Oh, hangman stay your hand

[venta]

I had meant to write lots about the folk festival I went to, at home in Darlington, at the weekend. But somehow I've not quite got round to it, and it's now days-old news. That's practically last decade on Livejournal.

However, two separate threads on other people's journals have got me thinking this afternoon. Firstly, edling was commenting on Cat's practice of knocking holes in eggshells to stop witches using them as boats. stompyboots pointed out it sounded like exactly the sort of thing I'd do - which I concede it does, though in actual fact it's not a superstition I'm aware of.

In general, my day-to-day life is hedged around with such habits and rituals. Whenever I put new bedclothes on the bed I deliberately tuck the bottom sheet round the foot-end of the mattress first, mentally hearing my mum's voice chanting first the foot and then the head, that's the way to make a bed. I put the pillow cases on the pillows, and turn the open ends away from the door to ensure I won't leave the bed in a coffin.

I let devils out of bread (as explained to Stompyboots), I avert a third crisis by breaking a matchstick, if the palms of my hands itch I rub them on wood to make sure my finances are safe. These things are so automatic that now, trying to list them, I can't think of many. When a magpie flies across in front of the car I bid it good morning, and enquire after its family, without even thinking about it.

As a passing digression, I haven't absorbed into my daily life superstitions which my parents didn't appear to go in for. I cheerfully walk under ladders, and I don't throw spilled salt over my shoulder. Thirteen seems quite a friendly number to me. I can think of at least one I believe I invented for myself - if I get out of bed during the night, I pull the bedclothes back over the place I've been lying to keep the devil out. I have no idea why this seemed necessary.

I should add, indicentally, that the devil isn't the chap who turns up in hellfire church sermons. The devils I try to avoid are the folk-story type, scheming, keen to enter into bargains with humanity, easily recognisable and none too bright.

And yet, in all this, I wouldn't describe myself as a superstitious person. Do I believe that failing to rub an itchy left palm against wood will result in me losing money ? (left for leave, right for receive). No, I don't.

Which leads me to the second thread, which was one of these answers-to-questions-about-myself posts. One question was "At what age did you find out that Santa Claus wasn't real?" I don't know my answer to that question. The obvious response is to cry "What ? He's not real ?"

Father Christmas is as real to me as he ever was; at Christmas I still put out my stocking (actually a small string bag made by my Dad) and when I wake up in the morning it contains small presents, wrapped in different paper from the giftwrap I or my parents are using that year. When I was younger (and went to bed before my parents on Christmas Eve) I used to leave out mince pie, sherry, and a carrot for the reindeer. Father Christmas was a very real figure, who would visit me if I'd been good.

And yet at the same time, some part of me wasn't really expecting that there was a real, tangible elderly gent hurtling through the sky to deliver parcels all over the world. I remember my nextdoor neighbour telling me that "it's just your parents really" - it didn't shock or surprise me, I already knew, had always known, and it didn't in any way stop me from believing firmly in Father Christmas. I still do.

I can believe six impossible things before breakfast; I can certainly believe two mutually contradictory things round afternoon-tea-time. The glib answer is, of course, to say something like "Well, it's all paradigms, innit?"

But no, I don't think it is. I don't consciously shift between the two views of the world, they co-exist quite happily in my mind. Neither is my "real" view of the world. Writing something like this is something of a struggle; I desperately want to prevent myself committing in writing somewhere that I concede that Father Christmas doesn't "really" exist, it goes against the face of me the world sees all the time.

Maybe the rich tapestry of folklore and myth is just something I've woven for myself in an attempt to impose order and justice on a world that seems to be sadly random. A sweet cloak to provide reasons for things, and to give me some hope of fending off the bad stuff. I prefer to think that the folklore is just something that's become engrained in me because I grew up with it, something I've retained because it makes the world that little bit more interesting.

My world is peopled with witches (possibly waterborne ones, since I leave eggshells unscuppered), devils, demons and countless other spirits. I take what precautions I can to keep the more malign ones at bay, and do my bit to ensure that the sun will come back each year and that the apple crops won't fail. Escapist ? Maybe. But it's a good world.

