Rituals and bullshit of the holiday sort: Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett

 When it serves to break up some otherwise weighty material, I have been going through Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, and going largely in sequence, although skipping however I choose, because there's no point unless I can do whatever I want.  This year, pagan tree and present day falls on a Sunday, and since I have made a habit of science fiction & fantasy posts on Sundays, well hey!  There's a Discworld book about this!  OK, it means jumping forward, but I've already done a post on Mort anyway.  So let's do Hogfather.

Discworld is a flat world resting on the backs of four giant elephants, who are standing on the back of an even bigger turtle who flies through space.  It is a world of magic and craziness, and a vehicle for satire.  The Hogfather is Santa Claus.  Every year on Hogswatch, this jolly, fat man gets in his flying sleigh, flown by hogs rather than reindeer, and visits children's houses to go down the chimney and stuff presents in socks nailed to mantlepieces.

But one year, something goes wrong, and someone needs to fill in for him.  That person?  Death.  There's also some crazy stuff with an assassin, a god of hangovers (sorry, an oh god of hangovers), the wizards at the Unseen University built a sentient machine, there's some tooth fairy stuff... fuck it.  Death is Santa Claus.  That's kind of it.

One can go through various mythologies and imaginings of Death anthropomorphized, but Pratchett's Death is, well, one hesitates to call him a "chill" guy, or someone with whom you'd want to "hang," but if you want funny, read Pratchett.  Point being, Death is in no way villainous, he can be pleasant, charming in a cluelessly goofy way, and his goals are essentially noble.  Indeed, more than anyone else, he performs his job with fairness and equality, making him the most astute observer of any unfairness should he choose to pay attention.

Mostly he doesn't because he's Death, but what if he did pay attention?

I find holidays, rituals, and gift-giving rituals rather strange.  Yet what if someone looked at the holiday gift-giving ritual from the lens of equality with the true clarity of Death Himself?

There's a great and vital scene in which Death is going around to distribute presents, and he sees a rather poor house, to which he gives a financially-appropriate gift.  After several turns of magic, though, he is frustrated.  He has a conversation with his assistant, Albert, acting as a pixie, or elf, or whatever.  Death sees rich kids getting fancy presents that they do not need, and will barely appreciate if at all.  He sees poor kids getting barely anything, and nothing like what they requested.  Death sees a gap, and since this is not actually a matter of parents buying gifts, but Death acting as Hogfather distributing them, why can he not just give the kids what they want?

If you want to go full commie, consider the following famous line from Helder Camara:  When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.  When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.

Of course, when you look empirically at which economic systems produce poverty and which economic systems alleviate poverty, communism does not have a very good record.  Confiscate wealth at gunpoint in a bloody revolution, and redistribute it in order to create a flat distribution.  What could possibly go wrong?

Actually, Stalin and Mao both individually topped Hitler in the all-time body count by starving out their people.  So yeah.  As it turns out, that's not actually how you make sure people get fed.

But what if we don't go all Marx on this shit?  Or even Camara?  What if we ask, instead, about the basic fairness of this stupid holiday ritual?  (As opposed to some other ones.  I'm gonna make a turkey tonight.  'Cuz.)

Does it pass a philosophical test that rich kids get cool presents and poor kids don't?  That's not a capitalism versus communism question.  It's a question about the ritual, posed to you by Death because Death sees the ritual with a clarity that you do not.  And within the story, acting as Hogfather, Death has the power to equalize that, but is told he should not.

Albert tells Death that the value of the ritual is in the hope.  The hope of something in the future.  Hope is the motivator, not the fulfillment with some mysterious arrival of a fancy present.  The hope is the thing.  After all, Death would not overthrow the economic system by distributing some more fancy presents, just as he didn't hurt the department store owner by conjuring gifts for the kids (instead of the parents paying for gifts).  But do you think about these things?

Probably not.  You give gifts to those in your life, contingent on your ability to pay, perhaps you tithe a bit, but the present ritual is a strange ritual for demonstrating wealth in a ritual that needn't exist.  Death's predicament is being told not to use magic to equalize outcomes, even absent any changes to the greater macroeconomic system.  But at least Death sees it, because he cannot not see it.  That is how Death is presented to us, as one who sees with clarity, and demands perfect fairness.

Life isn't fair.  Death is.  If Death ran Hogswatch... well, different sorts of messes.

Sax Ruins, "Pig Brag Crack," from Yawiquo.  What, you were expecting the obvious Pink Floyd track?  Yeah, when pigs fly.    Ooooh!  I get it!