Eric Blair who became famous as George Orwell wrote a single article under a different pen name John Freeman. The artcile is sort of about Chrismass and titled “Can Socialists be Happy?” Here is the key paragraph for me:
“It would seem that human beings are not able to describe, nor perhaps to imagine, happiness except in terms of contrast. That is why the conception of Heaven or Utopia varies from age to age. In pre-industrial society Heaven was described as a place of endless rest, and as being paved with gold, because the experience of the average human being was overwork and poverty. The houris of the Moslem Paradise reflected a polygamous society where most of the women disappeared into the harems of the rich. But these pictures of “eternal bliss” always failed because as soon as the bliss became eternal (eternity being thought of as endless time), the contrast ceased to operate. Some of the conventions which have become embedded in our literature first arose from physical conditions which have now ceased to exist. The cult of spring is an example. In the Middle Ages spring did not primarily mean swallows and wild flowers. It meant green vegetables, milk and fresh meat after several months of living on salt pork in smoky windowless huts. The spring songs were gay … because there was something to be gay about. The winter was over, that was the great thing. Christmas itself, a pre-Christian festival, probably started because there had to be an occasional outburst of overeating and drinking to make a break in the unbearable northern winter.”
It’s just happens that people are not very good with positive definitions. People are unsure of who they are but rather certain who they are not. I think this hard-wired as trial and error is the only mode of knowledge, so we are constantly involved in selective elimination. And no one, not even Lenin would admit how rooted they are in the negation.
The rest of the article is confused and unstructured. Although the idea of Socialism as brotherhood is interesting. I also believe Orwell is saying that the incomplete English Christmas is the source of the delight in the holiday and this incomplete happy picture is what Lenin couldn’t grasp.
Further reading: