It’s different for me now. Once upon a time, when I was a little boy, Christmas was magic … and then, after I wandered into adulthood, it was just a pain in the ass. The insipid inescapable music, the TV commercials, the grueling weather-inflicted travel to get somewhere by plane or train or bus or car, and of course the shopping, oh God, the shopping, like a scene out of Gladiator. My wife works retail, and has come home every night since Thanksgiving looking like a WWI soldier staggering out of Belleau Wood. It gets worse every year.
The pendulum swung back, however, when my little daughter figured out what was going on. “There’s this big blinking tree in the living room … and brightly-wrapped boxes keep appearing under it … and I get to tear those open … and there are toys inside! And then all our friends come over! And then we eat! Holy crap, this is so awesome!” She met Santa for the first time last week, and it was like a job interview: “Have you been a good girl?” followed by, “Yes. Yes, I have.” I am seeing Christmas through her eyes, and I’ll flat-out admit, it makes me a little dopey.
And then I pause, and wonder what it is I am promoting when I inculcate my daughter with the odd mythology of the season. See, sweetie, a long time ago this very special baby was born to a mother who never had sex, and when he grew up he could walk across water and wake up dead people, and then a bunch of mean Romans nailed him to a crosstie for telling people to be nice to each other, but then he came back to life and went home, so now we worship a German guy in a red suit with a white beard and a herd of deer while buying stuff we can’t afford in order to salvage the mirage that is our current economy … and if you think that’s odd, let me tell you about Easter. Want some chocolate?
Yeah, I look forward to that conversation. Daddy, is Santa Claus real? Yes, dear, just as real as capitalism.
Say I want to buy her a Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, or maybe some Pokemon gear, or some Playskool stuff, or a Tonka truck, or a Nerf ball. I’d be giving my money to Hasbro, which made $4 billion in sales in 2014 alone. How? Easy. They sell cool toys … manufactured in China by migrant workers earning pennies in dismal, brutal conditions. Mattel, which earned $6.3 billion in 2014, likewise outsourced their manufacturing to China in 2002, leading to a recall in 2007 of 18 million products because they were coated in lead. Disney, the undisputed world heavyweight champion of selling to kids, is also a grand fan of overseas outsourcing, and is complicit in sweatshop manufacturing of their products hand in hand with Mattel.
What was the best thing you ever got for Christmas? What was your favorite toy as a kid? Mine was a Boba Fett figurine from the original Star Wars franchise, hands down the coolest action figure ever made. His head fell off after years of vigorous play, and now he’s in a landfill somewhere. I never knew who made him, or where he was made, or how. I never asked. I was a kid, and Boba Fett was badass, and that was that.
Hold your favorite toy in the palm of your mind’s eye. That, right there, is the US economy today. A fancy dream, well-constructed but ultimately hollow, all myth and no reality. You love it, because you were taught to love it and because it fed your dreams, but it represents a faltering fiction we can no longer afford. An economy that seeks survival by way of people running through plate glass doors once a year to buy slave-labor products they don’t need is not an economy. It’s a scam, and a dangerous one.
My daughter will sack the small castle of presents awaiting her this morning. She’ll likely enjoy the wrapping and boxes more than the toys, and I will enjoy her enjoyment … and then wonder how many tears fell on her new favorite toy, shed by the worker who made it. Christmas was once about a baby. Now it’s about brute economic survival, and the toys required to beguile us from seeing the situation for what it is.
God help me, but I do still love Christmas, and love it all the more for how much my little girl loves it, too. The fantasy, however, needs to end. It’s past time to let love, imagination and joy shine through. Those toys are free, and not just for children.
Merry Christmas, all.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy