With the arrival of the touring Seinfeld apartment in Los Angeles just in time for Festivus, the recent proliferation of anti-holiday cards(the Virgin Mary slept around!) and anatheist billboardfeaturing an anti-church Santa, one could argue Christmas has become a nationwide exercise in tipping over sacred cows.
I recently spoke via Skype withS. Brent Rodriguez-Plate,longtime RD contributor, about how the supposedly blasphemous has become the everyday and how new narratives of the Christmas season are changing how we celebrate.
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Do you feel the increased observance of Festivus shows how Christmas is becoming a more democratized holiday thats for the rest of us as they say?
Yes definitely, I feel democratizing is a good word for it and is a better way of thinking of whats happening than secularizing. Its opening up for more people.
Ive been teaching about Festivus in my classes for a long time, and Ill show the Seinfeld episode. Its this fake holiday that has actually become something realand people actually find ways to celebrate it. Some people may even argue that there is now areligious dimension to Festivus because it pulls people together and creates community and people have fun with it. Thats an important part of ritual.
Also a lot of people have time off work or off school around this time of year and whether or not they celebrate Christmas as Christians, everybody still gets the time off. Theres no hiding that thisholiday that people of all religions enjoy is there because of an initially Christian reason, but its become open to everyone, and everyone gets a chance to celebrate in their own way.
Theres been too much seriousness around Christmas and too much of a somber attitude about it.Wethink of Christmas as a kind of silent night thing,witheverything very calm and rigid. The idea of Christmas has been pacified in certain ways, butpeople are ready to break out of that and have fun.
Religious traditions die off if they dont revive some sort of festival spirit. Its happened throughout history: rituals get old, people reject them and then have to reinvest them with new energy. Its not just diversifying and democratizing, theres a certain narrative that weve bought into with Christmastime that has outlived its usefulness.
Therearea lot of creative possibilities coming out of thisdemocratization of the Christmas season.
InBlasphemy: Art That Offends, you explore the troublesome relationship between the visual and the sacred. How does that relate to the recent spateof anti-holiday cards? Would some of those be considered blasphemous?
A theme that I explored in Blasphemy is that theres no such thing as a blasphemous image per seblasphemy requires an accuser.
In the current environment, where we do have freedom of speech, we can do whatever we want with sacred images. It only becomes interesting when someone of authority labels it as blasphemy, and then it enters into a larger social context.
There are a lot of those who struggle with what is sacred and why its sacred and to figure that out, you have to profane it a little bit. You have to push on the line between sacred and profane. For one group, there is a clear line between what is sacred and what is profane, whereas theother side believes the line is somewhere elsethats where the clash comes.
For example, Jesus has become such a common figure that his imageisan easy target. Its to the point where one must question whether theimage of Jesus is culturally sacred anymore. Because ofmass media and consumer capitalism, weve profaned Jesus in our socioeconomic structurehes become the everyday.
Do you feel the sacredness that does stillsurround the image of Jesus has extended to other images that dont even have Christian origins? (i.e. Santa Claus, Christmas trees or even the reindeer on Starbucks cups)
Santa comes from a Christian tradition; hecomes from an actual saint. But then he becomesincreasingly secularized, and he now doesnt really have a connection with the church. But through time, he becomes kind of sanctified, and becomes anintegral part of the modern American Christian tradition.
And then theres the Christmas tree, which comes from pagan traditions in Europe, but has become asacred symbol.
The controversy over the Starbucks cups is the perfect example of how we made something that has no religious connection into a sacred thing. It becomes sacred without religion. It becomes acollective agreement that were going to think of Christmas trees and reindeer and lights as a sacred thing.
These visuals become so ingrained that it doesnt take much to trigger them. It becomes very abstract and very simplified. And whenour cultural response to this iconographygets to that stage, it becomes easy to knock. So now ifyou remove those (sacred) elements, all of sudden theres this War on Christmas.
But for rituals to last through history, they have to constantly be remade. All these things that we think of as traditional Christmas are in fact woven in from pagan traditions, and from all these different backgrounds. Its an artistic process.
As Christmas becomes less Christian, will the religious cling even more to the sacredness of symbols, even symbols like the Starbucks cup where the sacredness is completely imagined?
I do think these images become a place of security for some. Images of Jesus, prayer beads: we hold on to these things and they have meaning. Its a human trait to need visual, tangible symbols and for us to celebrate with them during certain times of year.
We need these rituals in our lives and these times to gather. So put up a Christmas tree or a Festivus pole or go to an atheist Sunday Assembly. They all hit on basic human needs.
The Starbucks cups incident is a great example of that. At no other point in history, could we have made such a huge deal out of a such a simple thing. Its totally dependent on the mass mediathats whatturned it into an event.
Whats different now is that its the media that makes the blasphemy. Blasphemy wouldnt exist without the media, whether social media or contemporary mass media. It needs that responsethat accusation I described earlierto exist. As our engagement with media continues to expandas a culture,so too will the invention of new forms of blasphemy.
Source: http://religiondispatches.org/festivus-atheist-santa-and-the-invention-of-blasphemy/
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