Festive Cheer
It is, as some of you may have noticed, Christmas. To me this means a bit of a break, giving gifts and cards to some people you like, and spending time with friends and family. However, I fear a lot of people get overly hung up over the trimmings of it all, no matter what their take on the Christmas season is.
I was particularly dismayed whilst reading an article in the weekend’s FT about how shops were doing this year round, what with all the so called credit crunch and what not, about how people feel the need to splurge even though things may be financially difficult. In the article, someone from an economics research house was quoted thus (emphasis mine):
Vicky Redwood of Capital Economics said the outcome was “pretty good…given that consumers don’t have a lot to feel cheery about”. She added: “Consumers are putting off the inevitable for as long as possible.”
So spending large amounts in retail outlets on gifts is now “inevitable”? How sad. I appreciate that I’m probably a bad one to talk about what Christmas means given I generally see religion as something orthogonal to my life, but I’d like to think that even a secular view of the season would mean you’re meant to have a nice time rather than live up to the demands of the retail world. But what would I know?
I’m not anti-gift or anti-consumerism – I think it’s great to get people something nice that’ll make them happy (an opinion I note my sister shares :); I just don’t think people should feel the need to bankrupt themselves in the process. Anyway, I trust that no one I know feels they should get me something, and if they want to get me something shouldn’t worry if it’s going to cause any sort of stress!
Whilst on the topic of economics and Christmas stresses, Laura and I spotted the queues of people trying to get their xmas turkey outside a butchers (this picture doesn’t really do justice to the queue’s length, but I felt bad about taking pictures of these people stuck in the rain):
Our immediate comment to each other was that the butchers “looked like a branch of Northern Rock!” – I wonder if that in years to come Northern Rock will have earned a place in common parlance for all the wrong reasons.
Anyway, hope you all have a relaxing Christmas and New Year, and don’t worry about the GDP, I’m sure it’ll be able to look after itself.