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Why we cling on to Christmas Even the Godless need to be guided by ritual

"This will be my first Christmas in the Orthodox church". (YE AUNG THU/AFP via Getty Images)

"This will be my first Christmas in the Orthodox church". (YE AUNG THU/AFP via Getty Images)


December 25, 2021   6 mins

In the strangest of times, the strangest of festivals. Dulled by familiarity, piled over with good food, buried in torn wrapping paper, drowned in good drink: can we see Christmas again for what it is?

In days that seem unprecedented, we cling to the familiar. I do, anyway, and Christmas has been familiar to me all my life. The excitement and the anticipation that I felt as a boy is felt now by my young son, and I can live vicariously through him: the lack of sleep, the mince pies for the reindeer, the presents waiting, if he’s lucky, under the tree. Christmas has its rituals, and we don’t have many shared rituals left in the modern West.

But the rituals disguise the radical strangeness of the claim that Christmas makes, and the radical strangeness of the religion that makes it. That God took human form, that he was born into persecution and poverty, that he came to put the world back into its right shape. That this God does not demand burnt offerings, but will instead sacrifice himself to correct our errors. That He shows us a path both straight and narrow and leaves it to us to decide whether to follow it. A virgin birth in a cave, a risen corpse and an empty tomb: there is no sense in any of this. None of it is normal, even by religious standards. It is some kind of revolution.

But here we are, celebrating it with turkey and crackers, and yet not really celebrating it, because — well, because this is now, and that was then. We all know that Christmas has become a commercial horror show: complaining about this is another part of the ritual. We all know that most of us will barely genuflect towards the Christ whose mass this once was: hearing bishops lamenting this is also as traditional as watching the Queen’s Christmas message, or refusing to watch it and reading the Guardian in the corner instead.

The world has been upended these past two years, and it feels to me as if the ructions, which are far from over, are not merely temporal. It feels like we are being shaken out of some slumber; as if the spirit is on the move. Perhaps I feel this way because of the unexpected turn my life has taken, coincidentally or not, during the corona era. Just over a year ago, much to my own surprise (and initial resistance) I became a Christian. Some people might call it a “conversion”, which always sounds a bit shiny-eyed to me, but I didn’t really feel like I’d converted to anything. I felt like I’d come home. I can’t explain it, though I keep wanting to.

It is always ridiculous to write about religion. When I say “ridiculous,” I mean “dangerous”, I think: dangerous in the West, anyway, which is the only part of the world in which the rejection of religion and the denial of God has ever really taken off. This does not seem to be working out well for us, but try talking about that in public. Since I became a Christian, and as the daily practice of the faith has deepened my understanding of it, I have found it harder and harder to relate the Christian worldview to the worldview I used to have, and which the culture around me encourages in us daily. This is not just a Christian problem: everyone I know who follows a faith seems to understand it. It might just be a manifestation of how new I am to this, and how inadequate my understanding is. Still, the gap between the world and the Way — as the early Christians called the path of Christ — seems more and more like a widening gulf.

This will be my first Christmas in the church. The Orthodox church, into which I was baptised just under a year ago, has a deep and old and demanding practice around this festival of light. For the last forty days, we have been fasting: today the fast is broken. A child is born, and everything has changed. The birth of Christ marked the beginning of a new age. The Orthodox church talks of Jesus of Nazareth as the “second Adam”. The first human messed up by rejecting God — by choosing control over communion, and falling into self-love. The incarnation of God in human form corrects the error: we get a second chance to turn from ourselves and look to the greater whole.

It is, as I say, a strange story: frightening, glorious, thrilling, radical, impossible, repulsive to some. Jesus remains the most controversial man in history, and his followers have always been looked at, like him, through narrowed eyes. Here in the West we are still emerging, both psychologically and structurally, from a period in which Christianity was associated with authority: with power and Popes and state churches and holy wars. Now that this authority has been overthrown, Christians are increasingly regarded again as they were for the first four centuries of their existence: with suspicion, if not open hostility.

Some Christians regret this, and long for the return of a West in which church and state again hold sway in tandem: a world of faith, in which the people live, at least in theory, by the way of the cross. I understand this: it’s an enticing vision. I would like to live, I think, among the symbolic splendour of the high medieval Christian world. Certainly I’ve never felt comfortable in this one. But for better or worse, that world is not coming back, and it seems right that a faith built on sacrifice and renunciation should again require some of its followers. Throw down your nets and follow me. If the world hates you, know that it hated me first. The Way was never supposed to be comfortable. Christ and power don’t mix.

This is how it seems to me, but I am still new. One thing I have learned though — or had brought home to me, because I knew it before I became Christian — is the necessity of ritual in a human life. One reason I joined the Orthodox church, despite being an Englishman who lives in Ireland, was because of its deep understanding and practice of this. We reject ritual in the modern West. We don’t see why we should submit to any authority or respect any tradition. We believe that every one of us can invent the world anew. We are wrong about this, as we are about much else.

The rituals of the Orthodox church are sometimes florid and always long, and like Christianity itself they can look strange or off-putting from the outside. But the first time I attended a divine liturgy, I knew where I belonged. Something had happened to me that I couldn’t put my finger on. This service, largely unchanged for 1600 years, has a spiritual and psychological impact that can’t be outlined in essays or explained in words at all.

Church rituals, like those of all religions, fit into a wider pattern — that of the ritual year. As a Christian celebrating my first real Christmas, I have come late to the realisation of how much this matters. I think this is why many Western Christians hanker for the Christendom that is gone: not because they desire power, but because of the container, the guiding light, that the ritual year offers, and because they see what we have lost by abandoning it. Christmas, Lent, Easter, Whitsun — we still know the names, but we are long detached from the symbolic pattern they provided, and the understanding of our place in the universe that they formalised in daily life. What comes together in the bread and the wine, changed into the flesh and the blood — this can never be replaced with turkey and sherry.

