The Pagan Origins of Cyber Monday
Yes! It’s that time of year we all look forward to – Cyber Monday. Overshadowed by its senior partner, Black Friday, it’s all too easy to overlook Cyber Monday as just another cynical corporate attempt to make us to spend money. But in fact, Cyber Monday has fascinating ancient origins that will make you treasure this time of the year even more.
Since time immemorial, Internet-based retailers have stood up on Cyber Monday and showered us in fine deals on products such as streaming subscriptions and wireless headphones. Who doesn’t have fond childhood memories of waking up early on Cyber Monday and rushing to our laptops to see what great savings we can make on SD memory cards?
The origin of this tradition is, of course, the USA. It was first signed into the legislation by Washington, although some version of Cyber Monday since earlier arrivals of colonists. In fact, the first Cyber Monday is thought to have been celebrated some time around 1692. Early Puritan settlers arrived in America, only to discover that all their USB cables were data-transfer only, leaving them with no way to charge their phones over the long, cruel winter. (Remember, this was a long time before the rapid-charge functionality of USB-C).
These settlers were saved by a passing band of Native American traders, who offered them cables and charging ports, even sharing America’s WiFi password so that these settlers could at last send selfies to their anxious relatives back at home. This meeting quickly fell into companionable silence as everyone stared at their screens solidly for the next six hours, catching up with their WhatsApp messages. And today, families across the world celebrate this story by doing the exact same thing around the dinner table as they scan the Internet for fab discounts.
However, this widely accepted version of events fails to acknowledge the far more ancient origins of Cyber Monday. There are striking similarities between the traditions of Cyber Monday and much earlier pagan festivities that make it likely that the modern incarnation of Cyber Monday was simply piggybacking on the cultural heritage of those American settlers.
The Venerable Bede refers to “that wickede heathen festival of Sebel Moon Day, still abroade in the land” as early as 946AD, and it’s clear that he believes this to be a pre-Christian tradition. A “Sebel” or, in its modern spelling, “Sable” Moon was simply an ancient term for a new moon. But what marked out one particular new moon from any other in the pagan calendar? Historian Gavin Menzies argues that the Sable Moon celebrated in this day was no literal moon at all, but a period of the year when everyone’s phone battery finally died. In British prehistory, settlements would have survived off limited agriculture, supplemented by hunting and gathering, and it could often be many weeks between opportunities to charge phones.
Of course, these Celtic tribes still used Nokia 3310s, so this length of time was often quite manageable. But “Sable Moon Day”, falling as the nights drew in and the Winter Solstice beckoned, likely marked the point in the year that the phones would finally die, until they could be charged anew in Spring. While a dark and gloomy time for all, it would be a time when those with phone battery would generously share their remaining screentime with those whose phones were already dead.
As Sable Moon Day mutated into Cyber Monday, and calendars became more rigid, we naturally assigned the festivities to fall consistently on a Monday. But the core of the holiday has remained the same: generosity through the medium of phones, first practised from one tribesperson to another, and now more commonly seen in the truly unmissable offers made available to us by online retailers.
Which version of the Cyber Monday myth is correct? We may never know for sure. But in a way, the magic of Cyber Monday is in the not knowing. Cyber Monday is a living, breathing tradition, which we have every right to shape and remake for our own age.