On the first day of Christmas... it was October

During the couple of decades that I have existed, I have noticed a strange occurrence, which I’m sure many of you will have noticed as well. It’s like time is shifting. Suddenly, it’s Halloween in September, Valentines in January, ‘back to school’ as soon as the schools have broken up and, most heart wrenchingly annoying of all, Christmas in October. It seems to me that the day that advertisers and retailers decide that it’s ‘Christmas time’ has been sliding slowly forwards year by year. Give it another ten years, or thereabouts, and maybe Slade will get their wish – it really will be Christmas every day. 

Even though I’m generally quite a cynical person, I can’t deny it, Christmas is special. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in the religious connotations of the holiday, or not. The fact is that it’s a time to revel in our good fortune, however vast or disparaging it may be, with good food, good drink, good company and good spirit. It’s like it’s everybody’s birthday - everyone has something to celebrate. And, just like birthdays, one of the reasons why Christmas is special is preciously because it only comes once a year. It’s a matter of perception: if Slade got their wish, we wouldn’t even enjoy Christmas, because Christmas would be normality. 

So what am I complaining about in this month’s blog? I’m complaining about the fact that consumerism is ruining my Christmas, and it’s doing so in more ways than one. Firstly, the build up to this beloved holiday is now so horrendously drawn out that, when the joyous event actually arrives, I'm akin to feeling less merry and more morbidly nauseous. Every time a child on some TV ad luridly shouts "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" it urges me closer and closer to projectile vomit my dozenth mince pie of the day, (which I started buying in August), directly at the Christmas tree, (which I thought I might as well leave up all year), producing an obscene metaphor for what this mongrel festival has become. A combination of desperate retailers, and an even more desperate chancery, has reduced modern day Christmas to nothing more than a prolonged marketing exercise and a much sought after boost to the economy. This is why Christmas now starts in October, and why we are encouraged for months on end to spend as much as we possibly can afford to.

This leads on to my second point – the obscene importance placed today on gift giving at Christmas. Let me say from the offset, anyone who looks forward to the festive season purely for the presents is, in my opinion, either a child, or an idiot. Sure, it’s great to receive a gift, especially if it’s something that you couldn’t usually afford, or wouldn’t usually buy for yourself. However, I assert that emphasising this aspect of the holiday as much as we do today is destroying it. This has a lot to do with the sad reality that most people in this country, and others, seem to have more in common with a sponge than an actual human being; wandering through life, their sole purpose seemingly being to soak up the slippery jizzum of retail and advertising, before wringing themselves out into their own, or their loved ones' moronically gaping mouths. Ultimately, this leads to people wanting more than these hard economic times can afford them.

Just imagine potentially how many families across the country could have their Christmases ruined by disappointment when they realise that the piece of jewellery, games console or mobile phone they so greatly desired isn’t waiting for them under the tree, simply because no one could afford to get it for them? Now imagine how desperate you would be to make sure this didn’t happen to your family… what would you do to prevent this? Get a loan perhaps? Yes, I suspect that at the very least you would feel pressured to. The problem is that, as we all know, excessive debt and credit is the reason why we’re in such an economic mess in the first place. This festive phenomenon is a microcosm of the consumer situation throughout the whole country, across the entire year, and in all sectors of commerce. As such, it serves as an example of just how little we’re actually doing to diffuse the ticking time bomb of private debt.

Meanwhile, austerity measures across Europe and the world are continuing to cause an uprising of civil disturbances, the latest (and most promising) incarnation being the Occupy Wall Street and other global Occupy movements. As dissatisfaction with the current system increases and becomes more highly disseminated to the public through both independent and mainstream media coverage of these occurrences, one can only hope that eventually people will no longer be interested in the phoney fixes and lugubrious legislation currently being spat out by our current government, and demand some changes that will actually make a difference. At this point, I expect that ‘the powers that be’ will have to listen, or else risk an exponential increase in both the violence and frequency of these anti-capitalist demonstrations, until they’re only really left with two choices - fight the power, or fight the people.

And so I am left shaking my fist at the Christmas lights that have already been put up in the West End of London, and living in tepid dread of the first Christmas hit that I will have the misfortune of hearing a month too early, hoping that I’ll be able to survive another year before denouncing my beloved festival altogether. I have no doubt that some people will read this and purely think me a Grinch who, for one reason or another, just doesn’t ‘get’ the Christmas spirit. To all you people I say, in a final flourish of easily dismissed but, nonetheless, accurate cliché – that’s what they want you to think. 

Oh well, if you take anything at all away from this post, just remember this one thing…

CHRISTMAS STARTS IN DECEMBER

Vanity Fayre! Just £5 for a ride on the Wheel of Self-esteem.

