I have been to have a haircut today and for the second time on the trot my hairdresser and I got talking about Christmas. No not the “What are you doing at Christmas talk”, well we did briefly, but as she is off to Australia just after and I am just doing the usual it is neither of ours hot topic of conversation.
No what we have been talking is about excess that surrounds Christmas. Last time it was the commercials asking people to go into debt in order to get people the right present. Yes that is right, there are commercials that advertise going into debt as a positive solution! It seemed over the top to me and to her.
Today the topic was on excess drinking. A student has been knocked down and seriously injured after a “Christmas Day” event at the Students Union. You can check it out at Sheffield if you prefer but that reporting is far more sensible in my opinion than what is available at Sheffield. The quotations marks around “Christmas Day” are deliberate since it was held on 15th December and secondly its main attraction seemed to be cut price drinks. The carol service happened on 14th for instance and I did not hear of anywhere serving turkey sandwiches cheap. Is Christmas really seen by those student age as really being about getting drunk, probably very drunk?
It makes you wonder if all our festivities at this time of year are well and truly fucked up. Maybe we would be better off in a world where the story did not end with Scrooges conversion to the Christmas Spirit and we all had to be in work on Christmas day. Maybe we could do with having to get a certificate from our cleric to say that we were active Christians in order to have Christmas day off as a religious festival. I wonder if church attendance would go up if that was the case. Give any religion three days a year, to be specified by the authority of the group (maybe we would have to specify three for atheists: maybe Human Rights Day, Workers Day and Earth Day as they don’t seem to require any religious attachment. If you want other days, than those, you have to find you religious person to certify you as practising whatever belief. It would mean the withdrawal of Christmas Day, Good Friday and Easter Monday as general bank holidays. Maybe Boxing day could be attached to New Year as in Scotland.
It sounds good in principle but I just expect the excess would be spread over to New Year.
Now I am also sure the Students Union was playing to what attracts students. Cheap alcohol has long been a tool for attracting students to use the Union and I am pretty sure that if the Union lost its license it would pretty quickly be in financial difficulties despite the money the University puts in and its other enterprises. I am pretty sure as well that the encouragement to go into further debt was because in part the economy runs on debt. We have become dependent on people behaving excessively to survive as a culture. I want to suggest our culture is sick.
I tell you we have lost two things is desire and appreciation. What we have is gratification. The thing is that without desire, gratification looses it savour. Desire is the practice of developing a want, of understanding the wanting in itself to be good and a proper preparation for gratification. It is about imagining what we want, thinking it through, planning for it, finding the money, denying ourselves other things so we are ready for it. This sort of practice does not diminish the gratification but increases it and can itself be pleasurable.
Appreciation is the mirror image of desire, it comes after the gratification, when you appreciate what is given not because it means a want but for what it is. It is the looking back and enjoying memories (try doing that after a night when you are blind drunk), it is knowing not that you got anything for your desire but you chose the right one and it is the feeling of no longer having to do without. Instant gratification never gives you the sense of something truly desired being gratified, you never fully appreciate the part it plays in your life unless you have truly experienced being without it. It is savouring the flavours in the drink not just knocking it back for the fussy feelings it gives you. It is about caring for something, looking after it, because it is desired even though you have it.
