Driving to work I picked up a woman who’d just missed the bus. The bus stop is close to my house. She asked me if I lived close to the solo mother. I thought about it and said no I didnt think so. We chatted on and then back came this question did I live close to the solo mother… finally….. I’m so slow….. I get it…… that’s ME!
or Christmas creeps up on Easter
or I thought I’d blogged this but apparently I never got around to it (blush)
here goes:
Just before Easter an American church group was making a plea for contributions to poor children’s easter baskets. The camera panned to such a basket and there in non-recyclable plastic were a collection of toys and, presumably, chocolate goodies.
What the? Stop the insanity! Why would you encourage the children of poor people to think that three or four months after crippling consumerist Christmas there’s another credit card celebration. Come on! It’s bad for kids to keep getting something for nothing. It’s bad for parents to have to respond to another financial demand. And why would a church group of all things be promoting the blurring of Christmas and Easter???
Capitalism is built on exponential growth. Exponential growth is highly
unstable…. so, therefore, is capitalism.
There is a lot of evidence that Christmas does us more bad than good. Family violence rises, and people report higher levels of debt, loneliness and depression. Interestingly domestic violence has shown a regular decrease in April for a number of years:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/2321790/Experts-baffled-by-April-dip-in-family-violence
So I think there is a case to not mess with Easter until we know more about why there is some correlation with a positive indicator. In fact rather than buying into yet more consumerism maybe we should be winding the clock back a bit. I’m writing this the day after Good Friday in which I successfully did not eat chocolate. You read it right! Largely this is because I’m feeling blobby enough: having succumbed to impulse purchases of chocolate on and off since Christmas as that’s when the eggs come out. Just as October sees the first bloom of tinsel at my supermarket, New Years day seems to spark a laying out of the Cadbury cream eggs (actually I like caramel).
I’m a person who drives more than she should. I barely manage to keep up with burning the calories I consume at breakfast, lunch and dinner. These eggs and other treats that come my way at work morning teas and get-togethers seem to settle round my midriff like a sort of anti-life preserver.
The effects of Easter haven’t just registered with me. A nutritionist is complaining about the size of some of the Easter eggs on sale:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2328606/Easters-chocolate-excesses-anger-nutritionist
Easter, as I understand it, has it’s origins as a spring ritual. It’s about looking out the window after the hardship of winter and celebrating survival and new birth. The egg is symbolic for its promise of new beginnings, new life and fertility. And then the chocolate industry got involved. Easter slotted in rather well with the Christian celebration of Jesus death and (new life) resurrection. A few thousand years of paganism, a few of christianity and somewhere in there the happy advent of the hot cross bun as a result. But lets leave it there. I’m all for fun rituals that remind us of something but those which only encourage empty expenditure need to be questioned. We have had enough credit trouble lately.