A wise man once said: "What makes vanity so insufferable to us, is that it hurts our own." Well, I tell you what, my vanity has been violently murdered with a brick in an alleyway. Recently I spent two whole days trying to flog electric razors to people in the well-known high street cosmetics shop, Boots.The experience was so excruciatingly dull that at one point I caught myself shaving the hair off the back of my hand with one of the razors I was demonstrating. Thankfully, nobody saw. Either that or someone had seen me and promptly ran a mile in fear that I might be on the verge of some sort of spontaneous violent breakdown where I would rampage through the store throwing hair gel at people and trying to scoop out their eye sockets with an electric tooth brush. Anyway, whilst not enduring sporadic bouts of insanity, for the rest of the time I was working in the shop I had the opportunity to contemplate the nature of human vanity and specifically how shops like Boots exploit it. The particular shop I was working in was, I pondered, somewhat of a temple to this idea. What with the bright white fluorescent lighting, stone washed marble floors, and staff that resembled hideous hybrids between vestal virgins and Stormtroopers wearing so much mascara that it was hard to tell whether they actually had eyes... to say the environment was somewhat oppressive is about as much of an understatement as saying that World War II was slightly upsetting. 

First things first, let me just say that I have no doubt that vanity is an entirely natural phenomenon. Darwinian theory would explain it as a mechanism that ensures that we maintain a high chance of finding a mate with whom to reproduce. However, one can’t help but think that things might have gone a bit too far. A good example is the current phenomenon of tanning. Whether it’s £100s spent on a holiday to Spain with the only goal being to partially bake oneself over the course of two weeks interspersed with painful showers and a growing risk of cancer, or the favoured Essex-style oompla loopma-inspired fake tans, I have met very few white women in this country who don’t spend at least some time and money attempting to accomplish a darker hue. 

The question is why? From the male perspective, especially with regards to fake tanning, I would 1000 times much rather be with a girl who is fair skinned and proud than one that is orange and smells like a mixture of death and rotting apricots. I’m pretty sure that most men think like this too – I’d like to see a survey done, actually – because surely if a dark complexion was inherently more attractive to men then the whole world would be Asian or African by now?

So girls, ask yourselves, who are you doing this for? Why are you spending so much time and money on making yourself something that you’re not? I suppose the answer to that question is mostly going to be “because it makes us feel good about ourselves”. Again, why? Because you actually prefer the way you look with a tan, or because some model on a TV commercial has told you that you will prefer the way you look with a tan and you’ve believed her? And to highlight just how utterly pointless this way of thinking really is, one only has to look at the current trend with middle class Indians who, opposed to our obsession with tanning, spend their hard earned Rupees on BLEACHING themselves to look whiter. Damn it, why don’t we all just dye ourselves puce and be done with it? At least then people will all feel more equal.

Why am I angry about this? It’s not because I don’t want people to feel good about themselves, of course not, it’s because I hate the idea that some fat cat in London, Paris or New York is getting rich off exploiting our emotions. People may or may not know this, but millions – I suspect billions – of pounds goes in to researching ways to manipulate our basic human instincts with the sole aim of influencing us to spend money on stuff we don’t need.  All modern advertising is an evolution of principles first utilised to sell stuff to us by the founder of modern PR and advertising - a man called Edward Bernays - who’s uncle was none other than the master of unravelling humanities deepest desires, Dr. Sigmund Freud. Mr Bernays idolised his uncle from a young age and, using marketing techniques inspired by Freud’s theories, managed to reverse the social zeitgeist in 1920s New York that it was uncouth for women to smoke, securing a hefty fortune in the process. Basically, he made smoking seem sexy, so... women started smoking, because they thought that if they didn’t then men would not find them as attractive. Of course, today we all know very well that smoking isn’t sexy at all. In fact, I think that most of us would agree that, unless you get turned on by your partner tasting and smelling like a charred carcass, it’s really quite the opposite. Does this sound familiar?

Almost a century on since Bernays’ pioneering outlook on consumer habits and advertisers are now so clever and subtle in their manipulative strategies that most people fall for their ploys hook line and sinker without even a second thought. One of my favourite techniques used currently is the blurring of the lines between beauty products and food. Having a look at the ladies’ hair and skincare section at the weekend I genuinely mistook some of the soaps and shampoos for elegantly crafted cakes and truffles. The scents were all very interesting too: mint candy, lemon cheesecake, coconut cream, gingerbread. It’s a double whammy in terms of exploiting women, appealing both to their supposed fondness for sweets AND their desire to smell nice. The question is... what next? Wotsit flavoured toothpaste? Lemon posit knob wash? Chicken tikka embalming fluid? I swear we’ll buy anything they put in front of us these days that’s in a pretty box and has an interesting name.

So girls: the next time you’re tempted to sully your natural beauty with a little pot of over-priced face paint or a tub full of carcinogenic chemicals, and gents: the next time some twat who works in Boots tries to up sell you an electric razor with a staple gun attachment or ANY form of anti-ageing treatment - for christ’s sake men look better as they get older! Any woman will tell you that! – please, please THINK to yourself, unless you really can’t see foresee being content without that product, don’t waste the money and resources on buying it! Who knows, you might find out that you’re happier without it.