So, the tide of red, gold and green twaddle is upon us again. It's been a very busy year here, but even so it only seems a few weeks ago that I was stripping the old baubles from last years tree - now brown, needle denuded and waiting to become kindling. The air of festive desperation appears more marked than ever this year, and, with added Black Friday mania, the whole lead up to that one day of infant-worship feels terrifying and sickening - to me anyway.
Do not get me inaccurate, I love Christmas, or at least certain aspects of it: making mince pies, hauling out the ancient and much loved decorations, adding green stuff to the home; carols from Liverpool Cathedral, and the opening of presents, et al. It's the shopping mania I hate; the encouragement of supermarkets to buy absolute crap, truckloads of chocolate, force-fed duck products, cheeky Santa underwear, special yuletide bedlinen and china; meaningless, soulless, worthless, junk.
On entering our biggest supermarket a couple of days ago, I observed the towering cathedral of chocolate boxes, BlackFriday/Xmas promoted Barbi's/Harry Potter/Starwars merch and felt overwhelmingly anxious about the state of the planet, especially our wealthy sections of it. After buying a couple of unavailable-elsewhere essential items I slipped out again and went off to Emmaus to buy a few old canvasses to paint on. Afore-mentioned shop has a great department of second hand red, gold and green festive accessories, complete with nativity sets, hand crafted pallet wood Christmas trees and boxes of baubles - fill a bag for 20 cents. My Scroogeness calmed down, and a small warm feeling of Christmas prep stated to roam about in my stubborn mind. We shall be buying second hand from Vinted, making a festive table from charity shop accessories, and spending time making celebratory food near and on the day.
And I shall visit one or more churches to perhaps light a candle and think about what all this consumerism madness month is really about, whatever I believe or don't.
No comments:
Post a Comment