What Would Jesus Buy?

Before you engross yourself in this month's entry, I want to make you aware of two things. The first is that, in the wake of my lengthy tirade against the Catholic Church last month, I endeavoured to limit this entry to a modest 800 words. Excluding the complimentary italicised paragraph I furnish my entries with, I think I did quite well, and intend to persevere with this goal in the coming months. The second is that, seeing as it is almost Christmas AND we are about to enter the second decade of the 21st century (a truly momentous occasion), I have provided a second, light-hearted piece, to take your weary minds off the subject of exams/financial difficulties/crippling loneliness (delete as appropriate). Anywhat, without further ado...

I find myself surprised, if not a little frightened, by the clarity with which I recall writing my last December entry. It may have been almost twelve months ago, but it retains a firm grip on my oft sieve-like recollection. I had written it a few days after Christmas, and had relocated to my own room to avoid as best as possible the testosterone laced roar of the new Colin McRae X-Box 360 rally game. Suffice it to say that mere load-bearing walls provided less than ample soundproofing, and I had to resort to further measures, namely listening to the Hold Steady at volumes which would have shattered the vertebrae of a lesser man. Writing that particular entry, I was in the midst of the festive period, with a substantial number of pub visits behind me, and the much anticipated Comrie New Year celebrations approaching. This year, I write to you from Edinburgh, a few weeks prior to the big day, on the commercialisation of Christmas . . .

Personally, I love Christmas, and I would marry New Year’s Eve, and consummate our union in the most lurid fashion, if such perversions were legally or physically possible. I understand the widespread condemnation of Christmas as having been whored out to corporations, or hijacked by supermarkets and television networks for the purpose of vast profits. One would struggle, perhaps, to argue that the traditional values of the holiday have not been eclipsed by materialism and commercial gluttony. Every year, the well-meaning piety of little old ladies from quaint country parishes rails ineffectually against the unstoppable money-machine that is capitalist holiday mirth and revelry as facades of yuletide humility crack under the weight of heathen materialism. I know all this and I agree that it is the contemporary reality, but acknowledgement of this does not place me in the “we-must-uphold-the-traditional-principles-of-Christmas” lobby. I, personally, don’t mind the commercialisation of Christmas, at least not as it is defined by those who denounce it.

The basis for the contempt shown by many towards Christmas in the twenty-first century is that the celebration of love, charity, peace and global brotherhood, which Christmas propagates, is dying. The multi-national corporations, those fiscal vampires, have Christmas held firmly in their vice-like jaws, and every year their razor-edged canines increase the pressure on the jugular of human generosity and kindness. I’m not certain this is true. I am certain that these corporations monopolise on the holiday season, heaving great tides of cash into advertising and the development of jazzy new gadgets, but I’m not sure this has destroyed Christmas. I like to think we, the public, are rather more intelligent than to allow our concepts of love and giving to decay under the attrition of Coca-Cola adverts. And I think I’m correct in that assumption.

So, what, exactly, is wrong with buying a loved one an iPod for Christmas? Why shouldn’t you buy your dad a Rolex? What moral incentive could you have for deciding that you probably shouldn’t buy your ten year old son a bike, or your teenage daughter a designer handbag? I’m being appallingly sexist here, of course; ten year old boys can also like handbags . . . I saw it on Channel 4 . . .

Some people would, genuinely, have you feel guilty for going shopping and buying lots of expensive gifts for your friends and family. Having quickly Googled the subject to discover what the internet-using world thinks, I discovered that an American journalist by the name of David Lawrence Dewey, believes that those who enjoy such gift-buying experiences have “somehow lost what Christmas is truly about.” This was in response to the views of a certain twenty-four year old Becky, from Florida. Becky writes: “I really love going shopping through the malls. With so many things that you can choose from, I sometimes have a hard time deciding what to buy. I just love Christmas because of the gift buying.” The image in your own head most likely echoes the image in my own. Becky is probably unnaturally slim, has been spoiled from the moment of her conception, has artificially blonde hair of blinding hue, and could quite possibly construct a revolutionary and ironic piece of sky-scraping architecture literally using her vast horde of credit cards. Such is the stereotypical, materialistic American woman. It would be quite understandable, even predictable, if you, being British, thought this woman rather a tasteless hussy. Indeed, the only representative from our fair isle of Albion, is forty-two year old Rochelle. Her views resound thusly: "Christmas used to be a very special time in England, however, the American corporate commercialization of Christmas hit England about five years ago, how sad that we have relinquished our spirit of tradition to the way of commercialization.” A Daily Mail reader if ever there was one.

Conflicting views, then, from both sides of the Atlantic puddle, but I must say I find myself more affected by the simple, naive delight of Becky than the gaseous shroud of ignorant national pride oozing from the nauseatingly sentimental Rochelle. Becky may be materialistic, but she appreciates the fun of Christmas. Rochelle seems to think we live in “A Christmas Carol”. The joy, the satisfaction, of purchasing for someone, something you know they will enjoy, what is wrong with that? Who am I; who is Mr. Dewey, or Rochelle, to criticise her? To reject her enjoyment of the season based on some presumption of a selfish incentive, that is pompous, self-serving and not in the least generous and loving.

