By Andrusha Wickermaratne
“Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat. Please put a penny in the old man’s hat………” (traditional) Yes it’s the time of year for all good Christians to fatten the goose, get fatter themselves and spend pennies (I mean in shops). Thousands of them, millions of them. Whether some pennies go to a deserving old man, woman or child is another matter.
Shops, airports and various public spaces are all decked out with Christmas trees and other seasonal paraphernalia. Department stores are exhorting people to spend money with increasing desperation. And it is desperation at that, as this year is predicted to be a very low spending Christmas. Nevertheless, this is the time when we really consume.
For millions of Christians in Britain, Christmas is a time of profound spiritual experience signifying the birth of Jesus, and a time of magic and excitement for children. However, shorn of its spiritual dimension for the vast majority of people (once a year visits to church with a hangover doesn’t count), it is a time when we pay homage to our favourite God – Consumerism. And who is this round jolly man in a red and white coat being pulled by reindeers? Why it’s the Cocoa Cola Santa Claus.
Whilst a quick internet search of Santa Claus reveals a man by the name of Nicholas; a shy Christian leader from Myra (in modern day Turkey) in the 4th Century AD, who wanted to give money to poor people without them knowing about it, the present day incarnation is an invention of a 1938 Cocoa Cola advertisement. What better way to show what Christmas is really all about than to align the apparently genuinely kind act of a Christian leader with the profits of the world’s largest soft drinks company. The very act of giving as a form of human behaviour with intrinsic, selfless and unconditional merit is not enough. It has to be sponsored by coke without which Christmas is simply not the Real Thing.
So lets go and spend. Gordon Brown has been strutting his stuff over the last 10 years as the most successful Chancellor of the Exchequer in recent political times; guardian of the nation’s economy. An economy which has produced year upon year growth; growth fuelled, in large part, by consuming way more than we need for our relative well being. These then are the conduits of happiness and success; economic growth and the acquisition of material goods.
The flipside to spending for a lot of people, is increasing debt. This, of course, is nothing new. It is simply heightened at Christmas. So, for many households, the weeks and months leading up to the Big Day sees an exponential (not to say catastrophic) increase in debt, which then takes the rest of the year to repay, if at all. There are however murmurings that this year might be slightly different.
In the wake of the Northern Rock fiasco, banks are less inclined to give away unsecured loans and overdrafts, which will impact on people’s ability to buy presents they cannot really afford, and which will, in any event, most probably be discarded come next Christmas. This is an important point. For it is perfectly possible for many people to enjoy a Christmas which is affordable. It’s just that we feel compelled to spend way more than we can afford to.
So with the possible slow down in ‘easy’ credit, the bad practices of Northern Rock might have done us all a favour and even saved some of the integrity of Christmas by stopping us from grossly over indulging. We might even consider that the simple act of giving, as the Christian Nicholas of Myra did all those years ago, and as an inn keeper in Bethlehem did, by providing shelter for a pregnant woman to have her baby, over two thousand years ago, might contribute more to human happiness than spending vast quantities of money we haven’t really got.
Happy Christmas.
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