BY STEWART SLATER
- Regular readers may remember my struggle a year ago to get an A.I. to produce an image for Christmas. Being every bit as male, cheap and lazy in 2024 as I was in 2023, and having the additional justification that it would be an interesting check on the improvement in our soon-to-be silicon overlords, I decided, a few weeks ago, to have another go. Happily, I can report that this more recent effort did not, like the earlier one, feature a horse-less stagecoach in the middle of the river Thames. Instead, I got a London bus in the middle of the river Thames. Progress certainly, but progress, I felt, of a relatively limited sort.
- You read this at the start of another lap around the cosmic running track. But if comparing a year to a race is attractive, it is not entirely apt. Sporting contests get harder as they go on – marathon runners take 20-odd miles or so before they hit “The Wall”. The change in the calendar dumps us straight into January, with its dark mornings, dark evenings and gloomy in-betweens. (For any Antipodeans smugly chucking another shrimp on the barbie, remember, even for you, Winter Is Coming…).
- The lack of love for January distresses me for it contains my birthday which surely ennobles it above all others. It is a “Big Birthday” this year, the sort which ends in a “0”. But, of course, we only think this because we count in decimal. If we used binary, my last “Big Birthday” would have been 32 (11111 becomes 100000) and my next would be 64 (111111 becomes 1000000). The structure we impose on reality is every bit as important to us as reality itself.
- My celebrations will not involve champagne for the simple reason that I am “dry” – it is many a year since the Devil’s Buttermilk last passed my lips. But even when I did drink, with the exception of one bottle given as a gift (thank you, Andrew!), I never really liked the bubbly. This does not, of course, mean that I did not drink (more than?) my fair share of it. I was young, I was a banker, drinking champagne is what young bankers do.
- “Traveller who passes by, go tell the Spartans that here we lie, obedient to their laws”. The Roman author Catullus, in one of his greatest (and certainly one of his cleanest) poems, tells his late brother that his funeral rites were conducted “Prisco…more parentum” (“in the time-honoured way of our ancestors”). We like to follow tradition, and we like others to know that we follow tradition. Thus, I think, the “Christmas Dinner Discourse” – “Oh, you must have sprouts. We always have sprouts. It’s not really Christmas without sprouts” or “Oh, we never have Yorkshire pudding. Not at Christmas. You just can’t, can you? Not if you’re doing it properly.” One of these things is not, I feel, like the others. Dying for one’s country ennobles in a way in which forgoing a mound of doughy goodness does not. Morality requires more than mere mimicry.
- One Christmas tradition I fully support is the presents, particularly the “receiving presents” bit. This too, has a long history. The Wise Men brought gold, frankincense and myrrh, the ancient equivalents, I suppose, of the “cash and a Lynx gift box” fall-back for difficult teenagers today. And who can blame them? What do you get the Son of God for his birthday?
- The world received an early Christmas present with the downfall of the Assad regime. Or perhaps it was just Syria. Or perhaps, just some Syrians – it is, I think, as Chairman Mao’s deputy said of the French Revolution, “too early to tell”. “Things can only get better” is just as often a confession of a limited imagination as it is a metaphysical truth. Bashar of course bugged out, prompting accusations of cowardice from armchair warriors everywhere. Well, possibly. Personally, I am unconvinced that, given the choice between an imminent, probably unpleasant death (Col. Gaddafi was, if I recall correctly, sodomised with an iron bar) and a private plane to the peaceful contemplation of my plutocratic property portfolio, I would have done any different.
- Some in the real world have, of course, adopted the “Tony Montana” approach to regime change implicitly claimed by those lurking in the comfortable safety of the virtual world. Constantine XI Palaiologos waded into the front line when the Ottomans breached the walls of Byzantium and was never seen again. The absence of any identifiable remains soon led to rumours that he had not died, but was merely asleep, waiting to save his people in their hour of need. Just like King Arthur. And Frederick Barbarossa. And Montezuma. Indeed, like so many figures that folklorists have invented a name for the legend – “The King Asleep in the Mountain.” None of these figures has, to the best of my knowledge, actually turned up again (despite all the tribulations of humanity since their disappearances), leading, I think, to one of two conclusions. Either they are just stories. Or things can only get worse…
- That Britain’s entry on the list is a probably mythical figure who, at best, might have been based on an individual who lived through the Roman Departure is a testament to our relative stability. Monarch hands over seamlessly to monarch, Prime Minister to Prime Minister (the surprise occasioned by seeing Rishi Sunak on a “Year in Review” programme showed how successful our system is. Or how unsuccessful he was…). Charles has taken up the tradition of the King’s Speech (“We always watch it. You’ve got to, haven’t you? It wouldn’t be Christmas without it.”) and there was little that his mother would not have said. Invocations of “unity” (not an unalloyed virtue, I think – it rather depends on what we are uniting around). Mentions of “love”. Praise for public sector workers (medics, understandably, in this case). No real mention of private sector workers though. The state always appears keener to praise those it pays than those who pay for it….
- Some of you may be reading this while indulging in that seasonal pastime of the “New Years Resolution”. If you are, good luck. I have not joined you, history suggesting that my chances of keeping one are similar to my chances of winning a Nobel Prize. If yours involves giving something up, however, let me pass on the benefits of my experience with abstinence – first, you stop needing it. Then, you stop wanting it. And finally, you can’t quite understand why you ever wanted it in the first place. This progression, I have noticed, does not just apply to our vices…
- A less encouraging, and rather more modern, tradition is the spike in divorce rates after the holidays. Relationships are, I think, like books. Most people see only the cover. A few skim the pages for the good bits. Only two people actually read the whole work with its secrets, in-jokes and, let us be honest, long passages of quotidian drudgery. Both of them, however, think they are the hero – the book just a volume in their ongoing saga.
- Some of you may find yourself in possession of some book tokens (a gift, no doubt, from a great aunt who is the last person you know who still gives them). So, for this month’s quote, we shall take inspiration from the bookshops you will soon visit and offer a strictly limited, January sales “Read One Get One Free” deal. Both from Albert Camus and both aimed at those (wrongly, given the foregoing) struggling with this greatest of months – “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” And, “We must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.