A Happy Christmas - Village Magazine

60 December-January 2014

A Happy

Christmas

CULTURE CHRISTMAS

December-January 2014 61

diminishing dynamism in this society,

his birthday is a worshipped commer-

cial commonplace.

At its best Christmas is a celebration

of all that is good about the human expe-

rience including family and community,

joy, sociability, generosity, forgiveness,

and desire for peace between warring

parties. It is a time of hope and new

beginnings. In spite of this Christmas is

celebrated in a contradictory manner.

Ask the innocents: the hundreds of

millions of turkeys, chickens and pigs

that will be unwitting centrepieces of the

traditional Christmas dinner around the

world. It is estimated that 22 million tur-

keys in the United States, 10 million in

the UK and 700,000 in the Republic of

Ireland will take one for the human team

this yule.

And it is not a happy time for industri-

ally planted conifers.

Christmas elevates consumption of all

kinds with a corresponding increase in

toxic waste, greenhouse gasses, loss of

biodiversity and the suﬀering of those

in low-wage economies.

If we took account of the negative

impact of Christmas on the biosphere

we would no more celebrate it than we

would a riot in which vital amenities

were torched.

Christmas particularly conduces to

the exchange of ephemeral dross: a plas-

tic-destined-for-landﬁll squandermania

– Terry-the-Swearing-Turtle in your

stocking. If there were not an increase

in unthinking consumption, shopkeep-

ers, economists and politicians would

consider it a bad Christmas.

Christmas, since the time of Charles

Dickens, has been mass make-believe

sustained by the retail, advertisement

and entertainment sectors (which George

Monbiot calls “the global bullshit indus-

tries”), rooted in an unspoken agreement

between producers and consumers to

turn a blind eye to consequences and

contradictions.

As Eric Fromm, who spent his aca-

demic life analysing and criticising the

modern mind, wrote in ‘To Have Or

To Be?’ (1976): “most people are half-

awake, half-dreaming, and unaware

that most of what they hold to be true and

self-evident is illusion produced by the

suggestive inﬂuence of the social world

in which they live”.

As in a grotesques fable, Christmas is

a prescribed happy time in which bon-

homie and wellbeing can only be realised

through material consumption, gluttony

ATRICK Kavanagh wrote ambiva-

lently of Christmas in his distinctly

anti-modern poem ‘Advent’: “We

have tested and tasted too much, lover/

Through a chink too wide there comes

in no wonder. But here in the Advent-

darkened room /Where the dry black

bread and the sugarless tea /Of penance

will charm back the luxury/ Of a child’s

soul, we’ll return to Doom /The knowl-

edge we stole but could not use”.

Christmas marks the birth of Jesus,

but the strengths of the icons in con-

temporary Ireland are an extraordinary

contrast; the man himself a force of

and glitter, excess and inoculating ine-

briation, contrived festive partying, and

tantrums – childish and adult. Banal but

cheery Christmas-themed television,

schlocky ads for mobile phones and

department stores, forced attendance

at corny reprises of ‘A Christmas Carol’,

and threadbare pantos. This all speaks

of the failure of our education system,

religious bodies and civic culture to nur-

ture critical, creative and imaginative

thinking that allows for the collective

seasonal desire for renewal, the expres-

sion of appreciation and goodwill to be

celebrated in ways that are wholesome,

constructive and elevating.

Christmas encapsulates our society’s

dominant values and cultural norms.

It enfranchises the herd instinct - the

desire, not to be thought an ‘odd-ball’,

or Scrooge. The desire to feel part of the

great social mass is achieved at the sac-

riﬁce of ‘knowing’ in Eric Fromm’s use of

the term, which is “to penetrate through

the surface, in order to arrive at the roots,

and hence the causes ... to ‘see’ reality in

its nakedness”. Compassion too must be

selectively suppressed to avert isolation

from what is considered normal.

While austerity has its place in politi-

cal circles, frugality is certainly not cool.

At 1965 per head, according to PWC,

Ireland spends twice what even the US

throws at Christmas morning. To little

advantage.

George Monbiot has written: “Bake

them a cake, write them a poem, give

them a kiss, tell them a joke, but for

god’s sake stop trashing the planet to tell

someone you care. All it shows is that you

don’t”. It is up to progressive individuals

to break the mindless mould and cele-

brate yuletide consumer minimalism.

Life-aﬃrming ideas can take root

in the collective mind. It is not just

Humbug. As Owen Jones wrote recently

in the Guardian, “if we can build a society

that encourages greed and sentiments

which justify inequality, then we can

also build a society nurturing solidar-

ity, compassion and equality”. Science

casts some credibility on this theory on

the premise that if the selﬁsh gene had

prevailed during the course of our evolu-

tion humankind would be extinct.

It’s truly time to “see reality in its

nakedness”. Kavanagh’s poem ﬁnishes

with hope not from Christmas but from

its absence. Time to discard the knowl-

edge we never use, to cherish wonder.

The hope is in the poem’s ﬁnal line that

“Christ comes with a January ower”. •

Impose some frugality

and share some

emotion.

By Laurence Speight

We have tested

and tasted too

much, lover/

Through a

chink too wide

there comes in

no wonder. But

here in the

Advent-

darkened

room /Where

the dry black

bread and the

sugarless tea /

Of penance

will charm

back the

luxury/ Of a

child’s soul,

we’ll return

to Doom /The

knowledge we

stole but could

not use

“