Let's say you were born in the Middle Ages....

[icarus]

Let's say you were born in the Middle Ages.

After a long day salting away food for the winter darning socks, you would put away your apron thimble and hear that one or more of the passion plays were being performed in the courtyard in front of the church. Actors were basically vagabonds but... a play.

It's a muddy slog, but everyone is there, rubbing elbows, gossiping and laughing. No one actually watches the play unless it gets interesting. Kids run in and out of the crowd, excited by the unusual activity.

There were three main ones, and you probably know them by heart. Certainly you know the basic story line. But the slapstick of the three shepherds shoving each other about like the three stooges was a hoot, and it was a touching moment when the shepherds gave lambswool to the baby Jesus under that big star, after all those wise men brought their fancy gifts. What was myrrh, anyway?

In the Paradise Play the devil was half bad guy and half comic relief, and ran in and out of the crowd, hissing. A risky manuever given how riled up the crowd got, but the little fellow was fast. (Check your pockets.)

Now let's say you lived in Seattle, Black Friday, 2007.

You would bundle up your kids and go downtown to Macy's to watch the giant electric star on the side of the department store light up, kicking off the Christmas shopping season with big savings. Macy's Inc. also lights a four story Christmas tree and there's a fireworks display the moment the star is lit. After the fireworks there are carols singing "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree (Have A Happy Holiday)" and a fat Santa standing next to the mayor and most of the members of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce.

Most years you need an umbrella, but today the skies are clear and cold. There are hundreds of shoppers with plastic bags full of parcels. Tired toddlers crying. You make your kids hold hands as they cross the street.

After braving the sales at Nordstrom and Macy's and buying cotton candy (what the heck), you and your youngsters stand in line to take a ride on the restored Merry-Go-Round in Westlake Center, alive with lights.

The Upshot of it All.

I can't decide if it's really all that different. But I have to say, I watched the extravaganza starting the Christmas shopping season appalled and laughing at the sheer tackiness of it all. What's the underlying message of celebrating the start of the shopping season? Is this really what we celebrate?

Comments

[greenling.livejournal.com]

We celebrate Black Friday? *looks up into sky above head for point*

In the Middle Ages, I wouldn't be able to come home to the internet. On the other hand, I might still be studying Latin all night...

It is amusing that the term Black Friday is actually accepted, even to some degree among those that perpetuate it.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not feeling any particular nostalgia for the Bubonic Plague myself.

I'm not sure these are all that different. They're largely social events, produced by others, in order to replicate a certain message -- and they're both rather tacky. But, the undisguised commercialism is downright disturbing. Or it would be if it weren't hilarious.

Yep. The press got hold of the term "black Friday" and now it's on the evening news.

*shakes head*

[enname.livejournal.com]

Nope, no Latin all night unless you wanted to go blind at a young age from studying small, cramped writing by tallow lamp. :P Oh the smell of burning fat, hard to get out of one's clothes...

[greenling.livejournal.com]

True, but I bet going over conjugations in one's head is a great cure for insomnia... :3

[alchemine.livejournal.com]

Eh, it's still all about spectacle. People love to gather in crowds and gawk at stuff, whether it's a troupe of traveling actors or a shiny electric star. :)

Makes you wonder what Christmas celebrations will be like in another 600 years, assuming people still celebrate Christmas by then.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

The more times change, they more they stay the same.

I suspect the pagan tradition of Christmas will be subsumed into another world religion. In 600 years people will wonder what the heck pine trees have to do with Glorious Elisaphat Day.

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

So Black Friday is the start of the Christmas shopping season? I was wondering about that, but too lazy to check it up.

Though... you (as in, you in the US, not you personally) celebrate the start of a shopping season? *intrigued*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I didn't know this until the news last night. The things one learns from TV anchormen. "Black" Friday, as in the financial "going into the black."

And yes, Seattle celebrates the start of the buying season. Totally bizarre, is it not? I'm wondering if it's disgusting, embarrassing, or just refreshingly honest.

[helkamaria.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to say that the Middle Ages option sounds far more tolerable. Then again, I hate shopping during any kind of sales or special season. Christmas is especially bad, what with all the annoying songs the stores are playing.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping to do all my shopping online from my not-so-comfortable couch. I'm fond of the insipid Christmas carols (I lean towards the highly Christian ones, despite the fact I'm not a Christian :D) but I'm someone who, well, I don't shop. I buy. I get a list of exactly what I want and get my shopping done in roughly 35 minutes.

Usually at 9pm on Christmas eve. But I'm hoping to short-circuit that tradition with my couch potato shopping.

