And Another Thing...: God Bless Us, Every One
...The merchants are still making yuletide pay, as tradition urges us to buy more greetings cards than ever before, and expensive but useless gifts to hasten the depletion of the world's material resources and add to the planet's ever-growing garbage tips, and the merchants of death continue
to profit from massive arms sales at Christmas...
Arthur Loosely casts a sober eye on the season of spend, spend, spend.
**
Christmas time is here, by golly,
Disapproval would be folly.
Deck the halls with chunks of holly;
Fill the glass and don't say "when".
Tom Lehrer, the American humorist, song-writer and Harvard professor summed it up pretty well, I think.
For anyone who is may not be familiar with Lehrer's prodigious output of uplifting hymns and ballads for the modern age, perhaps I should mention that he was also responsible for the jolly apocalyptic anthem, 'We will all go together when we go', written and recorded in the coldest days of the cold war when the relentless countdown of the nuclear clock appeared unstoppable. He also wrote and recorded that charming ballad about the innocent Sunday pastime of 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park'.
His seasonal lines, 'Angels singing from on high tell us to come out and buy,' and 'God rest ye, Merry Merchants, may ye make the Yuletide pay,' remind us of the true meaning of the festive season in the modern age.
When I hear the church bells ringing at midnight on the 24th of December each year, summoning the faithful to Midnight Mass, I get that same cold feeling in my stomach as I am sure I would have felt had they tolled in the dark days of WW2, when their use in Britain was reserved specifically to announce that the predicted invasion of our homeland had begun. Fortunately that did not happen and we didn't hear the bells, but the world has not yet seen the peace and human understanding for which so many fought and gave their lives.
The merchants are still making yuletide pay, as tradition urges us to buy more greetings cards than ever before, and expensive but useless gifts to hasten the depletion of the world's material resources and add to the planet's ever-growing garbage tips, and the merchants of death continue
to profit from massive arms sales at Christmas, just as at any other time of the year, and lives continue to be lost needlessly, whether in the name of religion or as a consequence of those over-filled glasses.
For each note struck by the Christmas bells, how many more lives will be lost in drunken brawls? How many children will be orphaned or parents greeted by a uniformed police officer at their door informing them of a drink-driving fatality? And how many families will receive a message of condolence from the commanding officer of a loved one sent to fight someone else's war?
What will any of them have to celebrate, with an empty chair at the festive table?
One of those empty dining chairs will be mine because I'll be curled up in a favourite arm-chair, reading again Charles Dickens' enduring story, 'A Christmas Carol', and I will still be moved by the closing line from Tiny Tim, which seems a good place for me to close, too.
"God bless us, every one.''
