Well it’s here! Christmas,
excellent, it’s time to remove our hats of hatred and malice, paint on a smile
and act like friends. Simon, you’re a prick most the time, but for today I love
you! So what is there to complain about at Christmas; that happy, happy time?
Well to be frank. Quite a lot.
To begin with it’s a complete
mess of corporate gimmicks and fake gestures. You may as well wrap a receipt
stating all the money that’s been fed into the dirty hands of some capitalist
pig in a Porsche somewhere. Yes I know it’s nice that you friend got that new
foot spa they really wanted, and that their bunions have never felt so good.
But is it really worth giving moneybags a new yacht? Yes his old one got a bit
wet along with the rest of America’s east coast, but really, did he ever need
it in the first place? Poor little Timmy is still left limping in the corner.
OH HUMBUG!
“Daddy drives a Porsche!”
I mean really! This holiday
that is supposed to celebrate kindness and giving is being used in an abhorred attempt to turn a quick
profit. We have Snowmen preaching the Power
of Love –a heart-warming advert when taken in its own right – being used to
lure the unsuspecting public into John Lewis, a shop in which most of us would
never usually step foot. The truth is, John Lewis isn't a shop of free-spirited, loving snow men. No. It's a shop of monotonous boredom, Morton Brown and the elderly. But it’s okay, it’s Christmas! It’s time to splash out
a little isn't it? It just seems however, that Christmas has lost its way. If Nietzsche was around
today, it wouldn't take too long for him to stand up and declare,
“Santa is dead, and we've killed him.” Because let’s be
honest, what is Santa now but Capitalism’s biggest mascot, they've even given
him a lovely new outfit.
“Such a sell-out, what happened to you Santa?”
Still, even with this I can still see the positives of Christmas! It promotes kindness and giving, as well as
giving us a much welcomed holiday from work. It also gives the queen something
to do with her time and if we’re perfectly honest, she needs it. On top of
this, when else in the year is the notion of “goodwill to all” so strongly
promoted as at Christmas? It isn’t! But see here’s one of the major gripes I
have with Christmas. It’s a network of monstrous contradictions.
Firstly, something that is
forgotten by many is this; Christmas is supposedly a Christian holiday. Now,
who here celebrating Christmas is actually of the Christian faith? Go on, raise
your hands. Don’t be shy.
What a result. Well thank you
Susan, age thirty six from Lancaster. Now raise your hand if you celebrate Christmas
and you’re not actually a practising Christian.
Okay. Well thanks very
much all of you. Now raise your hand if you’re not allowed in on this
celebration because you’re not a Christian, and instead follow a different faith.
Wow! Thanks all you other people. Sorry you can’t join in on
our fun, but we’re busy leeching off some other people’s beliefs and you, well
you believe in something else so you obviously can’t join in! You see, this is
my problem. The vast majority of people celebrating Christmas aren't actually
Christians, but because they still decide to base their celebrations of
kindness and goodwill on this - a Christian holiday - they instantly push out a
large sum of the population! It seems quite a glaring injustice? Should there
not be two entities, the Christian, religious holiday and a more inclusive
national holiday? Would this not be fairer in a multicultural nation in which
Christmas is promoted as the norm? Currently those who don’t celebrate Christmas
are instantly made to appear different, secluded and overlooked. Goodwill to
all but you.
It is for this reason I feel
it’s time Christmas sought to practice what it preaches. This could be a
beautiful time of coming together for the entirety of society. Instead it works
only in forcing our cultural barriers more firmly in place.
Santa it would appear is BNP; coca cola's great new variety, Nazi Zero.
So other than the Capitalism
and its possible racial injustices, is there anything else wrong with
Christmas? Well yes of course, although nothing quite so drastic. One such
thing being the music. Now I'm not saying I hate all Christmas music! I just
don’t think there’s enough of it. Instead we get repeats of the same songs over
and over. I love Fairytale of New York and the first time I hear it each year I'm overjoyed; Christmas for me, has begun! But by my seventy third listen oh
my god, I want to pull Shane MacGowan’s few remaining teeth out one by one.
Seriously I love the song, but somebody write something new about bickering
families at Christmas because this one’s being played to death. But this is one
of the lesser evils of Christmas music. Because in the search for Christmas
hits the producers dug too deep and they've unearthed a darkness within…
FUCKING BONO!
NO! THERE WILL NEVER, EVER IN
YOUR LIFETIME BE SNOW IN AFRICA! WHAT THE FUCK! BONO, PERHAPS IF YOU TOOK OFF
THE STUPID SHADES YOU’D SEE THAT AFRICA, IT’S QUITE A HOT PLACE! I LIKE THAT
YOU WANT TO HELP SAVE THE WORLD BUT COULD YOU PLEASE START BY SAVING YOUR
STUPID, SENSELESS, ASININE LYRICS. OR AT THE VERY LEAST, GET IN A CAR WITH
NICHOLAS CAGE AND DRIVE OFF A FUCKING CLIFF… ‘CAUSE YOU’RE THE DEVIL AND THE
WORLD HATES YOU!
“Smug Prick…”
Oh my, sorry about that, I
believe that I saw red for a moment then. Of course I don’t want Bono to
actually die. That would be a terrible, terrible thing to happen; so many
manufacturers of tinted shades would lose their jobs. The entire market would
crash. As for Nicholas Cage… Without him who would there be left for me to
hate? I'm sure he’s a lovely man really. He just can’t act and has less
charisma than Gordon Brown’s face. Ouch.
So back to Christmas. There
are also those Christmas covers albums. These I do hate. I mean really. It’s
almost as if artists don’t retire, but instead die and go to some twisted
purgatory in which they’re only able to return to earth for a couple of months
a year in which they must make numerous repeats of outdated Christmas songs,
pose for tacky album covers and appear on Jonathan Ross. Why? Can’t they just
do what normal people do and go live in a home? It’s as if they’re unable to
let go of the limelight and it’s only in the tackiness of Christmas through
which they’re allowed a platform. Really, there have been enough of these now.
STOP IT! Yes Cliff, I'm talking to you! No, put down the microphone, buy some
Werther’s Original, and go enjoy the reruns of One Foot in the Grave on Gold.
Good boy.
So I guess that’s about it. I
mean I could go on! I haven’t even brought up the TV Christmas special –
*cough* The Royle Family *cough* - or the over-hyped battle for Christmas number
one. There is just one more thing I wish to discuss. It’s the whole Christmas
spirit. I mean, it’s a wonderful thing! Everyone is kind, giving and put others before themselves. Why is it then that this only happens at Christmas? It’s almost
as if people use up all their cheer in December, as a means of validating them acting miserable for the rest of the year! It seems a crying shame that once the New
Year’s over all that Christmas spirit’s gone.
Is the Christmas message not
one we should live by all year long? Or is it just a one day deal? I mean on
Christmas day 1914 over one hundred thousand British and German troops put down
their guns in an attempt to celebrate and take in the Christmas cheer. It
showed how inherently, they were all capable of doing so and were capable of
putting their differences aside. When one looks back of at this, they can’t
help but to be humbled by the outstanding power of Christmas. It’s only when we
then look to the other 364 days of the year that we think to ourselves, what
are we playing at?
What is it that went wrong, in
order to make kindness a one day thing?
Shaun Beale.
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