Let’s talk about signaling and countersignaling.

Signaling is behavior that shows your attachment to some group or cause or other, or that shows how much status you have.   The best signals are fairly visible and maybe have some cost associated with them (like Mormons not drinking, for instance).  Practically everything human includes at least a little bit of signaling.

Some people in some situations don’t have to signal, because their commitment and their reputation is secure enough already.  Imagine a serious war going on, and some guy walks up to you on the street. “Will you join the army?” he says, and he hands you a clipboard with a sheet of notebook paper on it. He’s scrawled LIST OF RECRUITS across the top. “Sign here,” he says.   If you sign, you sign to humor the guy. A real recruiter would have the signals of uniform, an army haircut and military bearing, a chiseled physique, and official pamphlets and forms. In fact, in the old days he would have come into town marching with other soldiers behind him, with a military drum and maybe a military band. All signals.   On the other hand—lets be fanciful here—if a trusted friend told you that George Washington had risen from his sleep to rescue his country in his hour of need and was recruiting a new army from the bed of a pickup in the Wal-Mart parking lot, you might at least go check it out. And if the man there had the aura, the voice, the face, the command presence, you might be willing to sign a clipboard with a sheet of notebook paper on it, on which was scrawled LIST OF RECRUITS.   Some people don’t need to signal.

Counter-signaling is behavior that sends the message that you don’t need to signal. Athletes who get to the end zone sometimes “act like they’ve been there before.” Instead of signaling that they’ve just pulled off a coup of athletic excellence, they counter-signal that coups of athletic excellence are pretty routine for them. Nouveau riche and arrivistes wear clothes and drive cars that make it very clear to all that they’re rich. The established rich can sometimes look down on them for it. Old money’s relative lack of display countersignals that they are secure in their status on the top of the world.

Here’s another example. Some kid gets beat up for wearing an American flag T-shirt on Cinco de Mayo. Next day, all the Mexican kids wear their Mexican flag tees and all the Anglo/core American kids wear their American flag tees, and all the kids who want to keep their heads down wear something plain. That’s all signaling. But then suppose that one of the Mexican kid’s mom is a prominent activist for La Raza, brown-skinned with Indio cheekbones, and she shows up at the school wearing an American flag shirt. Or suppose one of the American kid’s dad is a white cowboy with a thick old mustache, but he drops off his kid at school wearing a Mexican flag tee. Those are countersignaling. They aren’t signaling that they’re switching teams. What team they are on is already overdetermined. They are countersignaling an appeal for peace and understanding.

With that in mind, let’s look at the Christmas story. There are two major signs that bookend the 12 days of Christmas.

There is the sign to the shepherds.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

-Luke 2:12.

There is the sign to the wise men:

the star in the east.

The star in the east is a signal. It’s an unmatcheable signal of status, in fact. Mike Fink would approve.

The birth in the manger is a counter-signal.