Christmas Hype

Marie from Waikanae

Bless you, Joel Maxwell, you make my heart sing. Just when I’d got to the point where I couldn’t stand the Christmas hype any longer, your elegant article provided the therapy I needed (Observer, Conversations). The man in the red suit, as Joel succinctly points out, “is just another bit of shared, ongoing corporatized fiction, like James Bond, or the Briscoes lady”. James Bond we now know has a serious drinking problem (thanks to Nick, researcher at Otago public health – though with a name like that, you’d think he’d have something to say about the man in the red suit too. He’s obviously morbidly obese and sugar addicted).
This year the hype seems to be worse. The decorations went up in October, the TV started yelling at us to buy, buy, buy and even the weather has obliged by being summery. I see it on the faces of the women in the supermarket as we do the trolley two-step, tacking and jibing down the aisles. They will all be held personally responsible if Christmas isn’t perfect. Combined with the heat the best I can hope for is a pounding headache every time I venture out, helped along by those idiots in cars with the boom box on full volume.
Instinct tells me to fight back. That mongrel Irish underdog trait that says, “stuff you” (or worse), “I’m not buying into it”. Am I going to let these profit driven people dictate how I live and undermine my relationship with the land? Christmas is one day, its about a meal with the family. And in this heat, it should be as simple as possible with everyone bringing something. How much of all the stuff being brandished at us from every angle is plastic? Forget the presents, we all have far too much stuff already and the planet is groaning under the weight of it. Who hasn’t got a garage full of stuff. Pull some of that out and recycle it. Or, as the op shop ad says, “if you must buy an awful present, make it for a good cause”.