[ the other image ]

Abbots of Little Unreason

  • Gallery image
  • Gallery image
  • Gallery image
  • Gallery image
  • Gallery image
  • Gallery image

“Snowy Christmas 2011” at Holland Village, next to our apartment block in Singapore: free balloons and candy-floss, live music, American Christmas carols, a dignitary of the ruling party as honorary guest, and artificial snow (well, foam, actually).

I was fascinated by this loud and garish event; and yet, I was reluctant to write about it. Maybe it was just my own association of Christmas with festive candlelight and the silence of snow – a template rather different from the merry Christmas of the English-speaking world.

Last week, I reread Claude Lévi-Strauss’ classic 1952 piece on Santa Claus. For a couple of days I pondered over the structural analogies between medieval Christmas and Roman Saturnalia, and between party discipline and shopping. Santa Claus is both the heir of and the antithesis to the Abbot of Unreason, Lévi-Strauss suggests.

Trying to find a deeper meaning, perhaps, I approached last winters Snowy Christmas once again. However, the more I looked at the images the more I felt that symbolism and meaning were not what mattered here. Christmas was just a theme. But beneath the surface of symbols, obvious and barely hidden, was the stubborn being of the event, its texture and mechanics. This is what produced the social experience that mattered, and this is what made it so similar to any other community event.

And then, for a brief moment, I thought I really saw them: abbots of little unreason. I wish you a Happy New Year!

Privacy Policy

Plain and simple: I take the principle of minimal data collection serious and try hard not to collect or process any personal data beyond the basics required to serve and maintain the website.

Specifically,

  • We do not use cookies.
  • We do not use third party analytics.
  • There is no contact form that would allow you to enter personal data.
  • We do not use advertising to run this website.

In order to serve this website, your IP address and information about your browser, operating system and screen resolution need to be collected and processed. theotherimage.com is a simple, handcrafted, static website hosted by Netlify. It uses fonts by Adobe Fonts (formerly Typekit). Both Netlify and Adobe automatically collect usage data, either generated by the use of this website or from the service infrastructure itself. This data is used for accounting and analytic purposes as well as for technical maintenance by these two companies. Neither Netlify nor Adobe use cookies to track you. Specifics can be found in their respective privacy policies.

The videos on this website are hosted by Vimeo. Depending on your browser configuration, Vimeo may use cookies and other tracking technologies as stated in their respective privacy policies.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please write to: Martin Saxer, LMU Munich, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oettingenstr. 67, 80538 Munich, Germany.

This privacy policy has been updated on 30 December 2018.