Something is missing here, and not just for Christians. I have come to believe that humans are above all religious animals. If we do not have a religion, we will make one for ourselves, or substitute politics or ideology for it, to assuage our need for ritual, worship and meaning. But ideology or self-help can’t fill the gap, because what is missing is the thing we are all fleeing from, like the fire it is. The real meaning of Christmas, I think, and maybe the real meaning of all faith, is simply: look up. Raise your gaze. When we lose the religion that made us, and the rituals that contained it, however imperfect those things were, we lose our understanding of the heart of the matter, the thing we turn from and scorn and then are returned to because nothing else will fit into the empty space in our hearts: God.

Good, say the atheists, about time. I disagree. I think that understanding that there is something higher than us — that we are part of a greater pattern, that a higher intelligence is at work, that we are not in charge and that this is good. I think that without this understanding we find ourselves back in the garden, tasting the apple all over again, every day of our lives. We choose self over other, control over communion, power over sacrifice. Of course we do: we all do. We want to walk that way. But I think we can see now where it is leading us.

Like I say, it is ridiculous to write about religion. Ridiculous for me, anyway. But there is nothing else I can say today. It is deep winter, but some light is rising. It has been rising for a long time. Everybody should celebrate today, whatever they choose to raise a glass to. It has been a hard year. I will try to turn my scattered mind, before the feast and after, to the words that made us, and which still linger in the air, waiting to settle on the holy and the profane, the weak and the strong, the willing and the broken and the unsuspecting:

 Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.


Paul Kingsnorth is a novelist and essayist. His latest novel Alexandria is published by Faber. He also has a Substack: The Abbey of Misrule.


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J Bryant
J Bryant
2 years ago

What a beautiful essay for Christmas. I suppose one could say Mr. Kingsnorth writes with the zeal of the converted, and imply his enthusiasm is a little excessive and so not to be trusted. But how else should the converted write? Unless we reject the idea of God entirely, the newly converted have seen something powerful beyond words and comprehension. Only the utmost zeal is appropriate.
I was raised Roman Catholic and have always retained a strong sense of the spirit that moved through the rituals of Mass even though I long ago lost faith in the institution and its clericalism. My rejection of organized religion was easier because I’m an introvert and have little interest in everyday parish life.
The closest I’ve found to that sense of the divine is in nature, especially the mountains. I think, though, I’d like to again be part of a religious community but what type of community I’ve no idea. It’s the solidarity of worship I seek, the participation in ritual, not the solidarity of parish committees and politics.
When Mr. Kingsnorth wrote “This service, largely unchanged for 1600 years, has a spiritual and psychological impact that can’t be outlined in essays or explained in words at all,” I was reminded of the observation by Heinrich Zimmer quoted and explained by the mythologist Joseph Campbell: “‘The best things can’t be told,’ because they transcend thought. ‘The second best are misunderstood,’ because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can’t be thought about, and one gets stuck in the thoughts.’ The third best are what we talk about.’
I wish everyone a happy Christmas both for the fun and fellowship but also for its spiritual center whose impact can’t be fully described.

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

“It’s the solidarity of worship I seek, the participation in ritual, not the solidarity of parish committees and politics.” I can relate to that and found the solution in regular silent retreats at religious houses: daily Mass and Office, sometimes talks from a priest. (Retreats don’t have to be silent if that’s a step too far!)

Last edited 2 years ago by Judy Englander
JR Stoker
JR Stoker
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

A very clear description of a dilemma I too feel

Bo Yee Fung
Bo Yee Fung
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Reading your response after reading Paul’s beautiful essay, is like having a wonderful dessert after a splendid feast. I really liked the generous sentiments in your response. Indeed, the zeal of the newly converted (even though Paul doesn’t like this term) is because they have seen “something powerful beyond words and comprehension”, and this is fresh and immediate for them, unlike some of the older believers for whom this powerful something may have become a bit more remote and distanced. Grace can, if we are open, bring back that immediacy, sometimes even painfully sharply.
Thank you for the Campbell/Zimmer quote/explanation. Helped me see from another angle what the Zen masters taught, as in ‘first thought, best thought’. This explanation of the first, second and third thoughts really describe the difficulty of how we try to comprehend reality. All actual experiences are like that.
Like you, I’ve always felt a strong sense of the divine in nature. Similarly, I seek the “solidarity of worship and participation in ritual”, which prompted me to attend Christmas Eve mass in the local Catholic church in Pasadena, California where I live, after more than 45 years of absence. Maybe it’s because I’m now much older than my iconoclastic youth, but even though I miss the old Latin mass and find the modern version strange, it still touched me indescribably deeply to be part of the worship and ritual.
As Paul so succinctly says in his essay, the real meaning of all faith is to “look up”, and fill that unfilled space in our hearts that can only be filled by God, or whatever the name we use to designate the divine who we, deep down, really want to adore. I agree with Paul that the current “ructions” are not merely temporal, and that “the spirit is moving”. May this spirit touch and move all of us who are open to it.

Diamuid Collins
Diamuid Collins
1 year ago
Reply to  Bo Yee Fung

Beautiful reply. So nice to think you chanced into that mass and then this article.

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
2 years ago

I enjoyed the essay and am, to a degree, envious of the joy Paul has found in his epiphany. Like J Bryant my nearest equivalent is found on the fells or occasionally while running.

On a sourer note, those parts of the world where religion is still crucial to everyday life don’t seem to me to be attractive places to live, nor does the Middle Ages.

