OPINION | Wednesday, 19 December 2007

Led Zeppelin returns this Christmas

Readers during Christmas time may well stop and reflect on what this great event means to us? By now, most homes will be decorated with Christmas trees, coloured lights and paper or plastic decorations around the rooms (less than last year since surcharge bites).
These days, more people decorate their front garden trees or house walls with coloured electric lights and prop up plastic effigies of Father Christmas assaulting their balconies. Shops in our towns and villages fill up with new merchandise and colour magazines (stock up on weekend press for double-issue of glamour magazine) bombard our imagination to spend beyond our means.
The mythical shopper wearing the diamond studded Rolex is the rich uncle from New York who will cash-in our shopping madness until we die of exhaustion. Yes, Christmas is too commercialised.
Why are we festooned with adverts selling diamonds, cars, designer gear and showing celebrities wearing furs and fine watches, each costing a thousand time our annual bonus?
But banks do come to our rescue, giving us discounted charges for lending us new platinium plastic cards.
The extraordinary cavalier way banks are fanning the fire of consumer credit amid hubristic over-optimism gives questionable relief to our cash-strapped citizens. But who cares....”domani” (tomorrow) never comes!
It is like a never-ending jam jar. Materialism is progressively taking over the religious feeling and our desire to acquire and consume is made more accessible through free credit extended on our plastic cards.
Burning plastic cards on shopping sprees in London, Paris or Rome is rapidly taking the role as a status symbol amongst well-heeled couples. This is apart from lavish skiing holidays sipping Napoleon brandy amongst the jet set.
For the working classes, this is of course rendered worse if you are flat broke as you burnt your month’s salary in “Super five” jackpot tickets.
For the average shopper the madness just adds to pre-Christmas stress as the turnstiles to achieve luxury status shut us out. To add to the circus, political gurus battle for their share of the gravy train asking party faithful for donations to fill their election war chest.
All this ten days ahead of the annual humanitarian “Strina “ jamboree.
While demands for expensive children toys like electronic games and the “Ultimate Bumblebee” robots fill our adverts there is little room for olde sentiment such as reading A Christmas Carol. It’s all a consumer frenzy as publishing agencies ring up clients to cough up for their Lm500 a page advert in high definition colour.
Budget overtones subconsciously remind us that this is the time of plenty but children’s allowances and year-end pension increases are still days ahead.
Yet relish the thought that Santa has bestowed us a memorable gift for adults. This comes wrapped-up in a tinsel studded CD box featuring the live performance of the legendary band Led Zepplin. They teamed up once more and have made a sassy comeback since their “Stairways to Heaven” icon in 1972.
Yes she is buying a stairways to heaven and like most of our youth she is living in a dream-world of never-ending mirages. Thank God, older folks prefer to believe in an idealised vision of Christmas yet traditions are changing fast.
The feeling is different from the sacred images of the strict religious feast showing the baby Jesus born in poverty. Even the memory of our colonial past when the British bequeathed their Victorian values on Yuletide are swiftly fading away.
Regrettably the traditional Christmas card is fast receding in popularity and is being replaced by impersonal 4page 13
electronic cards flooding the internet. Conventionally, Christmas cards showed religious pictures – Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, or other parts of the Christmas story. All this has now changed as fewer religious themes are in use. Today’s cards are often jokes, winter pictures, Father Christmas, or romantic scenes of life in past times.
Charles Dickens tale of a Christmas Carol where images of ‘saghtar’, churchgoing, turkey, paper crackers and mince pies is morphing into champagne and caviar breakfasts, wearing designer clothes, fine watches, savvy jewellery, with party poops doning ‘crocodile skin ‘ stiletto shoes.
Revellers drive fast cars to superlative five-star venues where dinners are at Lm100 (€232) each. Concurrently end-of year office parties rave on till the early morning hours. Affluence has also reflected in higher value gifts exchanged on Boxing Day.
Even for the working classes, gone is the tradition of hanging children’s gifts in socks to be opened after the Christmas Mass vigil. This year this has taken a new dimension ever since low cost airlines opened the floodgates for enlightened travellers.
Gudja airport is packed with shoppers returning home with oversized bags complaining after paying for the overweight penalties at the check-in desks.
Yet this is not what Christmas ought to be. Indisputably it is very stressful. Mythical Christmas turns out in the end to be just that – a myth. The ritual of gift – giving is epitomised by the L-iStrina mega TV show. Last year it collected a cool million for charity while donors try their luck to bet on fabulous prizes. As can be expected, politicians & TV personalities flock in to capitalise on its popularity. Yet nobody complains since generosity at this time of the year is legendary.
We all want to give part of our perceived wealth so that others less fortunate may cherish during the festive season. It seems to be part of our Christian roots that propels us to be generous.
In this mad-rush to work, play hard and consume in even larger doses little do we stop to think why we are so hedonistic in our habits. Perhaps the answer lies in ancient history and our roots.
During the pagan times of the Romans in 336 the Church set the date to December 25 in an attempt to eclipse a holiday then known as Saturnalia. It marks the winter solstice. It is the time when the sun after having been at the lowest point in the heavens, beings to rise over the world with renewed vigour and power.
Back then in pagan Rome it was the time of heathen festivities in worship of the sun. History reveals how this day acquired a new significance under the rule of Emperor Aurelian.
Outlandishly even in those pagan days during the Saturnalia work of every kind ceased and slaves were given extra sustenance. As the Saturnalia returned each year it brought with it thoughts of the peaceful reign of Saturn when festivities were boisterous and cheerful.
Romans ate big dinners and their banquets were decked with boughs of laurel and green trees, with lighted candles and oil lamps. The streets were crowded with noisy processions of men and women carrying lighted tapers and public places were decked with flowers and shrubs.
It comes as no surprise that the present day tradition of giving and receiving presents, and partying was almost as common in Roman times as it is now. Nobody can dispute the fact that nothing changed as our present day “Christmas spirit” is actually as stressful as it was felt during the celebration of this old Roman festival.
The burgeoning expense of buying gifts, the pressure of last-minute shopping and the heightened expectations of holiday travel can all combine to undermine our best intentions (reach out for more tranquillisers).
Notwithstanding that the New Year finds us penniless and overweight we all dream of a Merry Christmas and continue to treasure this time as the golden holiday of the year. A Merry Christmas to all.

The author is a director in GMM Business Solutions.