The group of three students laughed and began to sing The Fairytale of New York.
If there were ever an anti-consumerist Christmas anthem, it must be it: two drunks without a cent to spend sharing their dreams on a cold and bleak Christmas morning, not much scope for success by slick advertising campaigns.
The need to constantly reinvent our consumerist culture underlines its essential futility. Despite there being no Thanksgiving holiday on this side of the Atlantic, advertisers decided there would be a “Black Friday.”
Even school students complain about the silliness of a day which is about no more than shopping. Presumably, these generations who are becoming streetwise at earlier and earlier ages will force executives to abandon that marketing ploy and develop some other excuse for bombarding communities with advertising for things that are neither wanted nor needed. Black Friday must already be waning in its influence because next Monday is “Cyber Monday.”
It is all baffling. What motivates the annual spending frenzy and burst of frantic hyper-activity?
Sometimes, people without religious convictions have articulated what it means for them, words like “family” and “childhood” are cited. People of a more pagan persuasion are more frank; it is mid-winter, the solstice is past, the days are lengthening, the sunshine and the warmth are returning.
Perhaps there is more integrity among the pagans and their celebration of the solstice than in those who persist in talking about “Christmas,” whilst doing everything possible to exclude its religious content.
There are often comments posted on social media suggesting that Muslims, or other religious groups, are responsible for such terminology as “Happy Holidays”, despite the fact that Muslims are explicit in their declaration that they have no problem with the religious celebration of Christmas (Jesus is honoured as a prophet in Islam who will return at the end of time). The “Happy Holidays” lobby owes much more to those of an aggressive secular inclination than to any religious-based objection to Christmas.
The exclusion of Christmas cribs, and other Christian symbols, from places like hospitals, arises most frequently from those who are simply intolerant of Christianity yet claim their intolerance arises from a desire to be “inclusive.” Inclusive of whom? One might ask.
It would be interesting one year to monitor the seasonal activities of the aggressive secularists, theirs is the most illogical of behaviour. What is it they are celebrating?
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the logical outcome produced by those whose only belief is in material things. They are about parting you from your money.
