All I Want For Christmas Is... Absolutely Nothing
At the risk of incurring the wrath of three random Eastern men with a telescope; presents are bulls**t.
For at least 10 years now, my family have stopped giving presents at Christmas. This year, I didn’t ask for anything for my birthday either. It began when my sister and I were well into adulthood. I was in my twenties; she was in her thirties. We had our own saucepans and pyjamas and the kind of disposable income that meant we could literally just buy a packet of After Eights whenever we liked (the height of luxury for anyone who lived through the 90s).
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In this scenario, knowing that our loved ones were spending December traipsing through overheated, plastic-wrapped, cinnamon-scented shopping centres spending their hard-earned money on internationally-transported rubbish we neither needed nor would miss, seemed ridiculous. Worse, it seemed offensive. Financially, environmentally, personally it was a stupid endeavour that we were happy to bring to an end.
When I finally expressed my sense of guilt at the amount of money, time and energy being put into this imposed orgy of commercialism the decision was quickly made to cut down on, and then cut out, presents all together.
Today, I have a seven-year-old son who still, just about, believes in Father Christmas. There is magic to our Christmas, of course. I sprinkle the stairs with desiccated coconut to look like snow, stamp boots through it to a table laid out with mince pies, we eat the carrot for the reindeer and leave a stocking full of food and a few tiny gifts at the end of his bed.
But away from this supernatural visitor, my son has said that he doesn’t really care about presents. He has asked instead to hold a snake or, perhaps, a chameleon. He has asked to cook a feast. He wants to see his grannies for a sleepover. I never wanted to raise a puritan, but I can’t help but feel a small sense of contentment that this boy is still more interested in animals and experiences than vacuum-packed pieces of virgin plastic flown half way across the world to be sold by shift workers on zero hours contracts for minimum wage.
This year, instead of spending our weekends shopping for presents that nobody needs, my husband designed a special bike ride around the city where we live, picking up food from various different shops to donate to our local foodbank. He made a map, they invited his class from school and generally made an adventure of it. Of course, my son loved it.
As he wheeled through the streets, his rucksack bulging with cooking oil and pasta, tinned vegetables and chocolate, you could see his sense of pride not only at the physical endeavour but also that he was helping people. Children are by nature, I believe, altruistic. They like looking after things and people they think need help and they like to be doing the right thing. Just ask any woman who has had to eat her way through a ‘special’ Mother’s Day breakfast of burnt toast and three centimetres of orange juice in bed.
We are also, as a family, emergency hosts through Refugees at Home. They call it ‘emergency hosting’ because we can only really have people to stay for short stints. But that still means that over the last few years, several people from Sudan and Afghanistan have come to sleep on our sofa bed or in my garden office for a week or two, in order to avoid rough sleeping. We have been the alternative to homelessness, the stop gap, nothing more. And every time it has been wonderful. Eighteen-year-old boys, far from their own families, have played football with my son, quiet, thoughtful young men have prayed barefoot in my garden surrounded by ice, some have stayed in touch and celebrated with us as they pass exams and got degrees and marked their own festivals.
It was interesting, while sitting on a small bench at my son’s school this week to watch a play about a middle eastern refugee family being ostracised by small town residents and businesses - the nativity is, after all, a story about political tyranny, migration and healthcare (as well as the shepherds, donkeys and all that myrrh of course) - it dawned on me that the whole point of the Christmas story is perhaps one of valuing humanity above all else. Certainly above acrylic socks and smart watches and £70 face balms. It made me very glad that organisations like Refugees at Home exist.
Like everyone, I could be doing much, much more, of course. I know of local organisations who cycle around every week delivering essential supplies to known rough sleepers; I know of rape crisis centres that need volunteers; I have friends who run music workshops for vulnerable migrants; I know other mums who organise baby banks for clothes and toys; we have neighbours who litter pick and dig ditches and care for our local nature reserves; there are mental health charities that need phone volunteers and hospices that need fundraisers and charity shops that need staff. There will be these places where you live too, of course. And we would all have more time to help them if we spent less time clicking through shopping websites or trawling through the high street assaulted by Slade and Wham! at every corner buying things.
I am neither wise, nor a man. But this Christmas I will rest, be joyful and be merry. And that’s good enough for me.
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