The Family at Christmas

Christmas is one of those times when far-flung families are reunited for the ritual of gift exchange, feasting and for catching up with each other's individual journeys. This Christmas was no exception with my own family. Mom and Dad are long gone. Those of us who remain are numbered among sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, grandchildren and great grandchildren. And so the circle widens as the center dissolves.

Families are conglomerations of disparate branches that would not ordinarily associate with each other without the ritual expectations of family Christmas gatherings. I found a renewed understanding of this on Christmas Eve. We began to gather with hugs and warm greetings. Layer after layer of family that sprang from the same center congregated around the tree and buffet. Then the differences began to appear as if they were strata along the fault lines of the San Andreas. Social strata were exposed in the same way that geologic layers are ripped open for inspection following the rifts of seismic shifting.

What was exposed at our family gathering was an upper strata, self-appointed and identified as such by its continual interactions and isolated reinforcement within its own social channel. This form of social and cultural isolation ensures a closed social consciousness. The self-chosen members of the upper crust in our family circle are immersed within their own isolated "class" culture. They are essentially blinded by the delusion that they are essentially different. This is a class that looks down upon the less desirable, less achieving levels of social strata with languid acceptance. Our presence is tolerated for the duration of the holiday ritual. All the while the socially privileged ones are thankful, no doubt, that the festive proximities to the lesser ones will be mercifully brief. Thus a return to one's own cultural milieu is the reward for having endured the loathsome ritual of toleration.

In our culture where one percent of the wealthy control as much wealth as the ninety percent of citizens below them, it is helpful for me to be reminded that the upper crust of our family is not included in that upper one percent of the ruling elites. Rather they are merely splashed upon occasionally by the ruling elites who find them useful as a buffer between themselves and the rest of us. Such splashings are tantamount to a baptism of acceptance. However, what comes after the baptismal drops evaporate? What happens when the upper strata's usefulness to the ruling elites dissolves ... as it surely will? All strata below the ruling elites is subject to compression and deformation. The resulting formation will be a new stage of capitalism ... neofeudalism. Can you dig it.