Christmas and the Polar Bear In The Room
Sophie Lombardi
Are you finding Christmas a little less sparkly this year? Like lots of people I am feeling far from twinkly due to the fact that our country will be run by a polar bear for the next five years. However, there are quite a few other factors making me feel more like a grumpy grinch than ever before.
Christmas lights are magical and the more kitsch, flashy and gaudy the better in my book. However, it is impossible to admire them without thinking ‘that can’t be good for the environment’ or ‘wouldn’t those council funds be better spent elsewhere?’. We are similarly conflicted when it comes to shopping. Giddy with excitement with my bag of loot and a little bit merry from the free mulled wine, I love a bit of late night shopping. However, we are more and more likely to ask ourselves ‘Do we really need that?’ as we load up our shopping trolleys with, lets face it, quite a lot of extraneous stuff that we have convinced ourselves we need to feed and gift to ALL THE PEOPLE. (postman, teachers, window cleaner - it goes on). Then we go home and have some festive guilt about our recklessness.
Since becoming a parent, I have come to realise that Christmas is a lot of extra work, that frequently gets undertaken by women*. There was a very valid reason that my mother would often go to bed with a headache over the Christmas period. Sorry to spoil the magic folks, but all the wrapping, shopping, cooking, decorating, planning and baking is NOT DONE BY ELVES, BUT WOMEN, getting up at 6am on Christmas morning to baste a bird. Typically men (Santa, Jesus. Elves, The Three Kings, etc) seem to get all the credit at Christmas. Lets not forget the ‘jolly Christmas songs’ and how problematic they are for women. All I want for Christmas is to never hear Mariah Carey sing about being beholden to a man in Sainsburys ever again.
Right then, now that I have unleashed The Grinch (note I haven’t even started on The Church and The Royal Family), I wish you a lovely festive week. Hopefully we can start to reform our Christmas’ to be more moderate, greener, happier and generally more meaningful. At the end of the day, it is really great to have some time off work with our loved ones, even if it is quite hard to ignore the polar bear in the room.
Sophie x
*Disclaimer: my husband does all the Christmas cooking (he will be cross if I don’t disclose this). There are lots of other woke men in the world and this sweeping generalisation may not include you.
