Jeff Goulding's Blog

So that was Christmas...

It's easy to understand why the ancients decided to honour their Gods in December. As a winter month, which contains the darkest day of the year, it would be fairly grim without a good festival or two to break it up. And any that involved decorating trees in brightly coloured objects, candles and feasting would have fit the bill perfectly.

Long before Christianity proclaimed December 25th as the birthday of Christ, Pagans, Romans and even the Greeks were celebrating in ways many of us would find eerily familiar today. Evergreen trees were decorated inside homes both to honour deities and to herald the arrival of Spring from ancient Britain to the shores of the Mediterranean and no doubt beyond.

The Romans found the twelfth month so miserable that they filled it with two major festivals, Saturnalia to honour their God of agriculture and another to celebrate the birth of their sun God, Mithra, on December 25th.

How interesting that Christian clergy, unable to put an end to these rival rituals, simply decided to adopt them as their own, declaring that Jesus was born on the same day as Mithra.

To an atheist like me, it all sounds very convenient. And yet, I'm glad that in the cultural and religious melting pot of the years AD or CE (Common Era) depending on your persuasion - these competing world views somehow left us with the Christmas I grew up with.

There was nothing particularly religious about the holiday for me as a kid growing up in Liverpool. But there was magic and wonder. It's hard to truly recall how it felt, but i think I genuinely believed that "Father Christmas" - we never used "Santa" - was real.

Life could be challenging for us in the 1970s, and I remember winters being colder and darker back then, at least in my minds eye they were. So a bit of sparkle here, a sprinkle of snow dust there, and the jingle of sleighbells (I actually believed I heard them once) was very welcome. So too was the food, and the presents.

I guess it wasn't that different for our ancient ancestors. Humans have probably always craved community over isolation and light over dark. I suppose it's about survival, but it's clearly more than that.

So, I love Christmas. Without it, the onset of winter and the slow cold march to spring would be unbearbly miserable. The christmas lights, social gatherings and the wonder in kids eyes help illuminate our lives, if only for a short while.

And yet, for me there is nothing spiritual or religious about it. I remember someone once questioning the fact that I buy my kids Christmas presents, while professing to be an atheist. The scorn in his voice was thinly veiled, and he delivered the line like a jounalist with a politician in their cross hairs, "Gotcha!" he must have thought.

I suppose I could see his point, even if he had spectacularly missed mine. I contemplated responding that there is nothing uniquely Christian or religious about giving gifts, I was fairly sure there's no mention of Santa Claus in the bible, and I didn't think there could have been many fir trees in Bethlehem 2000 years ago.

Instead I just smiled, and said that one of the perks of having no religion is that you can see the value in the customs of others, while rejecting the bits that don't work for you. With no belief in an afterlife, what did I have to lose?

To be honest, I wasn't particularly happy with that answer. Neither was he, judging by his response and I'm sure he left the exchange with his belief in my "hypocrisy" cemented.

Was he right? Well, I don't believe so. I think it's part of the human condition to crave mystery and wonder, to believe in something bigger than yourself. It's why I love going to Anfield, and why I invest so much in the fortunes of 11 men I don't know personally. It's also why standing on the Kop comes as close to a religious experience as I will ever feel.

I believe that this basic human need, to find meaning and purpose in what feels like a random and cruel universe, or a life filled with as much heartache as joy, is why some of us look to religion and superstitious thinking.

Then, I think of myself at the match, and how at times I convince myself that the things I do can influence the outcome of the game, and I realise how deep this need runs in all of us.

While I can explain away my prematch rituals in terms of "psychological tricks" designed to persuade me that the difference between sporting success and failure isn't really random, but that I can have some control over events, I know that others don't see it as a delusion.

In my rational moments, I realise that all I'm really controlling is my own anxiety, but others argue they are in some way influencing outcomes. We say special things happen at Anfield, and they do. But probably more because of psychology and the impact of thousands of people united in a common purpose frightening the life out of our opponents and filling our players with confidence, than anything mystical.

I don't think we really need the mystical to enjoy the wonder of life and the universe anyway.