Comments

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I dunno about you subject header, but your cut-tag is from "Livin' la vida loc" by Ricki Martin.

[venta.livejournal.com]

A kudo to you, ma'am.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

easily recognisable and none too bright

It's always a source of much amusement to me how easily foiled evil spirits, demons and the devil seem to be according to folklore.

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

A cynic writes: "Survivorship bias. You never get to read the stories abou tht ehumans that didn't get away".

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

knocking holes in eggshells to stop witches using them as boats

Dammit, we need those boats, selfish bloody
ex-christiananglosaxonfascistsuperstition. vandalism!

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I can think of at least one I believe I invented for myself - if I get out of bed during the night, I pull the bedclothes back over the place I've been lying to keep the devil out. I have no idea why this seemed necessary.

I pull the bedclothes back over the place I've been lying as well. It gets jolly cold if I don't. I've never heard of the devil being a metaphor for cold before ;-).

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I can cope with mutually exclusive things being true at the same time as well. You wouldn't get very far in a physics degree otherwise...

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

Thank You. 100% gratitude for this entry. You've managed to sum up my feelings on Father Christmas much better than I could.

There's the world the way I believe it ought to be, where what we as people do and believe matters, a world where such things as beauty, truth, justice have reality, and then there's the factual world of particles and chaos, which doesn't care about people in the slightest. I get derrided for being a naive* optimist when I declare that I want to be part of the former, not the latter. I re-read Hogfather (T Pratchett) recently with a lot more sympathy than the first time round - I'm with siding with Terry's expressed views on this kind of thing.

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

What was it about whatever was said that got it deleted? I've never had a response to a comment of mine deleted before.... *puzzled*

[metame.livejournal.com]

I was informed yesterday of the existence of a category called (I think, and triskellian can surely easily correct) 'performative speech actions' - those which, by the very act of saying them, change the world around them. Canonical example would seem to be 'I promise to ....'.

I am tempted to borrow this to separate out the 'performative thought actions' - those which change the world around them by the very thinking of them. Superstitions would be a classic here - there's no 'real reason' (that we can find and justify and explain and reason through) why we touch wood for luck, except that we have a thought that we should. And that's entirely sufficient to make us act, again and again - superstitions change the way we act (and that's about 'all' that they do - we don't try very hard to pass them on, or to analyse them, or to derive theories of pixie-kind from them (beyond the basics of brightness, motivations, weaknesses)).

Not really sure why I'm posting this as a reply to the comment 'above' but perhaps as a different way of viewing superstitions that doesn't try to tie them into culture - in this model you can have your own personal superstitions without anyone else knowing or caring. Which I think I like.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

"Well, it's all paradigms, innit?"

Something I was reading earlier quoted Philip K. Dick - "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". Now if anybody could be expected to have a slightly tenous grasp of what is and isn't real, it's Dick, so this could be more of a lifejacket than a philosophy, but it's close enough for jazz.

This is why it's so important that superstitious beliefs be cultural rather than individual. If everyone else believes it, or merely is aware of the belief, then it doesn't go away just because you stop believing, although it may have less tangible effects.

[venta.livejournal.com]

This is why it's so important that superstitious beliefs be cultural rather than individual.

So, you're saying that next time I hop out of bed to fetch a drink, and don't pull the bedclothes up, there won't be a devil in my bed when I get back ?

Can I have that in writing ?

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

Well I am glad its not just me!
Different set of superstitions/rituals but similar sort of theory.
The oddest is the I picked up from Mykl (can you catch these things, like measles) whereby walking over an odd number of grids/manhole covers in a line is bad, by evens are lucky. This results in some strange pavement antics probably entirely inappropiate in a "grown up". Its odd that 6 years after I last heard from the guy I still do this.

[venta.livejournal.com]

can you catch these things, like measles

Definitely. It's one of the few bits of evidence to suggest memes might exist :)

[j4.livejournal.com]

wrapped in different paper from the giftwrap I or my parents are using that year

My parents do that! ... Er, I mean, Father Christmas does that. Yes. :-) I know what you mean about the two views co-existing, though.