I will eat and drink far too much today, spoil the grandkids, seek, at some point, respite from the racket and be glad by nighttime it’s over for another year. Nevertheless it will be a good day.

I hope you all enjoy yours.

Mangle Tangle
Mangle Tangle
2 years ago

Lovely writing and another example of why my UnHerd sub will be renewed and why UnHerd should be supported. Happy Christmas, from a most definitely non-religious reader.

Last edited 2 years ago by Mangle Tangle
Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
2 years ago
Reply to  Mangle Tangle

Michael, thanks for your comments to many Unherd articles. I always learn something new. Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Peter LR
Peter LR
2 years ago

Happy Christian Christmas, Paul.
I was taken by Mark Steyn’s reflection on the loss of religious faith: it is manifested in a lack of transcendence. He remarked that godless Europe has created a world of secular fulfilment yet has a plummeting birth rate, meaning no inclination to pass on this “utopia” to a future generation.

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

‘Secular fulfillment’? The whole thing is set up to keep fulfillment just out of reach. Isn’t advertising the biggest industry in the world? You have to keep earning and spending just to keep up. And children?! School fees, the orthodontist bills, etc. etc. Birth rates are falling in Asia too – children are a big/long commitment in uncertain times, and we all have to swim hard enough to just stay afloat. Holidays abroad don’t pay for themselves. Subscriptions to streaming services aren’t free. They’re not giving away Prada and Armani.
But if you choose a religion, and choose it because certain features of it appeal to you (the orthodox vibe rather than the Zen vibe), isn’t it suspiciously like just another consumer choice?
Merry Christmas to all (and to those who might be wishing to be holidaying in sunnier climes, I can report that in Perth, Western Australia it’s 43c today, and 44c tomorrow – not that you could have come anyway, the borders are still closed!)

Last edited 2 years ago by Russell Hamilton
Peter LR
Peter LR
2 years ago

Happy Christmas, Russell.
I do agree that it is not “fulfilment”; more like chasing a mirage. I noticed a line from Douglas Murray making the same point about the absence of transcendence: “What’s the point of a life lived long if it is not lived deep”!
Sorry you’re all locked down by the zealots; although I couldn’t fancy 43c even in a beautiful place.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
2 years ago

Unprofound comment: why would anyone choose to travel somewhere with 43C temperatures by choice! Give me the albeit grey and gloomy 8C today in London any day!

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

What I meant was … you might have planned a lovely holiday in the sun, only to get there and find it was a hell-ish 43c (or like today 44c). Stay home and be grateful for gloomy grey – it might be better than blinding glare!

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago

Hope you enjoy it though Russell. I’d rather enjoy the space and openess that is there rather than crowded streets. Much more romantic.

David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago

I think Paul’s point was precisely that he did not choose, rather It chose him

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

Is not the plummeting birth rate to do with mass abortion? In Britain we are short of 9.5 M who were aborted since the 67 Act. But back to Christmas. I have had in my childhood all the traditions of the Catholic faith. By God’s grace at a later date I came to faith in Jesus where there was no tradition but a clear faith in scripture and the gospel. So for me the lack of tradition pointed to the faith in the bible and the practices within the bible which were real and not traditions. I don’t think I will ever go back to tradition now.

Jane Awdry
Jane Awdry
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter LR

It’s always interesting & moving to hear of someone’s discovery of the ineffable & a sense of fulfilment through a religious experience.
But I would like to say that the godless too are capable of an enormous sense of joy & wonder as they contemplate their place on this earth & in the universe. When I ‘raise my gaze’ I feel wonderment & awe at the extraordinary vastness & beauty of the cosmos. And yes, transcendence too. That for me this does not require a belief in intelligent design or a ‘greater power’ doesn’t diminish the experience or its power to move me. Ritual & ceremony have existed as part of human culture for millennia before any articulated ‘religious’ belief was formulated & is still a part of many atheist’s lives. We are not all slaves to consumerism. But to eat, drink & be merry during the short dark days of the winter solstice is a natural response to the rhythms of the earth. It can still be filled with meaning & significance for those without a belief in a higher being.
Wishing everyone the warmth & love of family & friends as we look forward to the coming spring..

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
2 years ago

I wish all believers (and the rest) a joyful Christmas.
Fortunately for me, the wonders that evolution has delivered across the natural world provide me with all the explanation, beauty and purpose that I need.
“Doing good unto others” really is a no-brainier – wherever your beliefs are sourced.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Barton
Andrew Horsman
Andrew Horsman
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

I was with you until about a year ago. Bought the ethics but not the metaphysics. I have not gone full on Orthodox fasting for 40 days before Christmas like Mr Kingsnorth (fair play, though; and if it’s helped inspire him to write the enormously influential and insightful essays that he’s written lately then all for the better – they can be found here https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-moment-part-three). But now I sense a shift, an imbalance, an overreach in the Enlightenment’s claims. Perhaps there can be a scientific “theory of everything” which marries quantum and classical physics to describe a singular, beautiful truth; but any such a theory which is silent on love and has nothing to say about justice is a theory of nothing, not of everything. And there’s the rub.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

Perhaps our understanding of the evolution of “memes” and other group norms goes some way to bridging the gap between cold science and religion.
However, I agree that there will always be gaps to wonder about.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Barton
Dawn McD
Dawn McD
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

Thank you for the link. I subscribed, although at the free level which always makes me feel a bit guilty, but if I paid five dollars a month to everyone I like to read at Substack I wouldn’t be able to afford groceries. This new piecemeal media world is frustrating.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Dawn McD

I know. The truth has migrated to private websites as the mass media is guilty of fake news. It is very commendable going private and free but one can only be members of a few of them because of the cumilitive cost.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Actually, according to Darwin, there is no reason to “do good” unto others. There will be no reward for it, and the strong will win out over the weak, and the swift will outrun the slow. It isn’t a “no-brainer”, I’m afraid.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
2 years ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

A wider subtlety perhaps, but groups (rather than individuals) evolving with the co-operative trait tend to be more successful than those without it.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Barton
Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Depends what you mean by success. We all have a reckoning at the end.

