My Xmas

 

I remember a time when advent calendars had little windows with a picture behind. I remember a time when bars of chocolates were what you bought for Christmas and our father would ask on Xmas morning, at some ridiculous time, after we had opened our present and stocking filled with nuts, fruit and a little tin of toffees with a picture on top, for a piece of chocolate off someone. It was Christmas!

Now we have fairies sitting on top of the ridge of high houses, without safety harnesses or a Health & Safety Officer in sight, lading tables with feasts of rich opulence, at a price.

Yes the fairy can come to your house, if you have been good of course. If you have worked all year relentlessly, to pay the mortgage, to pay the council tax and the water rates, to pay for school dinners and to run the petrol guzzling cars, which you have to have, as there are no school buses, or buses to get to work either.

The room with the laden table of food in the advertisement is quite a small room, actually it is not nearly big enough to hold the people required to eat all that food. If you were not having a couple of hundred people in to lunch on Xmas Day then your bin is going to be full. What a waste!

But none of the shops/supermarkets encouraging you to go to their store, advertising meat being halved and halved again in price to draw you in, actually care if you eat the food or bin it. They see their job as selling it to you and making their profit. Do they care if they make you ill with over indulgence or a fatty liver? Of course not, they will then sell you the pills to help you slim.

How can you have reports of people being too fat and allow the advertisements to encourage people to overeat constantly?

The number of people who will be ill at Xmas through trying to recreate the dream is probably staggering. Stores just hope you get the shopping in before succumbing to exhaustion, but make sure you stock up on paracetemol.

For you see when people recreate the dream, the dream that is supposed to make them into beautiful people, supposed to make them feel a million dollars, supposed to give them the luxury they deserve in this life, they are suddenly left bereft; they do not feel as the illusion told them they would; they feel worse than ever and yet they are  in that dream. The fridge is stacked with party food; the presents won’t fit into any hiding place; they are afraid to look at the credit card bills and they feel horrid.

It was not supposed to be like this.

But the supermarkets and shops have made their profit, their tills rang out with Christmas cheer. Is this all that matters to society today?

I heard some Xmas carols being sung on the television and rushed into the room to watch, as I love carols; what did I find, an advertisement for bingo. I was devastated, carols are not supposed to get you into debt or make you into a gambler; I thought they were pretty pure.

No Xmas is not what it used to be and the pressure now to fulfil everyone’s dreams at this time of year puts insurmountable pressure on the most vulnerable.

You see everyone is persuaded by the clever advertising that they only have to play the game and they can be a winner too. However for every winner there have  to be millions of losers who lose their stake so one person can win. What are the odds for always being a loser? Pretty high? Yet you have to try or you have made yourself a loser. No I think you have made yourself a winner, for I have no intention of joining a pyramid scheme whereby they take my stake, live well off it and then toss some of it to one person and leave me with nothing. No thank you very much, I will forgo the one in ten million chance of me being that winner by hanging on to my stake and buying myself something nice with it.

It is all to do with expectations. If you constantly expect what you are told you deserve then you are going to be disappointed. Life does not work like that and it is very unfair, so make your own decisions, decide what you will eat for xmas and get it and enjoy, but please do not fill your house with food that you do not have a chance of eating and remember those who visit food banks and are in danger of losing their homes. For it is said that a huge percentage of the population of this country are one pay check away from disaster. Just one months wages going missing and most families would never recover.

Think before you buy. One day, just one day and the shops will reopen. I much prefer something fresh after Xmas than opening a fridge full of decaying food that has cost you an arm and a leg, knowing you should not have bought it all but being unable to resist the illusion. Think! Think! Think!