Christmas every day?
In 1961 Viv Nicholson, whose husband had won the equivalent of over four million pounds on the football pools, became famous after declaring she would ‘spend, spend, spend’. Which she then proceeded to do. At this time of year, without that amount of geld available to you, do you feel pressured to follow that example? Do you wish you were like Viv and could win loads of lucre on the national lottery. That would solve all your problems, wouldn’t it? Or would it?
Festivity: ‘a joyous feast, holiday or celebration’. Do you buy into Christmas because it makes you temporarily forget how pitiful it is to be a wage slave? Not that you’re being pressured. Much. The retail outlets have been selling Christmas commodities since September. Poverty, or struggling with the rising cost of living or unaffordable energy bills is no excuse. Not believing in the Christmas fairytale doesn’t excuse you from participating. The UK now has more atheists than believers in a fairy tale. So what are you celebrating? It’s a British tradition, you say? Christmas trees, Charles Dickens, God bless us one and all, blah blah. The Queen’s, oops, King’s Speech telling you that no matter how bad your year has been the privileged ruling class have had it much worse.
Is it because the kids expect presents, expensive ones too? Do you want them to be embarrassed because their friends got much better ones? They’ll probably still be dissatisfied. Don’t you realise that the true meaning of Christmas is spend, spend, spend until it hurts? Is no one thinking of the poor capitalists and their profits? Oh, you are fighting your way through the Boxing Day sales where wage slaves in shops are forced to work the holiday to add to capital’s rapacious pursuit of even more profit. They don’t have a choice. This applies to many other workers in various industries. Selling your mental or physical labour power is necessary to live in a capitalist system.
The mainstream media will no doubt have faux anger stories about a single parent spending huge amounts of money on presents for their children. This will elicit gasps of horror in the comments section from the indignant who will be incensed that someone on benefits can afford to do that. ‘I work long and hard and I can’t afford to do that’, they will cry. ‘It’s my taxes that’s paying for that!’ Note that in order for the media to manufacture outrage the story has to be about someone being supported by the state.
Once there was a time when preparations for the winter festival did not begin until a week or two before… Home-made paper chains as decorations. Catching the bus with your mom to go shopping in the local town or village to buy all the necessary prerequisites. Salvation Army bands busking in the streets, guilt-tripping passers-by into putting money in their hat. It’s for charity! It should be noted that the lyrics of many carols would have made William McGonagall ashamed to have written them.
Charities love Christmas. An excellent time to prick people’s consciences and get the money rolling in. The homeless and dispossessed may enjoy a few days of respite at Christmas before once more disappearing out of sight and out of mind. Society won’t begrudge them a little warmth, some decent food and a warm bed, but will happily turn them back onto the streets and leave them to their fate.
Oh, how naive we were then. Pillowcases of presents to open when you awake. At that age there was no conception of how hard it might have been for your parents to provide the gifts. Your dad getting up early to build a fire in the grates to warm the rooms. Him making the first cup of tea of the day for everyone and adding a generous measure of whisky to it, even for the thirteen year old. Mothers and female relatives working as hard as they did every day, or even harder, with no labour-saving devices to help them.
This is not to romanticise the past, but to highlight that for many of us it would be many years before we learnt how exploitative the capitalist system is and discovered that there was and is a better alternative. Back then there was no knowledge of how one’s parents might have had to scrape and save to buy their children presents and provide the enjoyable, but ignorant, experience.
Season of goodwill to all men, women and children? Not to those who are still being killed and maimed because some capitalists within particular states are intent on fulfilling their desire for yet more profit irrespective of the cost to innocent lives. Is there likely to be a Christmas truce, like the one in the First World War, in the conflicts currently raging across the world? You wouldn’t bet on it, and in any case a cessation of hostilities for one day is hardly sufficient. Hostilities across the world need to be suppressed forever. What is the likelihood of that happening under capitalism? Zero.
When the ‘festivities’ have ended what is there to look forward to? The rich will get richer, the poor won’t, and the global working class will continue to be exploited. The world will continue to be a less safe place.
Greg Lake sang that the Christmas you get, you deserve. Don’t you think you deserve something better than capitalism? Don’t wait until another year has gone by. Make your new year’s resolution a Lennon one… ‘Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace.’ There’s many more benefits to a system where goods and services are produced for use, not profit. No classes, no leaders either. Give yourself and everyone else a real present – socialism.
DC
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