AC Harper
AC Harper
2 years ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Actually, according to Darwin, and those that followed after, behaving in a pro-social way in a social species is a fine way of passing on your genes to your descendants.
The phrase ‘the survival of the fittest’ means survival of the most likely to leave descendants, not necessarily the strong or swift.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  AC Harper

Well Britain has become weak and their seed leaving is getting less and less. The strong are the immigrants who have large families and pass on their seed in strength.

Matt B
Matt B
2 years ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

That is not the case nor direction of quite a lot of recent science that underpins altruism and cooperation as successful adaptive responses to stress and change. Darwinian thought too is not set in stone; it has evolved, and in part been superseded by fitter ideas. Religion is hardwired into humans, perhaps because, on balance, it provides the framework – real or not – for communities to survive – if not always thrive. Worth a thought.

Last edited 2 years ago by Matt B
Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Matt B

Religion is not necessarily faith. There is a difference between the two.

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Peter Singer would have something to say too I am sure!

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Judy Johnson

Who’s he?

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  Tony Conrad

An Australian philosopher. He is an atheist and, on the basis that we are just molecules he suggests that abortion, infanticide and some euthenasia is acceptable. His criterion is that a person has an understanding that we have a future. Without such understanding, for example with the unborn, newly born and certain old people and other adults, it is acceptable to take life.
I read about him in ‘The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self,’ by Carl Trueman. A fascinating book that does what it says on the cover and is so interesting in the development of ‘woke’ (although he doesn’t use that adjective as I recall!)

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Frightening. I am glad it is not the truth though but you can believe it if you like.

Eddie Johnson
Eddie Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Likewise. I find all the answers I need in atheism and science.
But whatever gets you through the night, I suppose.
Many imponderables remain and always will.
“Even the Godless need to be guided by ritual”…
They really don’t, you know.
I could happily forego Christmas and all the ridiculous consumption-driven rituals and so-called “traditions” and abhor the synthetic sentimentality which accompanies it.
Bah humbug…!
“Do unto others as you would…..”
Can’t think of a better guiding dictum.

Last edited 2 years ago by Eddie Johnson
nigel roberts
nigel roberts
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Strange, then, that Christianity is the only religion that commands us to love thy neighbor as thy self.

David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago
Reply to  nigel roberts

It’s not, actually. Buddhism does much the same although using different words

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  nigel roberts

One cannot really do that without Christ. His strength is imparted to the doers.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Oh yeah. It all invented itself then.

Annemarie Ni Dhalaigh
Annemarie Ni Dhalaigh
2 years ago

Beautiful writing from Paul, I’m glad he made his home here in Ireland

“The real meaning of all faith, is simply: look up. Raise your gaze. When we lose the religion that made us, and the rituals that contained it, however imperfect those things were, we lose our understanding of the heart of the matter, the thing we turn from and scorn and then are returned to because nothing else will fit into the empty space in our hearts: God.”

Look up to the heavens, make a pact with the transcendent. You won’t go wrong

Happy Christmas to all at unherd

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
2 years ago

I’m an atheist and I love Christmas.

George Stone
George Stone
2 years ago
Reply to  Cheryl Jones

It is a festival of nature so atheism has nothing to do with it.

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
2 years ago
Reply to  George Stone

Ummm no it’s about Christ. The clue is in the name.

Lord Rochester
Lord Rochester
2 years ago
Reply to  Cheryl Jones

And Saturday is about Saturn. How to reconcile the two!?

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
2 years ago
Reply to  Lord Rochester

I read something yes that suggests Saturday is a non-planet name – and named after some Roman concept called Saturnalia.
I really have no idea who is right and who is wrong on these things.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Barton
Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

I think it is the planet Saturn. Even the month names have significance. I know March comes from Mars but I don’t want to go through them all just now.

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  Lord Rochester

The clue is perhaps in the fact that Christmas is a celebration but Saturday is not!

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Lord Rochester

Yeah Monday the moon, tuesday the Tiws God of War, Wednesday Woden’s day – sky God, Thursday Thors day – Thunder, Friday Frigg day – Fertility.

AC Harper
AC Harper
2 years ago
Reply to  Cheryl Jones

A name grafted on to the existing pagan festival of Yule. A marketing ploy to win more religious followers.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  AC Harper

Yeah I believe you are right.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Cheryl Jones

You are right but then it was from a secular mid winter festival that it was compromised. It is a bit of both. I remember how Jesus came from God to the earth but there is within it a very secular side. I think it is a much needed festival at the darkest time of the year.

