Stories shape people

Joos van Cleve, ‘Madonna of the Cherries’, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery (discussed here https://wp.me/s2oNj1-cherry)

Inverted Commas 20: Ribbons of space-time

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.
Stories exist independently of their players. If you know that, the knowledge is power.

Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling […] stories, twisting and blowing through the darkness.

‘Witches Abroad’

“Stories are important,” Terry Pratchett wisely wrote, but he recognised that narratives are very much chicken-and-egg issues. Unconsciously we grow up playing out scripted roles: we are a good child or a naughty one, we sense we’re masters of our fate or else forever fated, we’re loved or we’re rejected. Some of us are princesses in disguise, others ugly sisters; some feel they are the knight in shining armour, others the dragon. For every one born with a silver spoon in their mouth countless others will hear resonances in Albert King’ s lyrics: “Born under a bad sign, been down since I began to crawl. If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.”

You would think that a creative writer would claim credit for coming up with original plots, that they were the one shaping stories; but Pratchett knew that he was just recycling or repurposing existing blueprints, because stories do indeed exist independently of their players.

Terry Pratchett

But we have to beware of pigeonholing stories as though that was all there was to basic plotlines, don’t we? In another context psychologist Lucy Foulkes discusses the dangers of thinking summary diagnoses are really the key to understanding human character:

“If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism,” academic and autism advocate Dr Stephen Shore has said, and this is true of all diagnostic terms. Even when a condition or disorder significantly shapes a person’s behaviour, it can still only be one part of the story. When attempting to understand and describe someone’s character, we need to resist linguistic laziness to convey who they really are.

Guardian Saturday, 16th October 2021

“Only one part of the story.” A psychological diagnosis may be like a Tale Type or Basic Plot — Rags to Riches, for example, or Overcoming the Monster, or Tragedy — but just as there are multiple, even infinite variations in narration so no two persons with a particular diagnosis will be the same.

© C A Lovegrove

All these thoughts rise to the surface when I consider the cultural narrative that tends to dominate at this time of year, the Christmas Story. The earliest accounts were given by the evangelists Matthew and Luke, with Luke providing the most circumstantial details. But ever since that time its basic narrative shape has been reinterpreted, reshaped, embroidered and adapted, whether in art, sermon, folk tradition or exegesis, according to century and culture, denomination or personal whim. Every individual who thinks they’re familiar with the ‘true’ story has their own version, their own concept of the ‘facts’ and their significance.

Take one example. Many Christian fundamentalists declare that 25th December is the anniversary of Jesus’s birthday and fervently believe it, some even castigating as pagan those who demur from this article of faith. They ignore one inconvenient literary fact and not a little attenuating evidence.

Neither Matthew or Luke say when the child was born. The 25th was only fixed as a convenient day to celebrate the event during the reign of the emperor Constantine in the 4th century, and that only because it could probably displace the popular Roman worship of the Syrian god Sol Invictus — the Unconquered Sun — who appears to have been associated with this date (coming, as it does, not long after the winter solstice).

Whatever the imperial reasons for this choice of date to celebrate the Nativity the symbolism associated with the midwinter turning point is potent: rebirth, renewal, the return of light, new life burgeoning. And this concept of a midwinter Christmas soon began to attract further symbolism — hope for the disadvantaged, gift-giving, greenery, warmth, family, childhood, and so on — all affecting adherents’ thoughts, behaviours, actions, beliefs.

The Christmas Story then is one of those “ribbons of space-time” that Pratchett identifies as having evolved and “grown fat on the retelling,” a meme complex or memeplex (this last an exceedingly useful term from psychologist Susan Blackmore) that has shaped and will continue to shape us, believers, agnostics and atheists alike.

That Pratchett guy certainly knew what he was talking about.

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All that remains for me to say is to wish you all the best for this season, despite all the political shenanigans, pandemic fears, economic uncertainties and environmental fears that assail us daily. Let’s hope for true tidings of comfort and joy coming our way!

The first ever commercial Christmas card