Buying Christmas
ANDREW LODGE STAFF/
“And what do you want for Christmas?” I had my back turned to the small six-year-old boy sitting on the exam table but I knew that I had fucked up before I had finished the sentence. I quickly finished what I was doing and turned back to him. He sat silently there, his legs swinging off the edge of the table. He had a little grin on his dirty face. He shrugged. My body relaxed. He was forgiving my ignorance. Little Hudson has spent a lot of time forgiving the folly of adults.
It’s the Christmas season again, and Christian or non-Christian, believer or non-believer, it is virtually impossible to avoid the smothering. It’s huge. A recent Gallup poll in reported that 34 per cent of adults in Canada plan to spend at least a $1,000 on gifts this season. This time of year is by far the most important for business; Christmas provides the impetus for a massive percentage of retail sales in a given year in this country. The TD Bank’s special report reminds investors that “’tis the season to go shopping,” and asks, coyly, “So, will the sound of jingling cash registers be heard again in 2006?” The answer: a resounding yes! Christmas “is far and away the most wonderful time of the year for retailers.” Christian and non-Christian businessmen and -women alike can rejoice in the coming of the little baby Jesus.
But December can be a time of great duress for people as well. A walk through the local department store here in Fort Frances, Ont. is very much
A recent Gallup poll reported that 34 per cent of adults in Canada plan to spend at least a $1,000 on gifts this season.
On the television, we’re reminded that our “loved ones” will “love you” when you “show them how much you care” by getting them that 500-foot plasma screen. For the special person in your life, get them the latest Blastthe Muslims game for the newest PlayStation.
So back to Hudson. Hudson lives with his three sisters and his mom. Dad had left some time ago and wasn’t in the picture any longer. Hudson’s mom is on welfare and, to make matters worse, she is addicted to oxycontin, an opiate rapidly emerging as the prescription drug-of-choice among users. I met her once. She was a quiet woman and seemed to care for Hudson and the others. But between drug addiction and welfare, she certainly isn’t in the “$1,000 and up” bracket for gift-buying.
Christmas can be especially hard for kids like Hudson. As a society, we are bombarded constantly with the idea that “he [or she] with the most toys when they die wins.” Christmas is a microcosm of that. The kid with the most loot wins. Marketing campaigns spend millions of dollars on advertising each year directed solely towards children, knowing full well that a nagging child can be the most effective means of making parents open up their wallets. The whole process is further driven as the children enter into acute competition with each other. Most Canadian kids know that the first week back at school is all about tallying up the score, finding out who got what and how much.
Christian groups can be susceptible to the orgiastic consumer frenzy as well. Last year, the Catholic League in the U.S. complained when Wal-Mart stopped using the word “Christmas” for its Christmas marketing blitz, claiming that the big-box megalith was “practising discrimination.” Happily for the Catholic League, Fox News reported this November that “Wal-Mart brings back Christmas and Cuts Prices too.” This is gonna be the best-est Christmas ever.
Not everyone inclined to celebrate the religious aspect of the season buys into the contemporary understanding of
For the special person in your life, get them the latest Blast-the Muslims game for the newest PlayStation.
Christmas, however. A group of renegade Mennonites has formed a loose coalition with Adbusters and the long-running “Buy Nothing Day” campaign to push a “Buy Nothing Christmas.” According to their website, “there’s a way to say enough and join a movement dedicated to reviving the original meaning of Christmas giving.”The rationale behind Buy Nothing Christmas is simple, yet challenges some
It’s probably little comfort to him that the guy who all this fuss is supposed to be about spent his time with a prostitute and a bunch of lowly fishermen.
fundamental values on which our society is built. Aiden Enns, part of the inspiration behind the movement, explains that, “after being continuously confronted with stats on the rich and poor and our level of consumption, I had to do something.” Enns argues that poverty is an inevitable problem generated by the very economic configuration that underlies our world, and not just a byproduct that will eventually be overcome. As such, charity, so promoted during this time of year, is no lasting solution. “Acts of charity towards the poor,” he says, “even though wellintended, are ultimately not as beneficial as structural change.”Enns’ point is bolstered by the numbers. Statistics Canada indicates that there are more children living in poverty in Canada today than there were in 1989, the year the House of Commons promised unanimously to eliminate child poverty by the advent of the new millennium. Currently, 18.5 per cent of all kids are poor in Canada.
The 2006 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty by watchdog agency Campaign 2000 points out some disturbing trends within that already disturbing statistic. It’s not hard to guess who the most vulnerable kids are. Over 40 per cent of aboriginal and immigrant children live below the poverty line. More than half of poor kids live with a single mom. And the average poor household is not just teetering at or around the poverty line; a family below the line needs, on average, $10,000 more in annual income to bring it out of poverty.
Poverty doesn’t necessarily get worse around Christmas, although scrounging for cash to keep up with the neighbours can stretch the wallet. But what makes the season difficult is the contrast: the gluttony on one hand juxtaposed with glaring scarcity. And that, say many, can obscure the original purpose of the commemoration.
How did we arrive at this point? I once spoke with a Jewish friend of mine about Christmas and its meaning. “Like so many religious celebrations, it’s grounded in a beautiful idea,” he pointed out. “The theme, the hope of peace and justice. It’s an important message, as important now as ever. But, as with so much that has to do with religion, it seems to me to have become bastardized, it’s lost all that meaning.” Looking around, it can be hard to disagree with that.
It’s that observation that folks like Aiden Enns are trying to counter. What’s interesting about the bunch down at Buy Nothing Christmas is their explicitly anticapitalist approach. According to them, such a view is completely justified since they believe that capitalism “favours the rich, abandons the poor, is heartless,” and should ultimately be abandoned.
But maybe their take on Christmas is not so strange. After all, it is one of those amusing historical ironies that a celebration of the birth of perhaps the most famous anti-capitalist of all time has spawned the most insatiable consumer frenzy in human history.
That won’t make it any easier for Hudson on the first day back at school. In a twisted way, maybe he’s lucky to live in a poor area, where there may be some degree of equalization. Even still, the little fellow is the poorest of a poor bunch. It’s probably little comfort to him that the guy who all this fuss is supposed to be about spent his time with a prostitute and a bunch of lowly fishermen.
If you’re not poor, though, you might as well grab all you can get here on earth. After all, it’s that time of year.
