In time, someone will say What about the baby Jesus? At this point Every single person in the country will stop dead, all weighed down with numerous presents in their arms, look around and reply with a blank look on their face What about the baby Jesus?
In the late capitalism era, Christmas is like a world cup for brands and the corporate financial world. Christmas, in fact, is more about boosting sales, and maximising profit and meeting their legal obligations to investors than celebrating the birth Christ – even with the latter the corporate world can still cash in on cards, music, TV shows, ads.
Kellogs, as we are often told, are not in business to make cornflakes.
Children help. With carefully tweaked and targeted Advertising and merchandising of popular franchise like 'Frozen' or 'Paddington Bear', demand is easily generated and mum and dad manipulated.
In the contemporary physical and virtual world, drop-into-mind images, catchy jingles, slogan-tagged products and penetrating logos, catch us unaware, stalk us and rise above the actual product to infiltrate our spending power. Together they drives us into our local retailers or online to free cash from our wallets. All in the name of, what was after all, a mid-winter Pagan festival.
To make it even more attractive and easier to part with our hard earned cash, Christmas has its own symbolism.
Christmas trees, baubles, tinsel, garishly coloured lights, Santa Claus effigies, cards, present giving, big feasts. People over indulge, eat, drink and spend too much which keeps the tills jingling and Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, RBS, HSBC,UBS, Microsoft, Apple, et al, gleefully rubbing their hands.
In truth, there is something cyberpunk about the contemporary Christmas and Late Capitalism.
Of course, with the religious sentimentality extracted from the celebration for most of us, we can simply concentrate on feeding the bloated global corporate conglomerate with our hard earned cash. The echo of our childrens' voicesringing in our heads, as we look for the latest trendsetting toy, driving us on like laboratory rats in a maze of gift finding.
The psychological and emotional layering of the festive season has us constantly reaching into our rapidly thinning wallets to meet the commercial expectations of the season. In return for our efforts we are handed overdrafts by the nice people of the bank of We'll Eat You Up Mate (WEYUM), and given a route map to extra debt.
Christmas parties with our workmates, careful with the photocopier Eugene and get your head out of there, Christmas presents to purchase for the family and friends, Food and booze to buy. Of course, post-Christmas we will have to fork out more money to sign for the slimming club and join the local gym.
So while Waitrose ask : When is Christmas...Christmas? John Lewis commands : Show someone they are loved this Christmas.
Aldi, of course, do a naughty parody of the John Lewis ad while their other advert tells us about OUR favourite things. Lidl, of course, have the audacity to think they can teach the population of the UK about Christmas, when really all they are aiming for is to get you and me to part with as much money as possible. So, Christmas is simple economics?
The echo of our children's voices ringing in our heads, as we look for the latest trendsetting toy, driving us on like laboratory rats in a maze of gift finding.
The psychological and emotional layering of the festive season has us constantly reaching into our rapidly thinning wallets to meet the commercial expectations of the season. In return for our efforts we are handed overdrafts by the nice people of the bank of We'll Eat You Up Mate (WEYUM), and given a route map to extra debt.
Christmas parties with our workmates, careful with the photocopier Eugene and get your head out of there, Christmas presents to purchase for the family and friends, food and booze to buy. Of course, post-Christmas we will have to fork out more money to sign for the slimming club and join the local gym.
So while Waitrose ask : When is Christmas...Christmas? John Lewis commands : Show someone they are loved this Christmas. Aldi, of course, do a naughty parody of the John Lewis ad while their other advert tells us about OUR favourite things. Lidl, of course, have the audacity to think they can teach the population of the UK about Christmas, when really all they are aiming for is to get you and me to part with as much money as possible. So, Christmas is simple economics?