David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago
Reply to  Cheryl Jones

It’s also about the return of the sun (in the northern hemisphere where it began) and the Son (that’s a pun btw)

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
2 years ago
Reply to  Cheryl Jones

Me too.

andy young
andy young
2 years ago

Sorry, this won’t do. The author just wants the same as we all do in a complex, unpredictable, insecure world. Certainty. Some higher authority to give us exact instructions as to how we should behave.
This never ends well.
I can conceive of no version of a Christian deity who randomly inflicts hideous pain on the innocent, including newborn infants. It makes no sense, & if he makes no sense then He is the other one. the Lord of Misrule.
 We choose self over other, control over communion, power over sacrifice” Well I don’t, & I’m sure many other non-religious people don’t either. This is a lazy assumption, deriving from a sense of spiritual superiority over your fellow men. Not very Christian is it.
Personally my greatest happiness lies in the happiness of others. Not everyone is like this. I accept this – I have no wish to control others except in curbing their power to control the rest of us. It’s a dilemma, & there is, & never will be, a perfect solution.
All through my life I have had powerful spiritual feelings, but to base a fully formed moral & ethical system to live by – & expect others to live by – with a whole set of rules & rituals contained within it is a form of madness.
For good or ill, better or worse, we are physical bodies living in a material world. Is there anything else? Something higher? I strongly suspect there is, but I’m not going to prescribe a life for anyone based on my, or anybody else’s, suspicions. I’ll stick with the mundane & hope for better.
And a Merry Christmas to all. God bless us, every one.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
2 years ago
Reply to  andy young

A nice comment. Thanks for posting. I wonder if you would put yourself to discomfort to help your neighbor? You did say “your greatest happiness lies in the happiness of others”, after all. If so, why?

andy young
andy young
2 years ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

I’ve put myself to discomfort countless times for others, let alone neighbours. Though I may have made exceptions for those who wish me harm (or have actively perpetrated it).

Bob Taylor
Bob Taylor
2 years ago
Reply to  andy young

The suspicion is rather impressively strengthened by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Book suggestion: The Resurrection of the Son of God, by N.T. Wright.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Bob Taylor

I believe that but thousands don’t. The majority are not always right and seldom are. I would believe it if I was the last person in the world. It will definitely work out right in the end if we believe.

Alex Stonor
Alex Stonor
2 years ago

I got a healthy dose of Catholicism over the course of my childhood; it always felt like a bad joke and an excuse to oppress our natural urges. I do believe that we desperately need communities and that it feels harder than ever to find those. I have grown to love my Unherd community and it lifts my spirits daily to meet you all and read your ‘ramblings’.
Happy Christmas Unherders, have a happy day, whatever that entails!!!

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Alex Stonor

I got the same. If they presented sex as a good thing but within marriage it gave you something to look forward to but this repression without the truth made us all randy and determined not to miss out. As a christian I did learn to keep pure until I married which was a very good thing but my youth was marred.

Barbara Manson
Barbara Manson
2 years ago

I am glad that Paul found a home in the Orthodox Church. There is a dictum: lex orandi, lex credendi. What you pray is what you believe. Ritual provides a form of prayer that goes beyond words and when it’s an expression of fundamental truths about what it is to be human, it is powerful and nourishing indeed.

I am a traditional Roman Catholic, in a state of suspended grief right now because of the recent pronouncements of the current Pope aimed at suppression of the traditional Latin Mass that has also been a ritual form for ca. 1500 years — suspended grief, I say, because it’s doubtful this move can go very far; but it promises to be a messy time ahead. We RC share the same root as the Orthodox Church. However the disfigurement of the Roman rite resulting from changes to the Mass made subsequent to (and largely contra) the vision put forward by the deliberations of Vatican Council II, has not accomplished its purpose–to be attractive to modern sensibilities. The new rite is banal, and cost me 20 years of wandering before I found a Catholic parish thriving with the traditional Latin Mass, teeming with young people, young families, eager to learn the rich wisdom that was not passed on when they were catechized.
So while Rome deals with sex and financial scandals in a priesthood that for several decades now has been formed more for business administration than theology, people on the ground (including young priests inspired by those “authoritarians”, John Paul II and Benedict XVI) are experiencing the joy of living a vibrant faith and the sanctification of time that authentic Christianity provides.
[Double trouble here with the rot in the Church and also the depravity of governmental COVID policies. But this too shall pass.]
Thank you, Paul, for this essay, and Unherd for posting it. God bless you and keep you.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago

“Even the Godless need to be guided by ritual”

No they don’t. They most definitely don’t.

Dr Stephen Nightingale
Dr Stephen Nightingale
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

We all invent our own rituals – without necessarily investing them with spiritual or cosmic significance. We will be visiting some ancient tumbledown stone ruin at ‘New Year’ as one of our rituals. We are about to go out and walk York Walls as part of our christmas day ritual. It lends verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative, as Gilbert and Sullivan had it.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago

Absolutely, and I have no problem whatsoever with inventing our own rituals as we all do. And contrary to the impression I might have given, I have no problem participating in the rituals of others when appropriate when requested, we all do that as a matter of courtesy.

The trouble comes when that request turns to coercion – for example ‘the taking the knee’ stuff. I am loathe to lose the right of refusal, because that way a theological dystopia lies in wait. My religious jokes are just me keeping the my refusal and skepticism mechanisms in good working order. Think of them as military exercises, not declarations of war.

Alan B
Alan B
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

I’m a very “logical” person. But to me it is odd that you feel compelled to observe such rituals of skepticism. I think one advantage of having a religious or theological sensibility, today, is that genuine indifference to all that “taking the knee” business comes quite easily: Its just idolatry. So, of course, is much that passes for religious; but genuine religion mustn’t be confused with magic.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

Can’t stand taking the knee. Thoroughly disagree with it. I’m almost glad we lost the European Cup after they did that. Can you imagine what the spectators thought who didn’t agree with it but were afraid to say anything?

Steven Campbell
Steven Campbell
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

They are, rituals can be the marching in the streets, the incessant screaming in my ear for equity, The cancel culture, the glorification of the state, you name it, all ritualistic substitutions for religion.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago

Yeah it shows all the signs of religion gone mad.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

I think they do but don’t see it as that. I am thinking of drinking rituals and other rituals which I won’t mention. They certainly have their own rituals even if unhelpful.

