The Rural Voice, 1998-12, Page 10can -con
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6 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Old attitudes battle new at Christmas
It's Christmas season and many
people object to the commercialism
that has invaded a holiday built
around an event that had everything
to do with love and nothing to do
with money. And yet the commercial
aspects of Christmas arc more a
reflection of our
society than the
spiritual ones. In
the 1990s we
are what we
spend.
Where
humans are
involved, the
pendulum of
events seldom
swings half -way
and so we've
gone from an
extreme of
worrying about
human needs,
no matter what
the cost, to a market obsessed
economy that values people only for
what is in their pocketbooks. You
don't hear leaders talking about the
needs of people but of the need of
consumers. So if I'm buying some
good or service, people are supposed
to be solicitous of my wants and
desires, but if I'm not spending, I
have no real value in today's society.
The corollary to this kind of
philosophy is that the more I spend,
the more important I am while the
less I have to spend, the less vital I
am to society. So we see that banks
don't even want to have bank
accounts of people on welfare and
that the federal government feels a
tax cut for income earners is a more
important way to spend the surplus in
the Employment Insurance fund than
giving more money to the unemploy-
ed, for whom the insurance fund was
set up.
Christmas was the centrepiece of
a whole Christian philosophy that
was based on loving self sacrifice
("for God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten son that he
who believeth in him shall have
everlasting life"). There was a moral
code involved in Christianity,
including a requirement that we don't
do just what we want.
But our marketplace philosophy is
so much easier to live by: the only
limit to any human activity is that it
makes a profit. Right is almost
anything that lets you make a profit.
Wrong is living a lifestyle that makes
you a burden on socicty.
And if, for instance, we
consumers hold views that aren't in
the best interests of commerce, even
after persuasive advertising
campaigns, companies can simply
institute programs to "educate" us
until the offending moral viewpoint is
overcome.
And yet for all that the shopping
frenzy of Christmas typifies the
values of our society is at this point in
history, the goodness of humanity
seems to seep through at this timc of
year. While people can literally get in
fist -fights over some scarce toy they
simply "must" have for their child,
we also are at our most generous at
Christmas. Despite how much they're
shelling out for gifts and decorations
people are more likely to find money
to give to the poor at Christmas than
at any other time.
In fact the pure marketplace
thinkers must be torn at Christmas.
On one hand, it is the height of
consumer spending for the year
which, for them, is good. But on the
other hand the one time of the year
when anti -commercialism still seems
to be in vogue is at Christmas. At this
time of the year greed isn't a good
thing but a vice to be overcome, as
Scrooge was taught in A Christmas
Carol. The poverty of Joseph and
Mary who had to stay in a stable, is
celebrated, instead of being the
subject of angry diatribes about
people who should just get their acts
together and get off the streets.
At Christmas the two sides of
human nature seem at war with each
other. Will we become only our
pocket books or will the wonderful
human loving emotions of Christmas
force their way back into our society?
Despite its commercialism, Christmas
is one of the times that gives me hope
for the future on the "human" part of
humanity.0
Keith Roulston is editor and
publisher of The Rural Voice. Ile
lives near Blyth, ON.