september 06
exmas______________________________________________
No one believes in Christianity but it's June and people are talking about Christmas. Bishops are blessing battleships, pious suburbanites are filling SUVs with £100 loads from WalMart as their kids drop pennies in the charidee box and god fearing patriot neighbours are praying for the safe keeping of men in tanks. No one but the anti-capitalist fringe is blinking much of an eye at the looming grotesquerie that is the annual December pig-out.
The loom starts with the first creepings of present-worry conversation, with the first snowy advertising as it hits the doormat. From there, as it speeds up and grows to surround you, it takes on its fully involving, fully appalling cultural majesty.
But what is this phenomenon? Just as Christianity was dying as a cultural force a century ago, so it was subsumed by consumerism, it's own devouring, self-devouring product. So now there's the inescapable spectacle of a morally dead religious narrative being told in a huge and spectacular way by its consumer manifestation.
Many people see the disconnection between cherry-picked Christian teachings and consumer practice; many more intuitively understand how religious hypocrisy and corporate advertising are, in a mendacious sense, totally alike, complementary.
Confronted by the Christmas edifice, few people will realise there's anything to resist. For those that do, what to say? Don't join in.
It's probably difficult not to give presents or cards to Christmas-travesty-participating family and friends, especially to ignore the present hungry paws of seasonally enwondered kids. Difficult also not to find yourself sat at the table of some semi-detached banquet as the CAFOD cards stare down at you seeping African hunger misery. But absconding from the festivities is the only way out.
If the prospect of familial alienation is too much to take, if the need to keep in with grandma is just too great, try turning to the 21 December solstice (no hocus pocus, just the seasonal start of a new year) or 1 January as alternative card sending opportunities. Or don't.
It's not a Scrooge thing - he came round in the end.
---
* shimmery timbers anti-consumer cartoons and graphics: 157 | 155 | 142 | 141 | 140 | 130 | 105 | 86 | 42 | 38 | 20
