austere debauch

"an advertisement in my sunday paper sets forth in the form of a picture the four things that are needed for a successful christmas. at the top of the picture is a roast turkey, below that a christmas pudding, below that a dish of mince pies; and below that a tin of_...'s liver salt...implied in the above-mentioned advertisement is the notion that a good meal means a meal at which you over-eat yourself. in principle i agree. i would only add in passing that when we gorge ourselves at christmas, if we do get the chance to gorge ourselves, it is worth giving a thought to the thousand million human beings or thereabouts who will be doing no such thing. for in the long run our christmas dinners would be safer if we could make sure that everyone else had a christmas dinner as well...a deliberately austere christmas would be an absurdity. thew whole point of christmas is that it is a debauch-as it was probably long before the birth of christ was arbitrarily fixed on that date..."
george orwell. as i please 66, london tribune 20 december 1946


certainly my sunday paper carries on the tradition of the christmas debauch...there have been full page color ads running in it since before thanksgiving and today's christmas edition of the new york times has ads for after christams sales at sak's fifth avenue, lord and taylor, macy's, kia, at&t wireless...on and on...retailers competing to come out on top in the commercial contests at the end of the year...well...i ate at mom's today along with my kids, sons in law, and extended kin...and i didn't stuff myself...we drew names and set a spending limit...and sat and ate and talked...took photos...said our goodbyes...and went on our separate ways...no-one felt cheated because we didn't engender unrealistic expectations the way advertisers and politicians do...we set limits and stuck to them...christmas may well have been an end of harvest/beginning of winter festival intended to utilize the foodstuffs that would not keep through the winter in an orgy of eating ... understandable when it was a matter of use it or lose it but i don't have to do that...i usually find myself in agreement with george on most things he chose to write about...he was wary of intellectuals and utopian teleologies...me too...and he had serious issues with the way politicians behaved and mangled the language to serve their deceptive ends...same page here...but not on the need to debauch at the end of the year...i don't have the religion and this isn't an evangelical rant...if it's a rant it's a rant about limits and how capitalists and their economist flunkies think we don't have any...fools and idiots...and that's on a good day...i suppose only some sort of trauma will bring that point home...you'd think the last three or four years would have left them with some inkling...seems not...happy holidays.

7:03 p.m. 25 december 2011
sak's fifth avenue even had a full page ad in the sports section...just saying