A Thought Experiment for Dog Owners

In 2014, the human race will be enslaved by aliens. They start landing on earth in January; by February, it’s clear that they’re not interested in talking to us but want the planet for their own.

By the end of June, what’s left of mankind is totally subjugated and is living effectively as domestic animals in the homes of our ten-foot tall insect overlords.

Suppose then, that you are one of these survivors and that you are being taken out for a walk by your “owner”. Coming down the street towards you is another gigantic bipedal crustacean accompanied by a man on lead.

What is your natural inclination at this point? You want to greet, speak with, possibly even sniff the anus of your species-mate – right? You’re a prisoner of a being you don’t understand and you see a fellow human. Of course you’re interested.

But when you try to sidle over to communicate, you are yanked back immediately and hustled on down the street by the firm grip of three chitinous space-tentacles.

Dog owners (you see now where the anus-sniffing reference came from? Well, actually I suppose the title gave it away somewhat...). Dog owners: your dog is interested in other dogs. Just deal with it. 

They're not interested in other dogs because they perceive their lives as some kind of post-apocalyptic servitude (although some might –who knows what they think?). No – because they are dogs and the most interesting thing to a dog, is another dog.

It never ceases to amaze me how many dog owners – at the sight of another dog – dash to render their own dog as immobile as possible or to drag it along as though there was no other dog there at all.

What are you afraid of? A bit of jumping around? A bit of ass-sniffing? That they might be conspiring to overthrow us?

The number of people who live near me who (i) own a dog and must therefore be credited with some degree of insight into dog psychology and (ii) who nevertheless view the presence of ANY OTHER DOG as presenting a threat level equivalent to a gang of drug-crazed African child soldiers is truly astonishing.

Dogs are not people. They interact differently from people. Sometimes that involves growling, play-fighting and other forms of behaviour – including bum smelling - we would rightly be unpleasantly surprised at were they to occur between two humans meeting for the first time.

Dog owners: let your dog be a dog this new year. Remember, the boot might be on the other foot one day.

The True Meaning of Christmas

I’ve been helping my eldest with his homework: a project on Christmas around the world.

Now, there are no doubt people out there – not ODHSNM readers, of course – who would find this outrageous.

Not me helping my son with his homework. The “around the world” bit. The true meaning of Christmas, they declare, can’t be reduced to some multicultural, relativistic blah blah blah...  - a line of argument which you know full well will inevitably end in someone blurting out the word “Immigrants!”

The true meaning of Christmas, they will say, is...erm...

Well, dear readers, let me put this to you. Christmas is just a celebration of good stuff at a crappy time of year. It has had all sorts of stuff superimposed on it over the centuries, but at the end of the day that’s what it started out as and that’s what it still is.

Don’t give me all that “it’s the birth of Jesus” malarkey. Christ is a late addition to Christmas.

He’s been stuck on top of at least two sets of pre-Christian traditions.

Pagan dessert

Firstly, the Northern European pagan Yule celebrations around the winter solstice. That’s where you get your holly and ivy, your Druidic mistletoe, your Christmas trees, your Yule log (chocolate or otherwise) and all those other Germano-Celto-Scandinavian accessories.

Not one of those things – except perhaps a log – would have been found in the Iron Age Middle East, so have clearly come from somewhere other than the Jesus story.

The second source is Greco-Roman paganism, specifically the festival of Saturnalia.

Saturnalia (Kronoia for the Greeks among us) was a month long celebration of the good old days before that bastard Zeus cursed mankind with the need to work for a living. It involved:

• Gift giving
• Eating and drinking to excess
• A general end-of-term, office party kind of vibe all round, when slaves were afforded freedoms usually denied them and the bosses made fools of themselves

Sounds Christmassy, doesn’t it?

There are loads of other hypotheses kicking about saying that the Christian myth is based on other bits of

Not real

ancient lore, but why get into all that? It’s like arguing about whether Tolkien’s orcs were green or grey. Even if there’s a right answer, it doesn’t matter what it is because it’s ALL MADE UP.

The point is – and I’ll go out on a limb here – it is completely impossible to extract a “true” Christian core or indeed a “true” pagan core. It’s a big syncretic mess of bits and bobs appropriated from here, there and everywhere.

Look at Santa Claus. Where does he fit in? Don’t try to tell me that he’s “really” Saint Nicholas, the fourth century Turkish bishop and early Christian martyr. What the hell would he be doing with reindeer and elves? He’s as obviously mashed up as Baron Samedi.

Balls

Why do you think the Puritans banned Christmas in 1647 as “a popish festival with no biblical justification”? Precisely because they could see how pagan it all was. At least Oliver Cromwell had the balls to recognise it for what it was instead of whinging about the corruption of the “real” meaning on Radio Four.

You can’t select certain bits and say that’s the “real” Christmas and the rest of it isn’t – the Christian bits, the non-Christian bits, whatever. Every step along the way contributed to getting us where we are today. Who can say where taking any of them out would have taken us? There is no distinction between the signal and the noise.

The materialistic aspects of Christmas are just as ancient as the spiritual aspects.

And if we accept that consumerism is our current religion (or substitute for it), then a 50 year tradition of buy-buy-buy from Black Thursday to the January Sales is getting on for half the age of all “ye olde traditions” the Victorians bequeathed us.

It’s as silly to worship a tree or indeed money as it is to worship a big old beardy sky-fairy.  If you pick away rationally at every part of the Christmas myth, eventually you’re left with nothing but a bloody long winter ahead of us.

Maybe we don’t need to have a justification for having a party. The weather’s shit, it’s dark all the time – don’t we have a right to cheer ourselves up?

Perhaps THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is the true meaning of Christmas.