Kringleism: Dissemination and maintenance of a pervasive, complex cultural myth structure
During the past month, people across the western world have banded together to build and sustain a powerful mythical structure. If you could peer down on humanity and see highlighted, like you had infrared glasses, markers of the beliefs that connect us, that are intangible yet exist strongly in our communications and ideas, this time of year you would note a glowing red haze of lore maintained by a sea of good will and snowy pile of white lies. Since I too am a participant in the proliferation of this myth and would be crushed if a young believer who stumbled across this article (despite the opaque title) bit into the Christmas cookie of knowledge because of me, I’ll veil my language: Let’s say I’m speaking of Kringleism.
Kringleism’s structure is constructed of an elaborate, far-reaching, yet shockingly fragile apparatus, because it is built just of words and beliefs. One poorly hidden letter, one stray comment, and all could come crashing down.
Indeed, there can be no slip-ups. Adults, collectively, build Kringleism with incredible elaborateness and downright cunning. Architects, drug dealers, teachers, embezzlers, clerks — adults with all types of belief systems — including that most powerful one, contraryism — work together to avoid disrupting the myth. People you meet on the street have heard sleigh bells. Strangers talk of reindeer prints. Anonymoids describe a pleasant aroma of pipe. They all work together in an unspoken adult pact not to spoil Kringleism.
The media is in on it (and has been for years). When not overtly supporting Kringleism, movies tip-toe around the subject. You have to be watching A Christmas Story with the cold eye of a critic to realize what the dad means when he says on Christmas Eve after the kids go to bed, “Let’s get ‘em.” In Christmas Vacation, the bumbling dad vows that presents will be bought (I’m introducing passive voice here on purpose, co-conspirators) for an unfortunate niece, but the topic is dealt with indirectly. Miracle on 34th Street brushes with reality, until we see that cane at the end.
I wondered if that real engine of truth and righteousness, the Web, could be a mounting threat to Kringleism, since our digital natives are only a keystroke away from all truths, but the opposite seems to be happening. For instance, children can now track the grand elf’s journey via the Website of NORAD (and high-achieving parents can throw in some geography lessons).
At some point each child will strive to see through the red haze, usually around nine or ten but a bit earlier for cynics, budding private investigators, or womb-formed pragmatists and somewhat later for the dreamers and idealists. Some day they all will face the inherent flaws in the Kringleistic superstructure, knowing something is amiss. (I myself stubbornly clung to Kringleism, only facing the truth when I found a long-forgotten letter. I was crushed. I may have been 18.)
But as the myth dissipates, kids are willing partners in sustaining it. While they suspect something doesn’t fit, they still act with both an amazing group will and an astonishing individual self-control not to raise the wrong topic, not to ask the question that might bring it all tumbling down. Kringleism lies in the unsaid. Friends tell of children who haven’t mentioned the sacred name in years, as if uttering it would invite dreaded parental honesty. Even when faced with that rotten kid who tries to ruin it all by bursting Kringleism open with the shocking revelation, seen first hand, no doubt, of parental involvement, even then, faced with the words of the meanest kid in the third grade, Kringleism will still linger between children for years.
Of course, some of this willful silence is just street smarts: All things being equal, why challenge Kringleism if it means those presents might disappear too?
Parents will eventually confront the Kringleistic mythos with their children — but never with anyone else’s! — often in the form of a convoluted, stammering speech/performance about how belief itself creates the reality. It’s a strangely comforting idea even as we utter it.
Why do we do all this? Oh, it’s so much fun. It’s so enjoyable to see kids under the influence of Kringleism. And, really, we might not be flying around in a railed winter vehicle, but if the magic is the creation, dissemination, and sustaining of this elaborate myth, then we’re not just play-acting. We, working together, are the transmission of that good will.
The motivation of so many different people to maintain Kringleism shows that despite our clannishness and suspicions that our children can engender a tremendous amount of collective good will. Some of us will never mark the moment when our children challenge Kringleism. One day it will have disappeared, we’ll realize. Others will face an overt question about Kringleism. Some will see this as the opportunity for a reality lesson, but many others will try to articulate that the concept is as real as anything we know, a powerful idea hanging between people in the ether (a la that old affirmation to Virginia), and we’ll explain that that is what supports and sustains Kringleism. We won’t be lying, and we will see that because when they know the truth, these children will believe our explanation so fully that they too will do their part in years to come to build Kringleism.
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At 43 I still ‘hear the bell’. Is that a problem? Why can’t Kringleism continue into adulthood? Yes, as a child the red-suited, rather overweight, jolly seligh driving gentleman arrived at my house every December 25th. Amazingly he gained entrance to my home [that didn’t have a fireplace], ate the cookies left on a plate, and drank the pint of beer [Irish here]. In return he left my family colorfully wrapped boxes filled with dream items.
Then reality hits. But if you look at it closely, couldn’t the conspiracy surrounding Kringleism be the actual gift? For two months out of the year our society celebrates optimism and good will. We wish strangers on the street a Merry Christmas. We actually enjoy the sense of wonder around us and happily reflect on our time spent being ‘out of the loop’ and high on Kringleism.
So, even though the elf may be out of the bag for us…we are still in awe and somewhat skeptical. Who actually brings the ‘most happiest time of the year’?
You hear that? Granted, it’s the light rail train, but it’s a bell!
The greatest article title in the history of mankind. I have spoken.
I don’t think it’s a mistake that Kringleism is linked to another complex cultural myth structure called Christianity.
Very nice, and bittersweet. I am, and always have been, a big fan of Kringleism. However, now that I live in a home where it is being exposed I wonder how the future holidays will go down. I’m sure it will mean some extra Kringlely effort on my part, but it will be worth every bit. It’s cliche’ but it really is the best time of the year. If I can preserve that for my kids, even as they openly admit seeing the holes in it, then I will be happy to do it. Bring it on.
Do not go gentle into that Kringle-less night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of Christmas;
Rage, rage against the dying of the Kringle.
Amen, brother!
Some of our best family memories concern the fairy who should have been a dentist. In our house, she had a name (“Fliterra”), and she wrote notes on a special kind of onionskin paper and with an unusual blocky handwriting. As time went on, she developed a backstory — classmates she had in fairy school, etc. Talk about elaborate! I had to hope that teeth only fell out on days when I had plenty of time to be crafty and creative after bedtime.
The revelation of her lack of formal existence was also hilarious.
Me: “Do you remember ‘Fliterra’? Well, she was me!”
Her: “I _knew_ it! (pause) Wait…but how were you able to fly into our room?”
Bravo, my friend.
To quote the Grinch…
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store. “Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!”