The turkey is cold; the sprouts have been ritually consumed and may be put aside for another year. The wrapping paper is hopefully in the recycling bin, or better still, the fabric gift bags are back in the cupboard. The Solstice is over, the light will probably return, and with a bit of luck, we’ll all be there to see it, even if 24 hours in close contact with family members might have shortened the odds for some.

And just as you’re beginning to consider whether you can fit in another cracker piled nose high with cheese, the ad comes on the TV.
“Sales start at 9 am!”

The news carries a segment about “brave souls” sleeping out overnight to be first in line for the posh handbag. My friends, I wouldn’t sit ten minutes in a comfortable armchair to get a discount on a handbag. People are sleeping rough on our streets in vicious weather, and you’re “brave” for queuing overnight for an over-priced fashion accessory? I look at the lines waiting for the doors to swing open, muffled in sleeping bags, clutching flasks, feverishly excited, and I think – they’re sacrificing something precious on the altar of capitalism. Their time. Family. The chance to watch Die Hard again. Hours of comfort and warmth for a trinket.

Why?

We are blasted with ads, the news, and social media. Deals, discounts, be the first in line – urgent and insistent instructions to go, spend, eat more, consume more. You have already emptied your resources to meet the demands of the fat man in a red suit or the need to match sibling gifts, in-laws’ expectations and Instagram versions of festive decorations.

We are human, and we want to fit in, and we want our kids to have what everyone else has, and we live in a hellscape of political hideousness and climate change, and a prettily wrapped present makes us feel a bit better. I’m not here to judge, folks. I have bought into it all more than once, thought, “feck it, why not,” and I begrudge no one a bit of joy and fun. Grab it while it’s still on offer.

But – there’s a limit. There’s a boundary.

I remember when the time between the 24^{th of} December and the 1^st of January was a sacred, liminal time in the city. When we huddled. We gave in to thousands of years of tradition that said, this is not the time to be a-wandering. Find a hearth, pull up a chair, and talk to each other. As young adults, we went out to pubs at night, slept until the afternoon, and had dinner in each other’s houses. Our parents visited and received visitors. Old friends came home for a brief but glorious visit, catching up on home news and sharing their stories of New York, or London, or Germany or Brussels. Every country, every city has their version of this. Sales started in January. Work resumed, the decorations came down, and the world turned its face firmly towards Spring.

In recent years, those precious few days of quiet and rest in the city have been eroded until we cannot even wait until the end of one event before dragging retail workers back in to stock shelves and man tills. You are not allowed to take a break from spending, from consuming, from feeding the beast.

One of the strangest tensions as an Urban Pagan is that the lifeblood of the city is commerce. Its history is steeped in it, my own family is shaped by it, we are all indebted to it in some measure, but the greed and callousness of modern capitalism threaten to destroy the very fabric of the same.

The people, we are now told, exist to serve commerce.

It’s a lie. It’s a myth. And it’s your duty as an Urban Pagan to resist it.

Urban Paganism lives in harmony with the needs of the city, just as a rural Pagan will observe the needs of Nature. The city has always been built around merchants, stalls and barter and coins changing hands. There has always been a price to pay for the relative comforts of community; there’s no time in history when we lived in perfect, communal harmony, freely exchanging goods. But at its best, there was balance. When the ordinary citizen could earn a living, hand over money, buy necessities and rub along. There have always been periods of horrible imbalance. There was a time in my city when the Dublin tenements were the worst slums in western Europe, presided over by a callous foreign power, with the highest infant mortality rates recorded. My own family tree is evidence of this, one short life after another, census records that show 14 children birthed, five surviving. We have always had housing shortages, built sprawling estates without adequate resources, and allowed private interests to destroy the history of our streets – nowhere is perfect. Every city has its own flawed past. But we tried, generation after generation, to improve the situation.

Now, in the absence of radical change, we currently live in a system that pretends to care, that states if you work hard and earn well, you will live securely. It doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter, whether you are born here or arrive here on wings of hope and courage. You are citizens of the city now, members of the community. When you contribute, you earn not only remuneration but the right to rest. That’s the basic social contract.

What do we, as urban Pagans, do then, when the contract is broken, or pushed to such extremes that it is broken and bent? We have a duty to push back. A few years ago, in my city, people began to object to the erosion of that precious sacred time between December and January. They can start the sales in December, people said, but we don’t have to go shopping. It’s a simple, radical act. Do not participate in their nonsense. Put away the urge to spend. Resist the fear that you’re missing out. Stay home.

And it’s working. Some sales still start ridiculously early, but many have begun to postpone. Many large stores, including supermarkets, shut down for the 25^th and 26^th, reflecting the need for retail staff to have family time. Others proudly announced this year that they will not start the sale until Jan…a return to the old ways. No government achieved this. No council directive. Just ordinary people saying, Nah. You know what? I’ll sit this one out, thanks.

Some pagans feel that living in a city is incompatible with their spiritual desire for freedom from capitalism or greed, or commerce. Well, I say, if you have the stomach for it, this is exactly where we need to be, in the midst of the fight. People are left behind in this cruel world. The heart of the city is ignored. The young are marginalised (and then radicalised by hateful groups.) The inequality between rich and poor is most visible, most vicious here. And there is nowhere better to see the strength of community in action.

Fighting back against the sales machine is just one example. Local people have set up food banks – sad that they are needed, yes, but look at the ordinary people, taking up the challenge!  Community gardens. Circular economy initiatives. Crafting, bartering, trading skills, or just visiting the vulnerable or lonely. Refusing to accept that the bleak and soulless desire to harness us to the yoke and keep us there is the only way forward.
Small creatives, independent retailers, collective publishing, and more, all exist within your city. Look around your own city, or town, or village. I guarantee you someone, somewhere, is trying to make things better.

We are surrounded by work. By the work. By providing opportunities to replace cold commerce with exchanges of talent, skill, work, and goods. Opportunities to strengthen and repair the connection between people, to highlight those who have slipped into invisibility on our streets, or to agitate the status quo until it realises, we are not going to accept things that no longer serve the people.

Urban Paganism is a calling. Do the work, reap the rewards. That’s the social contract, after all, and if we pay attention to what the city needs, it could be a good deal for all of us.

For more details: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/authors/geraldine-moorkens-byrne

Geraldine Moorkens Byrne is a well-known poet and writer, as well as an educator in Irish Folk Magic Traditions and Ceremony writer; she was a founding editor of the Pagan Poetry Pages. She has facilitated workshops and creative writing groups. Her work has been published in a variety of media from print anthologies to Ezines, including Poems from a Lockdown, and her poem “Where Once Were Warriors “was the title-piece of Asia Geographic Tribes edition. Several poems have been performed as theatre in Ireland, the UK and USA. She was a prizewinner in the Inaugural John Creedon Listowel Writers Festival Competition. Her short story “A Stranger Among Friends,” was a winner in the Cunningham Short Story Competition. She is also the author of a popular series of mystery novels. Her collection of poetry “Dreams of Reality” is available now.
She was the fourth generation of Byrnes to run the famous Charles Byrne Music Shop, in Stephen Street Dublin Ireland. This was a landmark business in the city of Dublin and an integral part of Irish classical and traditional music for 150 years.