Maybe the rich tapestry of folklore and myth is just something I've woven for myself in an attempt to impose order and justice on a world that seems to be sadly random.

If it's an attempt to impose order and justice on the world then it's one you share with lots of other people. I have kind of confused beliefs about whether the patterns in the world are imposed by us or whether they're "there", pre-existing, for us to find -- it all gets a bit tree-in-the-wood at that point -- but the memes of superstition and mythology are so densely woven that in a way I think they take on as much existence outside our heads as other consensus myths, like society, and money.

Will stop waffling now, sorry.

[taimatsu]

I am now Father Christmas. I started becoming him last year (Christmas 2004) when The Duty was passed on to me as it related to a certain Mr R. E. Baker-Self. Christmas 2005 saw me also undertaking significant portions of The Duty for the remaining members of the Kennedy family. The giftwrap thing only half-happened.

It's bloody odd. It's, you know, not my parents any more. That's just wrong.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

My mother decided when my little brother got contact lenses at age five or six that the act of throwing spilled salt over your shoulder would now be an incredibly unlucky thing to do, incurring such terrible consequences as spinach falling out of the sky and landing in your dinner or the cat somehow opening your sock drawer, going to sleep in it and drooling.

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

I insist on having my tea stirred anti-clockwise.

Dont know why though. But thinking of it when people bring me a cup of tea I have no idea if they have stirred it clockwise or anti clockwise....eek....maybe thats why everything keeps going wrong for me....people stirring my tea clockwise....gah!! The fools!!...

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

"At what age did you find out that Santa Claus wasn't real?"

For me, Father Christmas was very real. My Mum would take me to the bedroom window at bedtime on Christmas Eve and show me him coming. In the morning his presents would be wrapped differently from the normal ones, and there'd invariably be a sooty footprint in the grate where he'd come in. In fact, it was the lights of a lone car on a desolate hillside country road I could see at night. I figured the reality when I was 8 and got a great sense of triumph when I caught my parents out the following Christmas, but thereafter - and even though Father Christmas still visited (for the benefit of my younger sister, I imagine) - Christmas was never quite the same.

So I have been determined that my children should believe and thus enjoy Christmas for as long as possible. But my daughter is now 10 and she and we still go through the Christmas ritual as if she still believes it - I'm sure she doesn't by now; I know her friends have said it's just Mum and Dad - but none of us have blinked yet. She's probably worked out that Father Christmas stops visiting and doesn't want that to happen - or perhaps she just really wants to believe it's real. But for whatever reason she's been far cleverer than I was and hasn't said anything.

I already knew, had always known, and it didn't in any way stop me from believing firmly in Father Christmas. I still do.

There's an interesting parallel there with organised religions - at least those which can be called faiths in that they demand that you believe in something which cannot be proved. I believe in my faith and yet at the same time I know it's clearly absurd.

My sister - clearly spotting the similarity between the promises of religion and Father Christmas, and that one was provably untrue - has brought her children up without them ever believing in the latter. How sad is that?

[metame.livejournal.com]

My sister - clearly spotting the similarity between the promises of religion and Father Christmas, and that one was provably untrue

Which one?
I guess Aquinas' little known but ever so clever Discourse leading to an Ontologickal Proof of the Existence of the Entity known variously as Santa Claus, Father Christmas and Papa Noel never got as many reprints as it deserved.

[stompyboots.livejournal.com]

I like your view of the world. I'm widely read, and with an active imagination, and it suits me to understand (and consider) a world beyond my own. I think that people such as ourselves are all the luckier for seeing this richness, for holding a + ¬a at the same time.

[(Anonymous)]

As "touching wood" is related to the Crucifixion (wooden cross) is it superstition, or a relic (in both senses perhaps) of religion?

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

is it superstition, or a relic (in both senses perhaps) of religion

Is it allowed to be both?

[(Anonymous)]

Why not? Most of those who do it aren't practising anythings; those who do believe maybe feel they shouldn't do it as superstition is wrong, but do it all the same and, to complicate matters, may be totally unaware ofits origins.