I find wonder and joy in the fact that humans don't fully understand and can't completely explain nature - and probably never will - without the need to create a God to explain it, I recognise that others find comfort and strength from their faith that there is a plan, and that their fate is being guided by unseen hands. Each to their own, as my mother always said.

So, yeah, I love Christmas. Not for any religious or spiritual reasons. For me it's a tradition I grew up with that was completely secular. It was about good times, family and friends, warmth and light in the cold and dark days of December. And, yes, it was about giving and revceiving gifts.

Goodwill to all men and women, whatever their faith or if they have none, whoever they love and wherever they're from. Even a Godless me can get on board with that.

So, I hope you've all had a great Saturnalia, Mithra Day or Christmas. Roll on spring, and I hope your new year is better than the last.

Jeff x

I feared it would happen. I even joked about it. If anyone asked me about my recent literary purple patch, I’d reply that I didn’t dare stop writing, even for a short while, for fear that whatever switch inside my head had mysteriously been flicked on, might never work again. Ever since I penned the last word of Untouchables – a collaboration with football historian, Kieran Smith - I have been gripped by a fear that I was right, my writing gear has felt jammed shut.

For decades I had dreamed of being an author without ever being able to muster anything remotely publishable. I always wanted to write fiction. I still do, but I’ve rarely produced anything that I was truly happy with. That is until I started writing about the things that I’m passionate about, politics and football.

I started blogging about 15 years ago, at the age of 40. Soon I was pouring out articles, and it wasn’t long before my ramblings were being published by others. My first book, Red Odyssey, was published in 2017, and with that I found a rhythm to my writing that has served me well ever since. Stanley Park Story – part novel, part social history of the Merseyside derby – came hot on its heels and was particularly pleasing to me because it combined my desire to invent stories, with my twin passions of politics and football.

Writing then became an obsession, and soon my family were telling me I wasn’t good to be around when I had the keyboard out. I was “somewhere else”, inattentive, distracted and often irritable. They were right.

Whenever I started writing, I became fully immersed in a way I have never experienced in any other aspect of my life. It was all consuming, but it was as isolating as it was therapeutic, as oppressive as it was liberating. And it could be exhausting. In 5 years, I produced six books and countless articles and features. I will be forever grateful to my publisher, Pitch Publishing, and to my various collaborators and the web-based outlets who have showcased my writing. But there has been a cost.

The competing priorities of a writing career, a full-time job and family life would inevitably lead to conflict, both internal and external. I’ve never believed the myth of multi-tasking. At times the day job might have suffered, sometimes it would be my personal relationships and occasionally it was both. The writing took precedence, always. If that meant my evenings and weekends were consumed by it, then so be it. In hindsight, it could never last.

When Untouchables was published it became easier to listen to those appeals from family to take a break. I even felt like I needed it. The nagging fear remained, that once I eased off that would be the end, but for the first time in five years I chose to ignore it.

In truth, I’ve managed a few articles and features of late, but where the words once flowed effortlessly, now they were being cranked out, almost one at a time. Sentences and paragraphs constantly deleted and rewritten as the confidence ebbed from me. The demons of self-doubt whispered to me, you’ve said this before, nobody wants to read this, who cares. The whole process that once energised me, now genuinely wears me out.

There are positives though, not writing so much means more time for family and for work. That meant that it was easy for days to turn into weeks and then months without penning anything significant. I admit, though, that I miss the joy of writing and how easy it once felt. Inevitably the fear that I have lost something important to me has begun to intensify.

I’ve dabbled with a change in focus. Maybe I should I try fiction; would that reenergise me? A few ideas have fought for supremacy in my head, and I’ve logged them in a folder somewhere. But the impetus to start, the drive that was once so hard to ignore remains elusive.

Even the process of producing these words has been excruciating to me. I hope they weren't as painful for you to read. If they were, I offer my sympathies and an apology. The switch is stubbornly in the off position at the minute.

The only thing I can think of to do, is to try and write it back on again. I’ll let you know how it goes.