So that was Christmas

With the festive season having come once more to its close, it is perhaps a good time to reflect on what it delivered. This was my first Christmas in the UK. Sadly, it was not an experience I look forward to repeating. Never mind the wind, the rain and the fog; it was the spirit that put the wind out of my sails.

I walked into the high street a couple of days before Christmas and into the worst atmosphere I've been in in a long time. Everywhere people were rushing about, stressed and tired, making last minute purchases for those friends and family who would be receiving presents this year. Many of which I daresay would be neither needed or wanted by their recipients. But that, apparently, is not the point. It is the expectation of giving and receiving that drives the whole affair. The consumerfest.

And if I thought that was bad, then I had another think coming. The day after Christmas the sales began, and the pre-Christmas shopping rush was now made diminutive by what seemed to me a display of uninhibited greed. Buying for the sake of buying, 'because it's cheap', because it's new. Carrier bags galore. Landfill waste galore.

We are in desperate need of a change of heart. Step back for a moment and look at this in perspective. Across continents millions of people face a battle against hunger on a daily basis. A battle against need. The world of plants and animals also suffers, silently, unable to raise a voice in protest, unable to strike a chord in the collective human heart. When we see images of this suffering we are moved. But then we go back to daily life, to be blown helplessly in the perennial winds of our own petty desires. Our battle in the developed world is against want.

It is a battle that can and, I believe, ultimately will be won, individually as well as collectively. But the question is whether the lesson will be learnt the hard way, or by paying heed to the warnings that already wrap a dense and oppressive fog around us.