets suck, but jewellery rocks. So, this Christmas, buy your favourite economist some bling. Or send them on a long trip …

[Hat tip Zero Hedge]

.

The *real* reason for the season

 

Yes folks, it’s time for that post again because …

It’s the Christmas season. Yuletide. The festive season. And we need to know the real reason for the season, which is …. probably not what you think it is.

We’ve had the cartoon, so like all good Christmas dinners, let’s have a Christmas joke:

Q: "What's the difference between God and Santa Claus?"
A: "There is no God."

Ha ha ha.  The fact is, dear readers, at least Santa—well, Saint Nicholas at least—was a real figure, if not a real bloke, even if the many other inspirations for the Santa Claus character were not.

But God, or Christ, is suspiciously hard to find. (Which makes you sort of wonder what kind of message he’s allegedly trying to send by being so, well, non-omnipresent and all, and by only sending notes via obscure Bronze- and Roman-era texts.) And the harsh fact about him and Christmas, whatever else you may have heard, is that Christ himself was never even in Christmas --except in fiction and by order of the first few Popes.

Not even in the Roman-era texts:

[The New Testament itself gives two different and incompatible stories of the birth of Jesus, explains Christopher Hitchens.] None of the four gospels gives any notion of what time of year (let alone in what year) the supposed Nativity occurred. Only two gospels mention the virginity of Mary and only one has any mention of a "manger" [which is nothing more than a fancy name for trough – but try singing “Away in a trough” and see where that gets you!].
    Nowhere is there any record of a "stable." Wise men and shepherds are likewise very unevenly distributed throughout the discrepant accounts. So that the placement of a crèche surrounded by a motley crew of humans and animals has no more Scriptural warrant than does The Life of Brian [and many fewer laughs].
    Moreover, the erection of this exhibit near the turn of the year is actually a placation of the old Norse gods of the winter solstice - or "Yule" as the pre-Christians sometimes called it.
    I myself [says Hitchens] repose no faith in any man-made text or made-man redeemer, so when it's Christmas I say "Merry Christmas" with a clear conscience, as I respect Ramadan and Passover, and also because "Happy Holidays" is so thin and insipid.
    I don't mind if Christians honour the moment by displaying, and singing about, reindeer (a hard species to find in the greater Jerusalem/Bethlehem area). Same for the pine and fir trees that also don't grow in Palestine. I wish everybody joy of it.

And so do I. I just wish the Christians would leave off bashing us over the head with their myth—and their values.

So many facts that appear in your nativities don’t even come from those texts. We celebrate Christmas in December, yet the best we can tell from those Christmas stories is that the character of Jesus wasn't even born in December, let alone at Christmas time: he was born in July.¹ Which makes him a cancer.²  Just like religion itself.

And God doesn’t even like Christmas trees, for Chrissake!

So the reason for the season, and how the season is celebrated, have very little originally to do with what you might have thought it did.

Historians themselves however do know the "reason for the season," and it's not because of anything that happened away in a stable at a time of a non-existent census.  Even the Archbishop of Canterbury knows the truth, conceding a few Christmasses ago that the Christmas story and the Three Wise Men -- the whole Nativity thing itself --  is all just "a legend." Legends in fact that borrowed in whole cloth from other times and other places, and thereafter usurpedand occupied  by the Christian church.

Speaking for myself,  I really like myths and legends.

I’m even happier when we remember they’re stories, not historical accounts. (Q: What’s the definition of mythology? A: Somebody else’s religion.)

So the simple fact to remember at this seasons is that 'Christmas' itself was originally not even a Christian festival at all.  The origins of what we now all enjoy was most likely the lusty pagan festival to celebrate the winter solstice, the festival that eventually became the Roman Saturnalia (right).

In the pre-modern northern hemisphere, (from whence these traditions started) this time of year was especially important; the time of year when days stopped getting darker and darker, and started once again to lengthen.

A halfway point in winter, that bleak season of hibernation before planting could begin again and you knew by now that the crops being stored to keep the wolves at bay would see you through. Or not. And if they would, you had something to celebrate: that another year on earth was maybe possible!

So this was a time of the year for great optimism.  The end of the hardest part of the year was in sight (particularly important up in Lapland, the pagan home of the Norsemen where all-day darkness was the winter rule), and those all-important food stocks would soon be replenished.

All this was something worth celebrating with enthusiasm, with gusto and with plenty of food and drink and pleasures of the flesh -- and if those Norse sagas tell us anything, they tell us those pagans knew a thing or two about that sort of celebration!  They celebrated a truly Salacious Saturnalia.

Thus was born the now-celebrated tradition of being blathered for most of what has become the Christmas month.

One other popular celebration (and stop me if you’ve heard this before) involved having a chap put on the horns and skin of the dead animal being roasted in the fire (worn with the fur side inside and the blood-red side outside ), and giving out gifts of food to revellers.  This guy represented Satan, or at least some species of evil-doer, and the revellers celebrated beating him back for another year by making him a figure of fun (I swear, I'm not making this up). 

Observant readers will spot that the gift-giving and the red outfit lined with red fur (and even the name itself, almost) are still with us in the form of Santa.  So Happy Satanmas, Santa!

 

SUCH WERE THE celebrations of the past.  But the Dark Age Christian do-gooders didn’t like the pagan revels. Too little sackcloth and ashes for their liking. Instead of bacchanalia, these ghouls of the graveyard wanted instead to talk about suffering and their sores, and to spread the misery of their religion worldwide; instead of throwing themselves into such lewd and lusty revels, they thought everyone should be sitting at home mortifying their flesh  – and  very soon they hit upon a solution: first they stole the festivals, and then they sanitised them. 