Consider, gentle reader, the concept that Christmas is a time for fun. It may be a season of love, kindness, and giving, of family, friends and loved ones, but that makes it a celebration, above all, of life, and what is life without fun? What is life without unnecessary furnishings of pleasure? Superfluous spending once a year does not necessarily equate to mindless, corrupted consumerism. Did not the man himself, in honour of whom mankind established this celebration, say “Judge not, lest ye be judged”? This Christmas, then, do not criticise the man who gorges his ample form on turkey, wine and chocolate, and who falls asleep during the queen’s speech. Spare the hardworking mother of two your disdain as she sets about trying to locate a Nintendo Wii for her thrilled children to unwrap on Christmas morning. Withhold your scorn for myself and my friends, who will, doubtless, venture into the warmth of a pub rather than a Help the Aged fundraiser. We are, none of us, bad people. We merely desire a short period once every twelve months when we can enjoy ourselves with friends and family, and when we students can receive much-needed financial cushioning in the form of cheques from obscure relatives.


I shall conclude by wishing one, all, and some, an appropriately merry Christmas.

Jamie

A Glimpse of the Future...

The following is taken from an article in The Times, Monday 30th November 2089...

"Here follows the obituary of Jamie Lamb Esq., composed lamentably early by the hand of his self-proclaimed illegitimate son, Frederick Archibald James Lamb, who never met the man in person, yet considers the lasting intensity of his father’s spiritual imprint source enough from which to draw the following:

* The fields of literature, micro-blogging, social criticism, woolly liberalism and, most acutely, basket weaving, have each been shaken to their very foundations and robbed of an inestimably bright spark by the recent passing of the much renowned, revered, and reproached Jamie Lamb. Above and beyond his ample collection of academic suffixes, are to be found his other, lesser known, titles, Reverend Father (the result of a colourful misunderstanding upon visiting an east-African village of less than lenient Catholicism), and Duchess of Gloucester, which aptly explains itself.

Lamb’s years at Crieff High School, professed in his best-selling autobiography to have been some of the most enjoyable of his life, were marked by scandalous social indecencies of Wildian proportions. His many enemies and critics have claimed that more than one young man left Crieff High School with the deepest of emotional scars resulting from Lamb’s ruthlessly domineering persona and heavy-handed authoritarianism, and one needn’t excavate the well publicised incident of September 2006, when a promising fifth-year girl was quite literally blinded by the man’s proficiency at Scrabble. The suspicions of supernatural, even diabolic, assistance voiced by local Parishioners were irreversibly muted by the tragic series of gas explosions which ripped through the otherwise sleepy tourist town a mere twenty-four hours before the conclusion of the official enquiry, any testimony of Lamb’s nether-worldly dealings perishing in the resultant flames.

Leaving Crieff in a dust-cloud of teenage pregnancy two years later, Lamb made the move to Edinburgh, which he was to consider his home even when spending much of the year in Oslo. Reading English Literature, he absorbed many of the greatest works in the English language. However, his extraordinary metabolism, the much speculated secret to his trim, muscular physique, was not limited to the processes of his more base organs, and the accumulated repository of knowledge which should have served him well in future life, in fact slipped through his desperately clenched academic buttocks and passed down the u-bend of inescapable memory loss. A life of bluffing, ad-libbing and sexual favours was therefore the only one which would ensure him success, and he monopolised on his late-blooming physical beauty as shamelessly as any back-street whore-biscuit.

Having been instructed by his father in the ways of hard work and honesty in his formative years, he was disowned by his immediate family for a dubious act of trade-unionism at the age of twenty-four. He was to spend the next three years travelling Europe undertaking research on behalf of the British Government. The resultant treatise, "E.U. Subsidies and their Effects on Sustainable Agriculture in Hungary and Romania", was to be his first, but certainly not his last, academic paper to receive global infamy for its border-line satanic undertones.

His health irreparably damaged by the twin rigours of national scandal and a gruelling four year divorce, Lamb executed an ignoble retreat into the life of a Daily Mail theatre critic, an embarrassment of such towering severity that, within two weeks of accepting the post, he had lost all those among his former friends who had remained loyal through his previous troubles.

One of Lamb’s less than generous reviews elicited some level of fury in the virgin breast of a practically pre-pubescent female playwright. The woman scorned him and, in an interview with the Daily Mail itself, berated him with the catalytic phrase: “Why don’t you have a go at writing a fucking play then if you’re so fucking clever?” At the behest of this disgruntled lesbian (as Lamb was to leak to the press), he was to compose his first dramatic work, entitled “The Archbishop of Canterbury: A Tale of Two Wardrobes”, for which he received extensive critical acclaim. His subsequent works, comprising six plays, four novels, an autobiography, two volumes of poetry and the script for a proposed Broadway adaptation of “Mein Kampf”, remained in print throughout his life, and contracts have been flown to the German embassy in New York to await inevitable signing.

A life, then, plagued by suspicions of devilish association, sexual and academic infamy, but illuminated by his latter day contributions to the arts, Jamie Lamb’s was one of drama from its humble beginnings to its untimely end, choked by a pair of soiled dungarees. The death is being treated as “suspicious”, and the rights to a Blockbuster biopic are presently being fought over by Universal Studios, Warner Brothers and New Line.

God speed, Jamie. God speed... *

The Duchess's belongings are to be sold at charity auction next Friday, at a time as yet unconfirmed by a rather perplexed King William."



The future, gentle reader... We never know, do we? My Wikipedia article is considerably worse...

Jamie