And so this is Christmas, and what have we done? Well, for a start we’ve voted Boris in. Apart from that, we haven’t done much, at least, not anything Christmassy. Have you done anything for Christmas? I haven’t. It occurred to me earlier, looking at the frost on the ground, and it looking all festive, that it is, actually, next week, and up until now I haven’t really even noticed, and judging by my facebook and twitter feeds, neither has anyone else.
It’s odd. But it’s also, I think, actually quite nice. For years Christmas has been becoming this ogre-like spectacle that rules our lives from around October onwards. As soon as the Halloween stuff is out of the way, and sometimes even before, BOOM.. tinsel everywhere.
Now it could be that I’m not seeing it because I don’t watch tele or listen to music radio and I don’t go shopping and I tend not to really engage with everyday life on the whole, But Christmas usually even infiltrates my hermity life. It’s impossible to ignore. But the only indications this year that it’s close are the stalwart decorators who have festooned their places in light. This year, having spent a year arguing with the council over carbon footprints, I can’t help thinking that the lights should be less, even though when I see them I really like them. It’s a moral dilemma.
There seems to be a general air of depression over everything since the election. There seems to be quite a lot of legitimate mental distress associated with the disappointment of five years of the Boris. Love or hate Corbyn, you can’t deny that a whole heap of people engaged with this election and with politics in general since he came along. As they’re in the main quite young., they haven’t yet learned how to be cynical. Well.. they hadn’t. They have now. They had real hope. They felt like someone had come to save them. The parallels people drew between the Christmas JC and the election JC were evident, and not just from the young ‘uns, but from the generation X-ers like me. We saw the fall coming more than the young ones. But we’re no less disappointed. We saw Utopia for a little while, and it was nice, even if it was an illusion.
I know that people have similar hopes and faith in Boris, and I really hope he comes through for them, although my main sadness is that it’ll probably be a long time before we see him on Have I Got News For You, which was a job that suited him a little better than this one I feel. I hope he will surprise us all. And I hope that somehow, we’ll all manage to start thinking about the jolly season.
Maybe, though, the greatest gift the election gave us, was the realisation that Christmas doesn’t have to be a three month hectic-fest. You don’t have to run around for weeks obsessing over puddings and tablecloths. So many people have nothing this Christmas, no home, no food, no gifts, that to go full on consumer in a panic just because there are only a few shopping days left, seems at the very least, hollow, and at the very most, selfish. How can we look at ourselves and our excesses and not see them? Who really wants to max out their credit card every year and spend the rest of the year paying it back? We’ve all done it. To provide a perpetual stress, the constant reminder of which is the toys you end up clearing away all the time or that no one plays with.
Perhaps, as an eighties child, I have that nostalgic feel for Christmas that all eighties kids have. Where it was all Top of the Pops and Christmas number one and all the best Christmas songs came out. Older people seem to remember their tangerines and nuts, younger people tend to remember which console they got which year and how many days in a row they stayed on Zelda. But us eighties lot. We had it the best. We got Walkmans. Now though, we can’t even re-live the nostalgic with Top of the Pops2 anymore, because all the old presenters are in jail. Christmas, as we knew it, is long gone.
So let’s make a new one. A Christmas where it’s less about presents and more about friends, company, support, compassion, and thinking of others less fortunate. The fact that we’ve had a bit of a rest from it this year may have been just enough to break that consumer cycle. Thank you, weird winter election. You distracted us, and you started off the hope thing. And hope is for life. Not just for Christmas.
Postcards from the Hedge 