And instead of lusty revels with Satan and mistletoe, they gave us insipid nonsense around a trough along with Magi, stars, and shepherds – with only an angel or two to excite a bit of lust.  (Just think, the first 'Grinch' who stole Christmas was really a Pope!)

So given this actual history, it's somewhat churlish of today's sanitised saints of sobriety to be complaining now about history reasserting itself and folk claiming Christmas back for their revels.

BECAUSE THE VERY BEST OF Christmas is still very much pagan, for which you should really thank Odin, not the baby bloody Jesus.

The mistletoe, the trees, and the presents; the drinking and eating and all the red-blooded celebrations; the gift-giving, the trees and the decorations; the eating and the singing; the whole full-blooded, rip-roaring, free-wheeling, overwhelming, benevolent materialism of the holiday -- all of it all fun, and all of it fully, one-hundred percent pagan.

And commercial! (Spoiler alert, the modern Christmas was born that way: it was invented by capitalism.) Says Leonard Peikoff in 'Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial' (s), the festival is "an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life." I'll drink to all that, and then I'll come back right back up again for seconds.

Ayn Rand sums it up for mine, rather more benevolently than my brief introduction might have led you to expect:

“The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property (though it is supposed to be part, but is a largely unobserved part) of the Christian religion.
The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: ‘Merry Christmas’—not ‘Weep and Repent.’ And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form—by giving presents to one’s friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance....
    “The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialized. The gift-buying is good for business and good for the country’s economy; but, more importantly in this context, it stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And the street decoration put up by department stores and other institutions—the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colors—provide the city with a spectacular display, which only ‘commercial greed’ could afford to give us. One would have to be terribly depressed to resist the wonderful gaiety of that spectacle.

And so say all of us.  I wish you all, wherever you are a  Cool Yule, a Salacious Saturnalia, and a very Happy Christmas.

PS: Here’s some related Hot Facts from the Hot Facts Girl. Concentrate as well as you can…

 

 

 

1. Yes, this is simply a rhetorical flourish. Jesus' birth may have happened in March. Or in September -- or not at all -- but it certainly did not happen in December. More on that here.

2. "A cancer. Like religion." Think that's harsh? You should try Landover Baptist's Bible Quizzes. Or Sam Harris's 'Atheist Manifesto.' Ouch! [Hat tip for both, good old Stephen Hicks] And, I confess, I pinched the quip from Australian comedy team The Doug Anthony All Stars.

.

It’s Christmas in Venezuela

 

Its socialist rulers having taken the means of production into the toilet, and with its currency now worth less than the toilet paper you won’t find there, Venezuela’s socialist apparatchiks have now done a reverse Scrooge – confiscating toys from toy makers so they can be seen to be Santa.  But quite apart from the moral outrage of blatant theft, Dan Mitchell points out in this guest post that the practical problem with raiding toy makers to redistribute toys is that next year, there won't be any toy makers to raid.
This is what socialism looks like, children …

---

Socialist Venezuela Raids Santa's Workshop

Earlier this year, I borrowed from Dante’s Inferno and created the Five Circles of Statist Hell. At the time, I suggested that Venezuela was on the cusp of moving from the third circle (“widespread poverty and economic misery”) to the fourth circle (“systematic and grinding poverty and deprivation”).

Since we now know that children in the country are suffering from hunger and malnutrition, I think we can safely confirm that Venezuela has made that crossing, joining the dystopian hell of North Korea (though you can make a good argument that the savage regime based in Pyongyang actually belongs in the fifth circle).

And just in case you need another piece of evidence about Venezuela, consider these excerpts from a surreal BBC report.

Venezuelan authorities have arrested two toy company executives and seized almost four million toys, which they say they will distribute to the poor. Officials accused the company of hoarding toys and hiking prices in the run-up to Christmas. Last week, the government issued an order to retailers to reduce prices on a range of goods by 30%. …Our children are sacred, we will not let them rob you of Christmas,” it said in a tweet, along with photos and video of thousands of boxes of toys. …The agency also posted photos of the two executives being marched from the premises by a squad of heavily armed soldiers.

Here’s some additional background on the economic situation in the country.

This is not the first time Venezuela has ordered price cuts on retailers, or mobilised armed units to enforce it. In late 2013, the country introduced laws allowing the government to fix prices and dictate profit margins. …The same measures have been used to fix the prices of basic products such as flour, meat and bread – but supply is limited in a country where many people go hungry.

Before continuing, I can’t help commenting that BBC journalists apparently can’t put 2 and 2 together. The reason supply is limited and people are suffering is because of the price controls and intervention.

Sigh.

Anyhow, here are some final passages from the article.

The Venezuelan government is becoming increasingly unpopular as the country’s economic crisis grows. …The International Monetary Fund estimates that inflation – the rate at which prices go up – will hit 2,000% next year.

Yup, Venezuela is a regular Shangri La. No wonder Bernie Sanders is so infatuated with the place.

But let’s focus today on the Venezuelan government’s attempt to play Santa Claus by seizing toys and selling them at below-market rates.

I don’t know if this move will be politically popular since that depends on whether ordinary people have some degree of economic sophistication.

But we can say with great confidence that it represents terrible economic policy. That’s because, as Thomas Sowell has wisely noted, it’s very difficult for a government to steal wealth more than one time.

The victims (both the ones who already have been looted and the ones who might be targeted in the future) quickly learn that it’s not a smart idea to accumulate assets that can be stolen by the state.

In effect, the productive people of the country learn to behave like the Little Red Hen.

In the short run, though, the Venezuelan government gets to play Santa Claus. At least for 2016.

But it won’t have that option in 2017. And because the nation’s kleptocratic government is running out of victims, it’s just a matter of time before the system collapses, at which point the government either gives up power or launches a brutal crackdown.

Hopefully the former.

---

Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review.
This post previously appeared at his blog International Liberty, and at FEE.

.