It’s a time of the year when we think about celebrations. Midwinter is an important time for several different religious reasons, but nowadays the main focus is on family and social events. To some extent, the spiritual roots of the festival as a time when new beginnings are stirring in the darkness of the year – at least, for those of us living in the northern hemisphere – have been overlaid with a focus on much more immediate pleasures. We meet as families, we eat and drink, we play games. In many workplaces the office party provides an arena in which normal hierarchies can be set aside for a while.

My guess is that even at times when religious observance was more common than now, these more visceral elements were still an important part of the winter festival. Human beings may be rational animals (the saying goes back to Aristotle, some 350 years BC) but we are also playing animals, and fun-loving animals. Go back through the sacred calendars of the world’s religions, and you will find plenty of opportunities to celebrate as well as be solemn. Hardship and deprivation hardly ever erase the human desire to make meaning by way of groupish events.

Of course, the very same things which make an event good for one person might be difficult or painful for another. The celebrations that a group of people chooses can serve to reinforce difference, rather than undo such barriers. We may be good at finding causes to celebrate, but we’re also good at finding ways to include and exclude others from our celebrations. It would be nice to think that opportunities for inclusion might outweigh exclusion as we move forwards.

I see the act of celebration as one of the great unifying threads holding humanity together, whether you look back into the remote past or forward into the distant future. Whichever of these I am writing about, there will always be group events! However challenging the times, however alien the setting, it’s hard to imagine a society which has no provision for communal events.