Climate and Christmas
This is a very tricky time for those who are engaged with the reality of climate crisis and the many layers of crisis and collapse that we are living in and facing.
It is hard to celebrate when you are living with the certainty of collapse and people around you seem to be refusing to believe it. The shops are now full of extra plastic, Black Friday is encouraging everyone to spend and spend on more unsustainable stuff and launch the Christmas shopping period. If you are a parent of young or youngish children then there is a lot to navigate. It is already so painful and complicated to hold their childhood as precious when you are so full of fear, to smile at their dreams for ‘when I grow up’ while your heart is breaking and shaking. At this time of year we are thrown into even more dissonance with the crazy world around us. How are we supposed to get through even an ordinary shop for basic food without screaming with rage and throwing all the obscene plastic shitty toys around the place and shouting at the shopkeeper, the people around you, ‘Have you got no idea what is going on?’
Christmas is an opportunity for all the messed up capitalist madness to turn up the volume. Happy happy, don’t be a Grinch, what are you doing for Christmas, have you started your Christmas shopping yet? What are you giving your children? Mum can I have a massive plastic castle or Dad why can’t I have presents like my friends?
Then there’s your family, all the traditions and the complicated relationships. Expectations of everyone getting together and behaving in the way we have always done, don’t talk about politics, be nice to your racist uncle Bob, be respectful to grandmother. Why do you have to be so extreme, pushing your opinions down everyone’s throats? We have always had turkey, you used to like it. I can’t believe you are even complaining about the toys in the crackers that we are sweeping into the big bin bag full of unrecycled wrapping. Can’t you just enjoy yourself for once? Do you have to spoil everything? This is a time for relaxing and chilling, for sharing and caring, for peace on earth.
Peace on earth? Are you joking? What a mockery of a dream. Survival would be great, peace a massive bonus. This gap is terrifying. How can people carry on as if everything is fine, as if every bit of our ‘celebration’ wasn’t at the expense of people in other places whose lives are not valued by capitalism except as low wage labour or inconvenient hurdles to using up every last natural resource for profit.
Smile, be nice, it’s Christmas, it is only once a year, just let us have this.
Then there is all the history to deal with. The years and years of Christmas tradition, memories of special times and lonely ones. Maybe you were embraced by your family and cosied around a warm fire with blankets, hot chocolate and twinkling lights, or maybe this was the yearly torture of standing out in the cold looking into the advent calendar windows at other people’s togetherness, bracing as your parents drank themselves into fights or got overwhelmed by their uncoping. The echoes of this are there every year as we hear the same songs and the same stories.
It is a time of traditions and we know where that has got us. Any meaningful traditions have been carefully held by the earth keepers, water protectors, the indigenous folk who still know how to celebrate in meaningful life preserving ways. They are holding on despite the onslaught of white supremacy and theft of their cultures. In the industrial economies of individualism we have been co-opted into being customers, not community.
I think we need to talk about this more, those of use who are holding the care and awareness of what is happening around us and around the world. We need to find company in our rage and fear, in our cynicism and exhaustion. We need to find new ways of not just facing but even enjoying this time of midwinter.
On Tuesday 6th December 2022 I am holding a live Zoom call for anyone who would like to get together and talk about this.
Please click here for more details and to join us