Dr Stephen Nightingale
Dr Stephen Nightingale
2 years ago

The fact that we have three “End of Year” celebrations show how deeply confused we are: the original is the Solstice, which takes place December 21/22, and marks both the extinction and the rebirth of the light. Christmas is just hijacking that, but with updated ‘ritual’ and additional commercial content. New Year is what exactly? There due to the arbitrary placement of months by Rome, and only definitively finalized by the Gregorian calendar in 1582, and finally adopted by exceptionalist England in 1752 (Give us back our eleven days!)
The only physically real one of these is the Solstice, where we see the actual death and rebirth of the Sun. So I am happy that we are already 3 days into the new Solar Year.

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
2 years ago

So what ? For most people in the world, another year is just another year of struggle and suffering.

Only the Rich enthuse nowadays about the Solar Year.

There is no actual death or rebirth of the Sun, of course.

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
2 years ago

Christmas isn’t ‘hijacking’ the solstice. The symbolism of the extinction and rebirth of the light is at the heart of Christmas. As C S Lewis and Tolkien pointed out, pagan celebrations and understandings prefigured the Christian story in which ‘myth became fact’. Pagan religions based on cyclical nature unknowingly pointed towards an historical event in which the rebirth of the sun became a baby born to a human woman, in a specific place at a specific time. Unwin wrote, ‘time was fertilised by eternity’. Humanity was no longer trapped in the endless round of repetition. Human life has direction. The solstice takes on a new layer of meaning – tidings of great joy – and there is no confusion.

Last edited 2 years ago by Judy Englander
Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago

Just Christmas and New Year. Nothing wrong with that. Never heard of Soltice and don’t want to know. It reminds me of Druids and paganism etc.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago

It’s Christmas, I suppose, so I’d better not do my usual liturgical reading from ‘how to lose friends and alienate people’, as I often have done in the past, through Diwali for example where I keep up a stream of purile jokes until the smiles around me get thinner and thinner. It’s tempting though, because there is so much material here. For example, I would class this as a standard and completely harmless serving of Festive Waffle, the only decision remaining, would you like your Waffle served with Jam or Cream? (both very decent bands btw)

Anyway, a Very Merry Bah Humbug To All.


Well you wore out your welcome with random precision, rode on the steel breeze

Last edited 2 years ago by Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago

“…I think that understanding that there is something higher than us — that we are part of a greater pattern, that a higher intelligence is at work, that we are not in charge and that this is good…”

Exactly why is a fantasy of Control worse than this fantasy of Surrender? They are both fantasies, and if we accept the premise that we must embrace fantasy, it’s surely then up to individual taste which one to indulge.

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

God isn’t a fantasy – He is the only reality. The universe and ourselves being God’s creative fantasies.

George Stone
George Stone
2 years ago
Reply to  Tony Buck

Why do you call god ‘he’?

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
2 years ago
Reply to  George Stone

Presumably “mis-gendering” God leaves you open to a stoning in these “enlightened” times …

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Barton
Jean Nutley
Jean Nutley
2 years ago
Reply to  George Stone

God the Father, God the Son , God the Holy Spirit. might explain the male pronoun.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  George Stone

Because woman came from man and God is always a He in scripture. Who am I to change that?

David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago
Reply to  George Stone

Much better to just say god all the time ie avoid pronouns and personal adjectives altogether. Or just use It and Its.

David Yetter
David Yetter
2 years ago
Reply to  George Stone

I suspect the reason that God, the Uncreated Ground-of-Being, to whom created binary distinctions like male/female do not apply at all, chose, in revealing Himself, to use male forms is that a female form seduces the human mind to think of creation as birthgiving, thus effacing the radical distinction between the Uncreated and the created. It was the radical unlikeness between the Uncreated and the created that was the point of St. Gregory the Theologian (you Westerners call him St. Gregory of Nazianzus) saying, “Inasmuch as God exists, we do not exist; and inasmuch as we exist, God does not exist.” Which dictum I leave all of you atheists posting to this thread to consider, and what it means coming from one of the few saints Orthodox Christians title “Theologian”.

Last edited 2 years ago by David Yetter
Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
2 years ago
Reply to  Tony Buck

“It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they developed an experiment. They put the idea into the Earthlings’ heads that the whole universe had been created by one big male who looked just like them. He sat on a throne with a lot of less fancy thrones around him. When people died they got to sit on those other thrones for ever because they were such close relatives of the Creator. The people just ate that up.”
Kurt Vonnegut.

Bob Taylor
Bob Taylor
2 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

It shows how vacuous Vonnegut was of any understanding of Christianity that he supposed it “flattered” people.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
2 years ago
Reply to  Bob Taylor

But isn’t that just a matter of opinion. The problem with any religious belief is that people know they are right. You only have to read the opinions of the small group on UnHerd to see that nobody can be right.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
2 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

We are not right but believe God and His Christ are right. Can we do that?

David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

Yes I can

David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago
Reply to  Bob Taylor

Although certain kinds of Christians do believe exactly that, and a lot of them live in America and make a great deal of noise about their “faith” so you can hardly blame Vonnegut for mischaracterising Christianity (ditto Dawkins et al). You can blame them all for not digging a little deeper and thinking a little harder about the answer to life the universe and everything, which is not 42, much though I love Douglas Adams

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago
Reply to  Tony Buck

How will you react, when humanity creates artificial life, as it undoubtedly will do within a couple of decades?

Steven Campbell
Steven Campbell
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

Ah, but there is the conundrum of belief. Who created artificial life? A higher power? Could be that humanity is merely an agent of the will of the Devine.

