Received Wisdom

Here comes Christmas, bounding over the hilltops of the calendar weekends like an overexcited puppy. It’s almost here, and ready to give you a big, wet lick in the face.

Christmas, that time nominally devoted to giving, is really all about receiving. Receiving presents? Well, okay... sure, there are presents.. but those presents kind of lost their significance back when you realised that the best presents from now on were going to come from Uncle Amazon, and can be received all year round.

I’m talking more about the other things. Like receiving two bouts of flu perfectly timed to interfere first with your holiday and then with your return to work. Receiving the slap in the face that you skilfully dodged by ignoring you birthday, when you realise that 5 years have passed since 5 years ago.

But above all receiving wisdom, and reinforcing those Received Wisdoms that you carry around throughout the year.

Unlike the type of knowledge which is built over time, with careful careful consideration and continual readjustment, Received Wisdom comes in easy-to-digest, pre-thought-out packaging. It promises the bearer an instant air of well-informed assurance which is inherently more appealing than the vague uncertainties that make more accurate facts.

Like last Christmas for instance.

We’re all sat around the dinner table and cousin Alice, who turned 9 in October, looks suspiciously at her alcohol-free mulled wine.

“Can I have a Coke instead, Auntie?” she says to my mother.

“Alice”, warns her father, Uncle Gordon.

“um please?” adds Alice quickly.

“Try your mulled wine.” he says. “Coke’s not very christmassy, and you have it all the time.”

He hastens to add, “well, only on special occasions”, for fear that we might think him a bad parent who fills his children with soft drinks.

“No it’s fine.” says my mother, “she can have a Coke.”

“You know,” says my father, leaning back and positioning himself for a story. “Santa Claus was created by Coca Cola.”

The four children’s eyes widen, the older one suddenly excited that The Secret might at last be coming out into the open.

“Yes.” says dad. “It’s true. Of course Santa Claus has been around for a lot longer than Coca Cola.”

For the benefit of the younger children he adds “Santa’s always been there... living in the North Pole. But before the 1950s Santa Claus wore green and he was called St Nicolas. You see after the war there was a big depression and people didn’t want to drink Coca Cola, particularly in Europe.”

He looks pointedly at my Aunt, who is half American, as if to say “we’re healthy in Europe.”

“And then of course,” he continues, serving himself another helping of sugar-loaded sticky pudding, “Coca Cola needed some way to boost sales, so the marketing guys and artist called... erm Sunbloom somebody.. came up with the clever idea that they should make Santa wear red and white, like the Coca Cola logo you see.”

He points at the bottle of Coke that my mum has brought through from the kitchen.

“Then, of course, they made a big thing of Santa giving presents to take peoples’ minds off the depression.”

He shovels a spoonful of pudding into his mouth.

“It’s all marketing.” he says, and we all nod wisely.

“It’s true” says mum, “He wore green before Coca Cola.”

And she pours a glass for Alice, and the Received Wisdom is passed down another generation.

Now, I’m not going to go into the details (although I highly recommend the write-up on Snopes) but suffice to say that Coca Cola did not clothe Santa Claus. Santa had already been “standardised” as a fat man wearing red with white whiskers and a sack full of toys for some time before their seminal advertising campaign (which incidentally was run in 1931, a full 8 years before the war even started) and drawings depicting him exactly as we know him now can be found at least as far back as 1881.

But Received Wisdom is like that. It’s less the like the received gift of an unwanted jumper (or Uncle Gordon’s racist views of Polish plumbers) which can be actively rejected with a mental note never to wear them. It’s more like the endless offerings of mince pies and marzipan - although you may try to turn a few of them down, you still leave Christmas a full 2 inches wider than when you arrived, and find yourself quoting with certainty the “fact” that turkey contains a chemical which sends people to sleep.

In essence, such “facts” are usually little more than opinion as designed by Chinese whispers, and as such are a cultural and social necessity. Opinions are like the flu - don’t let on that you’re the only person without one, or everybody will come and take turns to sneeze on you.

Unfortunately, there’s no vaccination against spurious Received Wisdom but its effect can be reduced with regular mental exercise and by paying a little bit of healthy attention to how you consume such information.

Receiving wisdom with the phrase “could be” or “hmm.. maybe.” is generally a better response than “wow that’s amazing. I didn’t know that.”, not because it will affect the speaker (after all, their brain is not your concern) but because it will remind you that the information you are putting into your memory is not gospel.

If you are worried about causing offence a simple “I’ve not heard that before” is also a good option. In the cases that you have heard it before, then saying exactly that (i.e. “Hmm. Yes. I’ve heard that”) is better than replying “Yes it’s true.”

After all, repeatedly woven lies are still lies. It’s just the more times they’re woven, the harder it is to unpick them later on.