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Believe Ding Dong...

It's been a while since I've had a good, old-fashioned rant on here... And despite having more things on my to-do list than I am physically capable of completing in the allocated time (how on earth I would have coped if various other events had not been cancelled or scaled back due to covid I do not know), the experience of 1 hour shopping is enough to prompt this... 
It's not really a rant... but it is not well-digested enough to call it a reflection, and not even I can shape it into something I would claim as "poetry."
Its about Christmas jumpers, an item of clothing I have never possessed, but I have been asked to don one for something later in the week. At first I thought I would order a "Keep Calm its Only Advent" hoodie from an online supplier, but thanks to the Northern Ireland protocol (or rather the company's unwillingness to do the extra paperwork involved in the Northern Ireland Protocol - "Brexit - the Gift that keeps on giving") they won't ship to my address. So I then thought I would go and buy one that I could wear not only in the run-up to this celebration of conspicuous consumption, but throughout the winter, and for a few more years to come (I have jumpers that are older than my children!) using the remains of my "Shop Local" card.  
But one place I wasn't going near was M&S, as the style of jumper there that I was looking for would have cost me more than I David "Ebenezer" Campton was prepared to pay. They do have a more explicitly "Christmas" line around the pricepoint I ultimately spent in a shop that used to have the label of St. Bernard in contrast to M&S's St. Michael. Although I was slightly bemused subsequently to learn that in this increasingly secularised world St. Bernard hasn't been a thing since 2013, and St. Michael disappeared in the early 2000s... Shows how much I shop! Apparently St. Michael is making a comeback as a brand "for young people" which puzzles me greatly... But then branding and marketing and all that stuff is a complete mystery to me...
Which brings back to that slightly lower priced seasonal range at M&S... It has received a perhaps unexpected viral-marketing plug from thousands of my female clerical colleagues wearing the jumper emblazoned with the word "Believe" on it... There has been no equivalent of massed clergymen wearing the male equivalent as it doesn't say "Believe" but "Ding Dong", and for those old enough to make the connection, has unfortunate resonances of Leslie Phillips which in the post #MeToo era male clerics would do well to eschew.
But I am in two minds about this "Believe" thing... 
If it gets people talking about belief and faith at all then that's good...
As is giving women ministers a prominent place in the public eye... Especially in a season, where, as a friend pointed out on social media this morning, the men are either silenced (Zechariah) or silent (Joseph) while their wives are the ones who first express a sense of belief/faith...
However... to what is this exhortation to "Believe" referring?
Belief in Santa Claus that keeps the beancounters going "Ho! Ho! Ho!"?
Belief in our political masters despite the evidence of our own eyes?
Belief in human endurance and ingenuity to see us through this global catastrophe, despite the best efforts of those referred to above?
Belief in God as defined in some more formal religious creed, even if the finest theologians will debate the meaning of and continuing validity of the various historical formulations?
Belief in God in the more relational sense of trust in a personal, if undefined, deity?
Belief in belief either as a magic concept that will deliver our hopes and dreams to us, or as a religious shibboleth, getting us into the club and the after-show party?

What do we really believe in? 

Selah
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