Eddie Johnson
Eddie Johnson
2 years ago

Could be that humanity is merely an agent of the will of the Devine.
Mmm… Then he/she has a lot to answer for…

Last edited 2 years ago by Eddie Johnson
Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

Art thee a prophet? How do you know humanity will “undoubtedly” create life?

Bob Taylor
Bob Taylor
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

“Artificial.”

David Yetter
David Yetter
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

Artificial life as a challenge to Faith? Really?
Were I a skilled fiction writer, rather than a mathematician, I would surely have written by now a story I have long had the outline of in my head. The protagonist is an atheistic scientist who finds that the artificial life forms he has created inside the (at that point quantum) internet have seemingly become self-willed and are killing each other and harming the internet. In a desperate measure to fix the resulting problem he uses a neural interface to connect himself to the internet, to interact directly with his creation, only to be (in his virtual form) killed by them, then returning to the network, gets some of them to change their behavior because he is alive (in the sense his creatures are alive) again. At the end of the story, we would see him kneeling in prayer in a Christian church.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago
Reply to  David Yetter

I would have him praying in the ‘The Church of the God Who Makes No Difference’

David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago
Reply to  David Yetter

Brilliant

Don Butler
Don Butler
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

It is better because “surrender” implies humility and “control” implies hubris.

Marcia McGrail
Marcia McGrail
2 years ago

Welcome to the community of Christian faith. I do pray that you experience the agape love of Christ but sadly much that passes for Christianity knows nothing of it.
I would exhort you to avoid labelling it ‘Religion’. Religion kills everything stone dead aka the Pharisees etc. Rather, Christianity is a faith in things unseen; the things described in the Bible, by a loving God Whose ‘very good’ design for His people is eternal life in holy communion with Him. Mankind doesn’t like that idea and the consequences of their sin have stalked us throughout history. Illogically, the Godless blame a God they don’t believe in for the horrors of death, disaster, disease etc yet He continues to extend His mercy and grace, via Jesus Christ, to a dying world (1Cor 15:54-55; Rev 21:4…) so that none should perish. The concept of our ‘everlasting souls as an agent and the body its earthly instrument’ (Estabrook D, ARJ June 13 6 12 quoting Joubert 2011 p221) is an anathema to materialism but nonetheless true despite the scepticism.
I also pray that you discern the false prophets with all your heart, soul, mind and strength as silky lips and serpent words of these sheep in wolves clothing invade the Church like a darwinian cancer. Jesus warns of their insidiousness in the analogy of yeast.
And when you have done all you can, contend for the faith given to you by the saints gone before you. God bless you.

Michael Sinclair
Michael Sinclair
2 years ago

It could be put like this – that we have respect for ‘a sense of ‘otherness’ – that which we don’t know and perhaps never will, and in so doing incalcate into us a necessary humility. This is what is lacking in us. There are boundaries and limitations to the constructs of our biological minds.

Zorro Tomorrow
Zorro Tomorrow
2 years ago

It’s a midwinter festival. We worked all year, most of us, we deserve a booze up and a feast. The god squad hijacked it but so what?

Bob Taylor
Bob Taylor
2 years ago
Reply to  Zorro Tomorrow

Romans 1: 18 – 32.

Terence Fitch
Terence Fitch
2 years ago

‘I can’t explain it’. Catch 22- the best catch there is. Organised state religion seems to have been created to keep agrarian joint labourers under the thumb- a God King and his priests, together with the occasional human sacrifice mean the city state can persuade people to obey and join in communal sweated toil and military service. Or else! Then add on top a code for being good that has been delivered from on high- the details of which are strangely useful for keeping order. I have one question for religious types. Which one? Several major religions can’t all be right can they? The answer will, of course, be shrouded in faith. I might as well worship trees. As for a midwinter feast and fun: northern climes need breaking up at about the solstice so why not? Just spare me the mythical stuff as if it’s intrinsic. Ah yes..it’s inexplicable.

Matt B
Matt B
2 years ago
Reply to  Terence Fitch

Some recent archaeological digs and anthropology support a reverse chicken and egg sequence: that agriculture and urbanisation resulted from the humans gathering at religious sites, where expanding groups of religious hunter-gatherers came to need more food and, later, organisation.

Last edited 2 years ago by Matt B
Bo Yee Fung
Bo Yee Fung
2 years ago

Thank you, Paul, for such a beautiful and heartfelt essay. I completely understand and agree with you that after you’ve given in and accept the faith that has been drawing you in all this time, it doesn’t feel like a ‘conversion’ but rather like a ‘homecoming’. I agree with you that human beings are basically religious creatures and will always want to find something that can fill that empty space in their hearts – be it religion or science or progress. D.T. Suzuki wrote that “religion is the cry of the human heart”, and it made me understand why I felt I was always searching. I find, though, that the Way, or religious path, is fraught with temptations and obstacles, and that path doesn’t even start when you are consciously aware of it. It could have started long ago, as a faint and unrecognized stirring in your heart. The Way asks for a commitment from each of us, a commitment that some of us fight tooth and nail to resist. My buddhist teacher once said that one cannot have one feet in the world and one in the Path. It doesn’t mean we have to leave the world behind but it does mean we have to really recognize what these two are and give our heart truly to one, eventually. Thank you again for sharing your heart and thoughts with us.

Adam Bacon
Adam Bacon
2 years ago

A well written essay about the contemporary situation, and good that you are finding the perennial comforts of religion.

However, if you are looking for truth, try starting with Freud’s “The Future of an Illusion”, then “Civilisation and it’s Discontents “, followed by a modern day update from Yuval Noah Harari.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
2 years ago
Reply to  Adam Bacon

Freud was a strange bird, writing about uncertainties with perfect certainty. Ditto for Mr. Harari.

