BOON Magazine: Cabin Fever: Saint Of Nothing At AllWords: Dominic Knight | Illustration: Tabitha Knight
Another year has flown off into the middle distance and been burnt up in the heat of the sun, falling into the past just as Icarus crashed into the sea. In our own personal fable, the one that will be blogged about, lost in the great technical failure of 2021 and therefore wiped from the realms of human existence, Daedalus does not look down to mourn his recently deceased son, he carries on shopping for the newest high tech gadgets and gizmo’s, determined to reach the ultimate plinth of enlightenment through his personal image and wealth. Gold platted wings and all.
Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, brought forth in retaliation to the Roman festival Saturnalia, the celebration of the harvest and the beginning of the winter solstice, worship of the unconquered sun and of course, that age old tradition of man, excessive consumerism.
Around about 529 A.D, Emperor Justinian declared that Christmas would be a civic holiday and by the Middle Ages it had become an all out rampant Christian holiday through the repetitive means of false advertising and glorification of over eating and high spending.
Today, we are as far away from having an honest holiday as the day it’s meaning was changed. We no longer celebrate the winter solstice for the slow return of the sun, instead a gluttonous month of shopping ensues, sending families out into shopping centres like packs of rabid wolves, snapping at each others throats, vying for the most expensive over advertised gifts they can find.
Huge retail companies release certain products at this time of the year intentionally creating class rifts for those that could neither afford nor were quick enough to purchase them, resulting in trend bullying and increasing the crime rates for the new year. We are pummelled into the notion that what we have under the tree for our children is more important than the food in their bellies and the heat to keep them warm, and in return, depending on how you raise your child, you will get no thanks, only screams and demands of a refund because their iPad did not come with added memory or their new phone has a data limit because you couldn’t afford to spend fifty quid a month on the little shit bag. Slap your child, send it to it’s room with a copy of any book to hand and throw a brick through your television. It’s your own stupid fault for letting them become this way, and you should probably be a responsible adult and take charge before they are too old to learn any better, either that or commit yourself on the grounds that they brainwashed you and the government told you to do it. Either way, the only reason that this all still exists and won’t stop growing is because you are too stupid to realise that without you, and all the people around you, this beast, the idea of excessive consumerism doesn’t exist. If you managed to stop believing in the Tooth Fairy, Father Christmas or the fact that Metallica live under your bed, then you can alter your perceptions of what you actually need as opposed to what you are told to think you need.
If there is one thing good that comes from this faux holiday, it is the excuse to sit around for a whole day with your family, get drunk, stoned and play horrible board games until you have an argument, safe in the knowledge that deep down, you all love one another, because that’s the only thing that matters, unless you are a dumb shit, in which case, Happy Christmas.
Goodbye Weirdo 