Joyeux Noel

I don't celebrate Christmas. It's been a long time since I wasn't turned off by the commercialisation of what is after all meant to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, a figure who by any metric began a story which in the age of horse travel was beating at the gates of power in Rome within half a century or so.

Are Vogue doing this for commercial reasons? I don't know but I can imagine some curled lips at both this and the mention Jesus' gets in the post. More over here.

Merry Bleeding Chrimbo

The idea of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ always strikes me as a good thing. Depending on who you speak to the man could well have been a freedom fighter that spoke about love and peace, the John Lennon of his times, or a rebel that upset the Jewish faith. Some people don't even think someone special existed but its a hell of a construct to insert a fictional character into history with ideas that have spread around the world and are, in many instances, not so far from some of the other major religions including the social responsibility stuff from Islam and most of the eight major precepts of Buddhism.

I'm rereading Bulgakov's The Master and the Margarita at the moment (thanks Sasha) and I'm still blown away by that scene where Pontius Pilate has a splitting headache and fundamentally doesn't want to crucify Jesus but is under enormous pressure from the president of the Sanhedrin, the high priest of Judaea to crucify this awkward vagrant philosopher and let the common criminal Barabbas go free instead, as was the custom during the Passover to commute a sentence for one individual. Its so vivid that it might well be one of my most favourite chapters in any book ever. It brings to life, a life and death decision that possibly changed the world.

Why am I talking about this? Well as I've pointed out elsewhere if you try and bring up politics and religion in general discourse today people think you're nuts. They really think you've lost the plot. Yet is it just me that looks at the insane Christmas consumption frenzy (as the planet heats up) and thinks that the rest of the world has gone nuts? Don't get me wrong I think its a great time for children along with an opportunity to talk about some the ideas that were shared a couple of millennium ago. But what we have now, is so far removed from the idea that started it all I now have no time at all for the whole Shitmas gig.

Just last night I took a scout around Beijing's Nan Jiu Ba Jie in the SanLiTun area to see if I could find any decent DJ's and sure enough I did, although I had to work my way through the usual expat dribble of crap hip hop, drunk for life anthems and low-so discourse. But on leaving one place I saw this poster and as much as I think too few women know how important top quality lingerie really is I couldn't help concluding that this poster captures the essence of Christmas in the 21st century. A self indulgent piss up with the chance for an office party leg over followed by mince pies, Christmas pudding, liquor galore and gifts all round without a hint of what the gift of giving is really all about.