Hannah Cann tells us why she loves political correctness.
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Three of The Yorker's blogs team have had a hard think about what general rules they live their lives by and written them down in the form of their own Personal Philosophies.
I mean, before, I had been perturbed by Christmas displays flourishing as soon as the Halloween ones languished, and slightly agog at the number of Christmas adverts (but you better not get me started on adverts again) which all suggest you will make everyone much happier (or more likely to sleep with you) by investing in this particular over-expensive bit of plastic… tack. I sat and quietly estimated the number of days it would take for Christmas presents to be put in a cupboard somewhere and forgotten about, when you realise that a TV remote in the shape of a football is actually fairly useless at changing channels, or whatever.
But to see September, which is just innocently trying to hang onto that last bit of warmth and sunshine before autumn kidnaps it once more, being pulled into the pantomime of Christmas preparation made me rather sad. Why is that in any way necessary? And who would want to eat chocolate that has been bought in September? I am quite happy deluding myself that Cadbury make every bar I eat fresh the day before, and the preparation of advent calendars ruins that hope. My friend also recently informed me of seeing mince pies which expired in November; now what is the point of that?
Does the sly introduction of that advent calendar now mean we need to start our Christmas shopping in September? Making lists of people we should probably buy presents for, just to stop them being offended? Drawing up a budget we secretly know to be excessive, in the fear that if we don’t spend so much on an individual, they’ll be angry or we’ll feel guilty? That is what present buying has come to - each year I try to estimate who might guiltily buy me a present and thus whose affections I need to return. I wonder if this is all there is to Christmas, and whether one year I’ll be honest and only buy presents for those I really love?
Now I’m not crusading for ‘the true meaning of Christmas’, mainly because Christmas, for the majority of people, as it currently stands, is pretty unrelated to any religious belief. The renaming of it as ‘Winterval’ in some cities does reflect the fact it is now a guilt-filled wintery festival, in some way reflecting its pagan roots. I rather hope that the celebration of Christmas is like a giant pendulum, and advent calendars showing up in September is the most extreme end of its oscillation and from now on - particularly with recession hanging around - we might be able to swing the pendulum away from such commercialism and get back to having fun without buying endless, pointless gifts for a over quarter of the year before the event!
Merry Christmas!
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