In just two weeks all of this will be over. The weather will get even colder but spring will be not too far away.
I am sure that in the dim and distant past, the christmas festival was a welcome treat, eagerly anticipated, and in its execution, short and sweet, but like everything else, it has been thrashed into submission by economics. It starts almost as soon as the summer ends, the Co-op had mince pies on sale in september, and the whole thing drags on and on, enabling fools and money to separate with greater frequency.
The shops are full of garbage, made in China by slave labour, and destined to last a very short time before filling our burgeoning landfill sites with layer upon layer of non biodegradeable detritus.
Of course the shopkeepers are desperate to palm all this stuff off, competing with internet shopping and the pound shops, struggling to survive in the cut throat world of commerce. Parents are battered daily with advertising and propaganda, pandering to what they think will make their children happy, and yet it never does, the more plastic crap that they are given, the less meaningful it all becomes.
This is a good time for the money lenders. Payday loans, and similar schemes allow those who have least, to go out and spend most, accumulating huge debts that will hang around their necks for the rest of the year, whilst those providing the cash make huge profits.
It is a time of year when lies are propagated and even encouraged. We tell children about a weird fat man in a red suit that flies magically around the world. We tell them that he only visits good children, and yet that lie is disproved by the evidence on Christmas morning. We tell them of flying reindeer, elves, angels, virgin birth, and a vengeful, vain and invisible god, and of course they absorb it all and many remain scarred for life, knowing that it is ok to lie.
It has become a season for excess. To party seems to be the be all and end all for many, and that is a license to behave as badly as you like. Personal freedoms ignore those of others and it has become the norm for some, to get as drunk as they can as often as they can. Post party streets are littered with the ridiculous trappings that seemed so cool at the start of the night, bottles and cans and pools of vomit are left for someone else to clear up, whilst accident and emergency departments are stretched to deal with the human debris.
Charity organisations do very well of course and some of them pass on the bulk of their funds to those needy individuals in the community; whilst others, The Salvation Army for example, dedicate a proportion of their funds to promoting their own religious dogma, including vigorous homophobic campaigns. I am sure that they also do a lot of good for those in need, but for me, their religious bias smacks a little of hypocrisy.
For weeks and weeks, the media hype the whole christmas thing, and then in two days, when everything comes to a halt, it is all over, the overindulgence wanes and the post christmas resolutions to diet and get fit begin again.
What is that all about?
I am sure that in the dim and distant past, the christmas festival was a welcome treat, eagerly anticipated, and in its execution, short and sweet, but like everything else, it has been thrashed into submission by economics. It starts almost as soon as the summer ends, the Co-op had mince pies on sale in september, and the whole thing drags on and on, enabling fools and money to separate with greater frequency.
The shops are full of garbage, made in China by slave labour, and destined to last a very short time before filling our burgeoning landfill sites with layer upon layer of non biodegradeable detritus.
Of course the shopkeepers are desperate to palm all this stuff off, competing with internet shopping and the pound shops, struggling to survive in the cut throat world of commerce. Parents are battered daily with advertising and propaganda, pandering to what they think will make their children happy, and yet it never does, the more plastic crap that they are given, the less meaningful it all becomes.
This is a good time for the money lenders. Payday loans, and similar schemes allow those who have least, to go out and spend most, accumulating huge debts that will hang around their necks for the rest of the year, whilst those providing the cash make huge profits.
It is a time of year when lies are propagated and even encouraged. We tell children about a weird fat man in a red suit that flies magically around the world. We tell them that he only visits good children, and yet that lie is disproved by the evidence on Christmas morning. We tell them of flying reindeer, elves, angels, virgin birth, and a vengeful, vain and invisible god, and of course they absorb it all and many remain scarred for life, knowing that it is ok to lie.
It has become a season for excess. To party seems to be the be all and end all for many, and that is a license to behave as badly as you like. Personal freedoms ignore those of others and it has become the norm for some, to get as drunk as they can as often as they can. Post party streets are littered with the ridiculous trappings that seemed so cool at the start of the night, bottles and cans and pools of vomit are left for someone else to clear up, whilst accident and emergency departments are stretched to deal with the human debris.
Charity organisations do very well of course and some of them pass on the bulk of their funds to those needy individuals in the community; whilst others, The Salvation Army for example, dedicate a proportion of their funds to promoting their own religious dogma, including vigorous homophobic campaigns. I am sure that they also do a lot of good for those in need, but for me, their religious bias smacks a little of hypocrisy.
For weeks and weeks, the media hype the whole christmas thing, and then in two days, when everything comes to a halt, it is all over, the overindulgence wanes and the post christmas resolutions to diet and get fit begin again.
What is that all about?
