Pynchon and Christmastime

[Mark Kohut]

Christmas is, surely,  the most widely celebrated religious holiday in the
Western world? So widely
celebrated and so seasonally long, it is, effectively, a socially secular
holiday as well. I bet we all
know many non-Christians in our lives for whom it is not a religious
holiday, yet who participate
in the social fact of it.

What distinguishes it, say from other holidays, say Thanksgiving in the US?
I would offer its tradition of
giving. Giving to others even beyond family, but family fully too. I have
had the occasional thought that
it IS where Auld Lang Syne begins---that is, the right gift reduces the
year's tensions between folks, between
family foremost.

I would argue the societal embodiment of happiness, made real first in
children--that focus on innocence that Smoke wrote of--, then in the
happiness of being given something joyful, unexpected,  and in giving those
same qualities in things. Life was hard then; life is hard now for most.
Self-interest in simply having to survive makes us..selfish. We don't want
to be
reduced to that so, Christmas is kinda like the return of repressed
Goodness in us. (We know Pynchon knows 'the return of the repressed'
in the darker ways).

We overcome our selfish natures as we can and share gifts. (See The Gift,
Mauss)

wikipedia:

Mauss's essay focuses on the way that the exchange of objects between
groups builds relationships between humans. He shows that early exchange
systems center around the obligations to give, to receive, and, most
importantly, to reciprocate. They occur between groups, not only
individuals, and they are a crucial part of “total phenomena” that work to
build not just wealth and alliances but social solidarity because “the
gift” pervades all aspects of the society.

He argues this phenomenon is a blow against totally utilitarian aspects of
understanding society.

Utilitarianism is, one might argue, an inherently political way of seeing
society--who gets what, who should and why. How politics is defined. The
non-violent anarchistic anti-utilitarian strain sees 'the gift' as some
kind of statement against such. (David Graeber goes here wikipedia tells
me, as well as a contemporary theologian named Milbank)

about Milbank:

"the Christian mythos alone 'is able to rescue virtue from deconstruction
into violent, agonistic difference.'")[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milbank#cite_note-cao-1>Milbank,
together with Graham Ward
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Ward_(theologian)> and Catherine
Pickstock <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Pickstock>, has helped
forge a new trajectory in constructive theology known as "Radical Orthodoxy
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Orthodoxy>"—a predominantly
Anglo-Catholic <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Catholic> approach
which is highly critical of modernity
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity>.


The religious belief that begins the history of Christmas will play a
sizable role in M & D, as we know. I like thinking its origins are very
anti-modernity, at least.

The other perspective re Ford's observation--I don't know the essay and
Smoke just referred simply to one aspect of it, so--is that a real writer
can show

his vision of holidays such as Christmas. Pynchon chooses to present
Christmas as a good time in all kinds of ways. Carnival-like as a couple
have just posted (In one of Bakhtin's senses, I guess) Pynchon puts more
Christmas into his novels than he needs to, so there must be reasons.
Pynchon seems to simply LIKE the meanings of Christmas as adumbrated above.
It is a happy time (mostly). it is happy children. It is some pleasure in
the hard Siege that is life. It is all of the above and more.


He begins this 'historical novel' with a great time scene. What histories,
what historical novels about a hardscrabble Puritan time do this. Pynchon
begins this

slavery-filled book with the Counter-Force, one might say, not end it with
it.


And to repeat, this is perhaps the earliest layering of 20th Century
attitudes onto the Puritan 18th Century.
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