Bob Taylor
Bob Taylor
2 years ago
Reply to  Adam Bacon

For what it’s worth to you, I spent eight years as a patient of one of the best clinical neuropsychologists in the United States. One day, for reasons I cannot recall, I mentioned Freud to him. His mouth twisted in contempt. Apparently, Freud’s credibility as a life redefining thinker is sliding its way toward the same category which is a mausoleum for previous certainties, such as the reliability of phrenology and the conviction that stomach ulcers are psychosomatic in origin.

David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago
Reply to  Adam Bacon

Neither of whom have much, if anything, to say about love

Will Cummings
Will Cummings
2 years ago

Something my son wrote to me:
It’s my firm belief that those who seek to perpetrate evil in the world released something – a poison? – Into the world in the last couple of years, it’s not the Corona virus, it’s something far more insidious and damaging – it befouls the very air we breathe and permeates every level of our society, worms its way into every aspect how far interactions with others and our thoughts to ourselves – and it is meant to break our will, cut the bounds that secure strong with our kin and friends to our families – to have us turn on each other, sister and sister, brother against brother, father against son – and further, to make us loathe ourselves, sinking into helplessness – ultimately making us weak enough to fall for whatever further nefarious machinations they harbor

Nobody on earth would like more for the battle to be fight in a purely physical sense – battle axes, AK-47s, fists and blood and bone and steel – but alas that is not where the conflict is occurring – maybe someday, but it is not the most important battlefield right now

The actual battlefield is our hearts and our relationship and our ability to love and forgive and to persevere, for ourselves and for those we hold dear – that’s what they are trying to break, that’s what they would destroy, that’s what they are attempting to poison

We can’t let that happen, no matter how hard the battle.

Joe Donovan
Joe Donovan
2 years ago

I loved the essay.
Perhaps Paul by next Christmas can be converted away from the Orthodox Church to Gnosticism. The “Great Courses” has a great course by a professor at Ohio State that explains it all in 12 hours of lectures.
The Gnostics were suppressed when the Emperor of Rome embraced a version of Christianity that is now “orthodox” to us in the late 4th century. Their version of Christianity makes a lot more sense to me. The god who made us, the god of the Old Testament, is petty and vindictive, even evil. But He (He is a “he”) is just a defective emanation. Above and beyond him is the Ultimate Source, which is genderless and formless and without qualities. And we participate in its divinity. Christ came to give us a leap-frogging path around the Evil Yalbaoth to the One, who has more in common with a Buddhist or Pantheist divinity than with the Grouchy Old Smiting Man of the Old Testament. Echoes here also of the Kabbalah.
Do I believe this? No, but it is a much more congenial myth.

Bob Taylor
Bob Taylor
2 years ago
Reply to  Joe Donovan

Are you interested in truth more than a congeniality which, speaking of “emanations,” is a revelation of your own antipathy toward God? Why don’t you read The Gospel of John and The Acts of the Apostles? The most striking quality of those books is their lack of adornment: they’re “just the facts” journalism.

I don’t want to panic you by urging you to read N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God before you read those two books of the New Testament. You need to be conditioned first for the dissolution of your follies, which Wright accomplishes for you in his book.

Joe Donovan
Joe Donovan
2 years ago
Reply to  Bob Taylor

If God is Big he will forgive me.

David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago
Reply to  Joe Donovan

Well god’s infinite, so you’re already forgiven

Alan Hawkes
Alan Hawkes
2 years ago

In a similar vein, I recommend, “Angels I Have Heard on High,” by Joseph Bottum, published by the American website, Law & Liberty.

David D'Andrea
David D'Andrea
2 years ago

Amen

LCarey Rowland
LCarey Rowland
2 years ago

The promise of everlasting life is found in the legachy of that One man who intentionally placed himself in the centerpoint of human history and religion. Jesus endured a criminal trial and execution that set the stage for his Resurrection, the only person in history who has ever died a criminal death and then lived to tell about it.
You simply have to believe that it happened; your simple faith in his resurrection entitles you, the believer, to enter into eternal life with him.
Are you ready to believe?

Bob Taylor
Bob Taylor
2 years ago
Reply to  LCarey Rowland

You’d find a tremendous blessing in reading N.T.Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God.

David Simpson
David Simpson
2 years ago
Reply to  LCarey Rowland

Yes, you need to believe, but then you have to do something – leave self behind, pick up your cross, and truly love your neighbour and your enemy. It is not he who says “lord, lord” who will be saved, but he who dies to this world and does the will of my father “. And there are many who do precisely that, and yet do not believe. They also enter the Kingdom.

Last edited 2 years ago by David Simpson
Mark Walker
Mark Walker
2 years ago

Human beings like ritual and celebration. For example, New Year is celebrated in more countries globally than Christmas. We human beings enjoy marking an event with a party. A 4 day holiday to celebrate the longevity of our Head of State in June 2022 is likely to be the World’s biggest party in 2022. Unless SAGE blocks it.

Josie Bowen
Josie Bowen
2 years ago

Congratulations to you you Paul. Thanks for having the courage to write publicly on this subject.
I imagine all Heaven rejoices when a new Christian is converted. We don’t choose to be Christian, rather we stop running away.
It occurred to me when singing at our Christmas Carols recently, that we are meant to sing like this to our Creator, together, in unison. This is when the spirit in us connects with the Holy Spirit and we are in communication with God. It’s beautiful.

David Yetter
David Yetter
2 years ago

Christ is born!

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
2 years ago

What a fascinating article; it is so interesting to read the thoughts of a recent convert.
Some of the reasons for the decline of faith in the west today and excellently described in, ‘The rise and triumph of the modern self,’ by Carl Trueman.