[helkamaria.livejournal.com]

I'm fond of many Christian Christmas carols, despite also not being Christian. It's mostly the secular ones I find annoying. The religious ones are usually more beautiful, and I'd go to barricades if someone tried to take away my Hallelujah's.

I like shopping whenever I don't actually have to buy anything and the shops aren't crowded. :D It's when I actually need something that I hate shopping.

[enname.livejournal.com]

If by the end of November you hadn't got your food stores down for winter already, you'd be screwed. The Middle Ages underwent a small iceage - November was already frozen solid. Anyway, mornings are for baking and sewing when there is light.

You forgot one very important ingrediant with the Medieval version - that for when they are off time, they party hard. If you know, not so beaten down by surviving that they can't. Bucket loads of alcohol, improvisation, side shows (dancers, singers, story tellers, jugglers etc), hawkers, a lot of sex behind buildings by the youngsters, lots of food and that this is one of the few times you'd get to be eating a lot of good food( as fasting before Christmas is expected as well as Easter.There would also be eucharist (smells and bells!) to follow (or before) ... However, the passion plays are often subversive to the established powers and there is always fighting, violence and a lot of skirmishing in the streets. Never pays to be a widow or prostitute or single right about now.

For actual Christmas, any gift giving that goes on is small hand made things, or berries, or hair. After all this is a celebration of the saviour of the world, the one who has and will pull you out of the misery that is life... personally I would infinitely prefer the Medieval version .. I hate shoppers. :P

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*scratches out salting away food for the winter*

*adds in: cracks knuckles after hours of darning socks*

You'll note that I got the passion plays correct? This is because I've performed them. Guess which character I played?

[enname.livejournal.com]

Of course you did, they are very important! Along with the nativity plays. The conventry christmas carol is a part of one of the earliest plays.

What did you play? :P

*rubs arm after milling flour for hours*

Mmmmm grit.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

The best part in the entire Paradise Play: the devil!

No one else wanted it. Then they found out that it was the only fun part. (Eve was laaaaame. And God had a strikingly small part.)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*whispers* I liked the Waldorf version. We had electric lights and we celebrated, old-style. Consumerism was scoffed at. (The hard-core Waldorfians only gave hand made gifts.)

[enname.livejournal.com]

*whispers* I liked the teeny church my father used to take services too in the middle of nowhere, no electricity and only candles and one very old farmer reading out one of the passions (and adventures with snakes). Atheist that I am, the atmosphere was lovely still.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*whispers* Cooool.

*in an undertone* We celebrated Michaelmas with strange pagan ritual combined with Eurythmy in the fall.

Then Halloween had its own ritual (and our costumes!), forming and reforming lines until we were all in a big Waldorfian (it is a verb, noun, and adjective) circle.

Then in the weeks leading up to Christmas came St. Lucia day (you never knew when it was coming), where the second grade wandered the halls in multicolored robes with one little girl in white, singing together, Wake up, Lucia comes today. Oh be glad.... the voices falling away, then getting closer, until they'd come to our classroom door and encircle the room, singing. Then the teacher would be served tea and cookies (just the teacher, not us) and they'd leave, singing, voices dispersing down the hall.

The halls would be filled with the sounds of recorder trios, practicing for the yearly medieval festival. (I played both soprano and alto recorder.) Did I mention that our building was a state landmark and looked like a castle? And that we had an auditorium with vaulted ceilings and leaded glass windows?

Then we'd have the advent candles (my teachers were firebugs) before every class, with more music. Crafts class was taken up make little crocheted dolls for the medieval festival. Then the last week of classes, the teachers would perform the Shepherd's Play every year for the entire school, kindergarteners in the front row, the high schoolers sprawled in the back.

Then there was the year when all the first graders (I was one) carried candles into a spiral of pine boughs.

Then the medieval festival itself, with roast pig, jugglers (that was my boyfriend Chris), the recorder trio, wandering carolers in costume, and at the feast a professional troupe that performed, standing on the tables, while the rest of my class acted as servers (we'd been trained to move fast, act servile, and mumble appropriate phrases ;).

Then upstairs, while the clean-up was going on, the far more traditional "drinking of the leftover wine" by the teenage servers got underway... along with the traditional couples vanishing into the costume room....

[caseylane.livejournal.com]

I remember, years ago, seeing a sketch with Bernadette Peters where they renamed Christmas "Commerce Day". A day where you bought all those you loved presents. I remember thinking about how that's really what was going on.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Downright prophetic.

[sinick.livejournal.com]

Well since the whole idea of Christmas was blatantly stolen from Yule, I'd say the fact that it continues to change in line with the whims of the powerful, is very much More Of The Same.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Is it time to name it Commerce Day yet?

[katmaxwell.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, you've touched upon part of the reason I hate this season.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

You know we'll have to re-write all the Christmas carols to account for global warming, right?

