Mean-spirited, joyless Scrooge Patrick Vessey (LPUK Unofficial) snarls bitterly at the spirit of Christmas; turning on retailers of Christmas gifts, and their financial associates, he says:
Rather than paying 200% or 300% APR for sh*t you don’t need, ever thought about not buying it in the first place?
At last!
Of course people in the UK should be completely free to run themselves into catastrophic debt by spending vast sums on status-indicatingly expensive gifts, seasonal illuminations by the kilowatt and the medical services germane to a fortnight of attempted suicide by chocolate overdose. Of course they should. And they should expect subsequently to suffer the consequences thereof, etc.
But the further away from me that they are when they do it, the happier I shall be. In richer times Mrs. Underclass and myself used to seek asylum from the ‘festive season’ in a friend’s lonely, more-or-less-restored cottage, at the end of half a mile of low-grade Land-Rover track somewhere in Pembrokeshire. It was refreshingly peaceful (if, on occasions, something of a survival exercise; an outside chemical khazi is perhaps amusing in the summer, but less so in 15 degrees of frost; a passing fox was astonished at the depth and scope of human masochism).
Every year, at about this time, someone from the Retail Industries Federation (or whatever it’s called) appears on the wireless to make this year’s demands. I remember a few years ago that the spokesman demanded an average outlay of £800 per person in the UK, “or we’ll have to start laying people off.”
One could go on (and on, and on). The whole exercise is an elaborate blackmail. Hand over (x) amount, Buster, or your kids’ll shop you to Esther Rantzen.
If ever there was something which deserved a boycott, it’s the Consumerist Christmas.
My Xmas consists of pulling up the drawbridge, extending a cordial two fingers to the rest of the world and sustained immersion in my own rarefied delights… :)