Witness the uptake of ‘feudal’ protection in a competitive, recessionary marketplace, where Wal-Mart is offering rental space insde a new Chicago store to neighborhood businesses. Apparently tenants already include a dog groomer and a fried chicken outlet, and Wal-Mart is going to be inviting in barbers, manicurists, and other local small businesses.

Regional general manager Rolando Rodriguez told the NY Times: “We want the same resurgence of the community…”.

It’s not all about community of course. Wal-Mart is seeking counter-PR to endemic criticism (and evidence) that their megastores kill mom-and-pop shops on which many local jobs and services depend, and is hoping the gambit will revive its six-year stalled bid for the city’s approval of proposed Chicago stores.

Anyway, as one observer, Marissa Johnson, said of the new arrangement: “It’s like sharecropping.”

Yes, this is the return of a feudal model. The lord owns the land and the small guy works his patch, offering a regular tribute. And small guys will jump at it because — in the absence of fundamental challenge to an iniquitous system — having the protection of a lord is better than not having it.

Another need that’s not going away, merely being reinterpreted (ironically back to pre-feudal organization) is our need to mark the darkest night of the year with ritual. Yule is the pagan winter solstice rite centered on a December 21 dusk-to-dawn vigil. It was absorbed into Christmas and not widely practiced for centuries. But now, as reported in the big UK media Christmas pregame show, there’s been a great surge in Yule festivities and attendance. By how much depends on who is quoted but nobody is denying the trend — which more or less mirrors the decline in formal Christian Christmas (secular, gift-giving, tree decorating Christmas is alive and well.)

The need is a constant. The rituals will change, often mining the past.

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