[katmaxwell.livejournal.com]

... ♥

[florahart]

I concluded your mood was to mean "...somewhat horrified;" however "somewhat hor" amused me, in a post about consumerism.

Yesterday, I did buy a pair of jeans for $7.99 and one of those whack-to-break chocolate orange things, because I was there buying bread and milk and jelly because I was out. Oh, and I bought a lottery ticket, and $6 of gas for the car. This? Was way better than getting up at 4am in 29 degree weather.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I think you missed my point. The motives are no different.

The 15th century woman is going for some entertainment. While she's there, she'll probably splurge and buy something from one of the street hawkers (mulled cider? spiced wine?) and haggle the price down on -- oh -- a spool of embroidery floss died an unusual color, cheap from a vendor she knows is trying to dump his stock before he gets to London.

No doubt the monks copying Illuminated manuscripts are somewhere between amused and horrified at the revelry. Not that there's anything wrong with revelry, but they wonder if anyone knows it's supposed to mean something.

*massages hands, inked in blue and red from drawing birds down the margins of a text*

I'll always be on the side of the monks on this one. The rampant consumerism makes me feel a shade... embarrassed... at America. Like watching a greedy child get everything he wants.

[florahart]

Hee. I mostly was only commenting on the mood cutting off. It says "Vastly amused and somewhat hor."

Which, it took me a minute to decide that must have been intended to be horrified, but given the crazy spending thing of the day always sort of reminds me of a weird sort of whoring--buying of affection, I can give you what you need baby, only $500 for the whole night outfit/game setup/buy two get one free/whatever, you know?--the cutting off at "hor" amused me.

And then I was saying I didn't participate this year, except in that I did see other people in the store participating, though since I didn't go until like two, the crazy was mostly gone, and that not participating was kind of nice.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ha. I need to fix that.

And then I was saying I didn't participate this year, except in that I did see other people in the store participating, though since I didn't go until like two, the crazy was mostly gone, and that not participating was kind of nice.

It's almost a kind of delightful sacrilege, isn't it? Not obediently trotting down to the sales. My shopping is going to be done online and all my packages are going to roll in to me. :)

[lttledvl.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, the lovely joys of the shopping season. One must arise at 4am (or earlier - my hubby said that Kohl's in NoVA was opening at 12midnight Friday for those earlier early shoppers *facepalm*), stand in line for hours, rush the door as it opens elbowing granny as you squeeze through, fight with rival Mother over the last hip-hugging jeans your daughter simply *must have* (that can't even be worn to school anyway), stand in line that runs length of store to checkout, experience a whole new level of road rage as you escape from the parking lot, go to the next store and repeat until you finally arrive home after dark.

You'll be rejoicing the true meaning of the holiday when everyone complains that they hate what they got, return half of the stuff to the stores (where you wait in more impossibly long lines) and cry over the massive credit card bill that graces your mailbox come January.

Yes, Xmas is a most festive holiday isn't it?

(I personally celebrate black friday by not going to any stores at all for the entire weekend. saves my sanity.)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm the sort of person who usually shops Christmas eve. :D But this year, Amazon.com is my friend. *bobs head*

[lttledvl.livejournal.com]

I usually shop throughout the year (then it's all done by Turkeytime) but I haven't been able to do that since all shopping recently I've had to drag the kids with me. And that just doesn't really work...

[droolfangrrl.livejournal.com]

You might want to read _cows, pigs, wars, and witches_.

The major festivals are all about food.

fall festivals--harvest time, slaughtering time, eat as much as you can 'cause it can't all be stored

winter festivals-- eat it before it spoils

Spring festivals-- eggs oh my gosh, the eggs are back again.

And that's for places with the four seasons like in North America.

I'm sure there's a different way to do it when the Wet/ Dry is the important cycle rather than the temperature.

Seriously Marvin Harris was a heck of a guy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Harris

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

No way, really? That makes an uncommon amount of sense.

[droolfangrrl.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's just my take on it influence by Harris. He was all about how large groups of people don't carry on with customs that don't provide some sort of benefit.

Just if you can get a hold of something by him read it. His stuff is fairly easy to read and it struck a pretty significant chord with me.

[mkcs.livejournal.com]

If I'd been born in the Middle Ages, I think I'd probably be dead or at least half-blind by now. I've had quite a few bouts of tonsillitis and bronchitis, and eye infections. Or I might have died in childbirth without the forceps delivery, but I doubt it.

Of course, I wouldn't have my daughter, because her father's asthma would have killed him well before we met.

I do like your point about how our social needs really don't change much, though.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I would have enjoyed not being able to read, myself. Signing my name with an X just doesn't appeal.