HARK YE HERALD ANGELS SPEND....

A look at the commercialism of Christmas.

First published on the now-defunct blogging site "gather" and re-edited

There's one thing I've hated for as long as understanding crept like a turgid black cloud into my mind and that's the way the jolly festive season of Christmas has been abused.

I'm not talking about the biblical account (which certainly was either in the imaginations of people who wanted desperately for the nice man with long hair to be really, really special so they made magic up, or as a consequence of a bad dose of the wrong kind of mushrooms at a party back then). You can believe the story of the nativity if you like: it's your privilege to allow yourself to be convinced that a human mother can be made pregnant by the words of a bloke with wings. After all, it happened lots of times, mostly to the variety gods that inhabited the classical high-spots of Greek and Roman religions. Lots of them fathered or mothered humans, and jolly tales abounded. And I don't mind you believing that an eager young carpenter with a teenage betrothed was happy to be surrogate father to her growing foetus, and swallow lock, stock and barrel her unlikely explanation for a pregnancy he hadn't bartered for.

No: I'm on about the commercial side of things.

When I was knee-high to a reindeer's t**d Christmas lasted the best part of a fortnight, though the vital part was over in around forty-eight hours. We (I was obviously a schoolboy in short trousers back then - and how I hated those short trousers when I arrived home from school in the driving rain with the water freezing them onto my thighs and no way of thawing myself unless I virtually crawled into the only fire in the house), we finished school a few days before the big day and were taken shopping by mum into town.

On one occasion I saw a fat man in a Santa suit walking towards us on a crowded pavement and I cried my eyes out. I hated that image, he filled me with fear - I have no idea why because he's a ridiculous character, and to be perfectly honest I’ve never seen anything jolly about any of the absurd men who dress up and parade around department stores reeking of whiskey - and the fact that I've remembered the occasion as if it was only yesterday even though it was well nigh seventy years ago must say something.

Then tension was ratcheted up a few notches and it was Christmas Eve and promises of wondrous gifts come the dawn. Of course, there was the horrible possibility that the grotesque man in the red suit might wake me, but he never did. Thank goodness for that!

Then it was open-the-presents time, and presents were mind-bogglingly unexciting. I say that, though at the time I was as excited as an astronaut would be when he discovered the moon really was made of a particularly delicious globe of green cheese. I would open one parcel and it would be a book (I belonged to the children's library and without exception I could have got a borrowed copy ... and probably already had), and then, in another parcel, another book ... bigger, an annual, maybe. I first discovered Petula Clarke in an annual when I was way too young to know anything about sex appeal. Then there would probably have been a die-cast dinky toy neatly wrapped up, and (hold your breath) ... a board game!!

A board game!

Ever since then I've hated board games with a vengeance. They should be called bored games. And I'm lousy at them. I dared say that it you hate something sufficiently vindictively you will tend to lose when playing it, and the losing makes you hate it even more. It's a vicious circle and I was trapped in it!

Then there was the fruit. An apple, an orange and possibly both.

And that was Christmas day and the time of giving.

There was going to church, of course, and singing jolly hymns about bleak midwinters and mangers that were away. And a red-faced cleric telling us that a baby had been born and what myrrh was. Whoever invented the nature of the gifts offered to the make-believe baby in the feeding trough must have been a wally. What would a baby have done with myrrh? I suppose the gold might have come in handy, though, and if the stable reeked of old dung and horses asit probably would have they could have taken a sniff of the frankincense. But myrrh?

Then there was boxing day. The bored game had bits missing, the books were all read (both of them) and the only thing left was the die-cast car with one little rubber tyre missing. Those cars fetch a fortune at antiques fairs these days, but mine lost their tyres and got chunks of bright paint chipped off by boxing day. Then in the afternoon it was walk to Uncle Wilfred's for sandwiches and jelly and a chance to peep at his television set. Not many people had television sets back then. It was supposed to be black and white but I can only remember shades of grey, with snow every time a car went by on the road outside.

So why I have written all this? Well, look at Christmas these days. It lasts half the year (from when the last bit of tinsel has been put away, the last fairy light is back in its box and things are back to normal to when the first hark the herald angels warble hits the shopping centre in late summer.

And, you know, its very hugeness means that it means less. And I don't mean the religious bit. I mean the whole commercial enterprise that has snatched a silly old story and turned it into a money-making enterprise to beat all money-making enterprises.

Give me my apple and orange any day!

© Peter Rogerson 13.11.12, revised 13.11.16