As always, Crikey stands ready to expose wrongdoing without fear or favour. And in our view, it’s time the divisive, sinister figure of Santa Claus was exposed.
This uninvited, nocturnal distributor of gifts based on some arbitrary analysis of whether the recipients have been “good” or “bad” is anything but the benign, avuncular figure he would have us believe. Master of an enslaved workforce kept in, literally, Arctic conditions, Santa presides over a vast surveillance state that must make the National Security Agency green with envy, enabling him to monitor the behaviour of every child and enforce a reactionary code of servile obedience to authority — one plainly intended to inculcate lifelong habits of unquestioning docility to traditional authority. Who appointed Santa? To whom is he accountable? Who provides the funding needed to maintain such a colossal planetary panopticon?
There are no answers to these questions — and you’ll never find such questions in any Christmas cracker.
Santa perfectly symbolises the fundamental lie of capitalism: a privileged old white male authority figure doling out material goods as part of a global-scale marketing scheme, as if to suggest capitalism, far from being robbery on a global scale, is somehow related to generosity and charity. He has even appropriated the sound socialist colour of red for his uniform in an effort to obscure his true role in the kyarchy.
Santa stands discredited, and it is time he was called out on social media and on other forms of true citizen democracy — hashtag #hohoNO. Let the Yule-volution begin.
Could the Turnbull government’s insistence on giving us coal for Christmas their way of telling us we’ve all been naughty children? 🙁 #hohoNO
Go home, grundle, though good & faithful scribe. You’ve done Trojan work this year and clearly need to get (more) shitfaced to cope with the horrors ahead in 2016.
In my experience of anklebiters, rugrats and far too many “adults”, Claws isn’t uninvited, millions of letters demand his attendance, laden with gee-gaws, do-dads & fingimajingles.
Well said Crikey. For a number of years now my wife and I have donated a sum to a charity rather than participate in this absurd ritual of sending Christmas cards to folk I have interacted with through the years. Rather I would take the time to pick up the phone and have a chat at various times through the year. Lest we be accused of total Grinch behavior, I should add, we participate wholeheartedly in a holiday if possible, with family and friends and always buy direct family presents but avoid the Christmas Card rip off. #hohoNO