All posts by James W. Breckenridge

Homeless, Poverty

Response to a Letter

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First, I believe the only way to make any true headway on issues such as poverty or homelessness requires the entire community to be involved. We are speaking of very complex issues that need many new, innovative ideas so we can tease apart the separate threads making up the Gordian knot we currently have. In order to generate these ideas we must have discussion, debate and conversation. The second is that as part of the examination of these problems, issues and ideas it is a fair question to ask about my personal frame of reference. Having an understanding of my background and life experience should help readers understand what I am saying and not have misunderstandings occur, such as happened in the first paragraph of your letter.

Blame is a fool’s game. It accomplishes nothing and gets in the way of change. It would have been most beneficial to course of my life to have dealt with my mental health issues at a much earlier point in my life. I did not or could not get it together then and there is nothing I can do to change that past. I could blame myself for not having been able to act before and constantly beat myself up over that, but that behaviour accomplishes nothing. I have to let it go and accept it as one of the realities of my life I cannot change. While I cannot change what went before, I am responsible for my future mental health. I could be incredibly stupid and go back to the old behaviours that left me vulnerable to having my life trashed by mental illness. Alternatively I could choose to act in a rational and intelligent manner, accepting the reality that I suffer from mental illness. I can, by acting responsibly, choose to walk a path more to my liking. I have medication to put a bottom I can deal with on what was a bottomless pit of mental hell, tools to get me through the bad days, knowledge about my own mental health, awareness of and access to mental health resources to deal with unusual stress or problems, friends and groups for understanding and support, I have regained joy and found passion to pursue interests, issues and causes. Most importantly I have regained my ability to make choices. Hanging onto blame would only serve to anchor me in the unhealthy mental state of my past. I choose to let go and live well.

In a similar manner it is a pointless waste of time to attempt to assign blame for poverty, homelessness, addiction, mental health issues, injustices and the uncivil, selfish behaviour rampant in our society these days. There is plenty of blame to go around and absolutely no point in getting into a pointless argument about who, what, where, why or how we got into this mess. We are in it and I do not really care about blame. What I am concerned about is the future and that we as a community behave rationally and intelligently in the choices we make and the actions we take.

It is clear to me that the actions currently being untaken in regards to dealing with these issues have accomplished pretty well nothing positive while serving to add to the rolls of the poor, homeless, addicted, untreated mentally ill, victims of crime and a host of others ill-fated enough to need support. To continue current policies and behaviours expecting different results is to me behaving in a manner as insane as the insanity of an addict. What I in fact advocate, is that if we want to attain positive results (for example: cause the number of the working poor who depend on the food bank for enough food to live to go down or to reduce the number of homeless living on the streets), we must change policies and behaviours to reflect what is real as opposed to the current practice of seeing what one wants to see or believing what one wants to believe. Reality does not care what you want to see or believe it just IS. Ignoring or denying reality because you do not like, want to believe or want to acknowledge that particular reality is as pointless a waste as blaming. Refusing to face reality perpetuates current behaviours, wasting large amounts of money, resources and time to no purpose. When what you are doing only serves to increase the problems and challenges faced – it is time to change your behaviour.

Before we proceed to your points 1 thru 5 there is a question I need an answer to be able to more accurately understand the points you raise. Since I do not know you I have no real way to determine if you are narrow-minded, wilfully blind or merely uninformed. Your statements equate being homeless with being an addict which is erroneous. Before continuing to read I would suggest you familiarize with the reality of homelessness. Yes those with addictions make up a significant percentage of the homeless but they are far from all the homeless. The last figure I read, sent by another fellow citizen less than pleased with my words, was from a Toronto Star article on a study that cited addiction as the primary cause for 30% of those who found themselves living on the streets; a far cry from all the homeless. Labelling all the homeless as addicts, because some are, is no more fair than me labelling you as an unthinking, war mongering, ass-kissing megalomaniac who believes the size of his cojones is dependent on sending others abroad to kill and be killed just because conservative party leader Harper is.

It is totally irresponsible and un-Canadian for any Prime Minister to shove his nose so far up the American president’s derriere. It is beyond irresponsible to abandon our role as peacekeepers and place our soldiers in a situation where they will kill innocent bystanders and they cannot tell who the enemy is. It is insanity to spend our soldiers lives so that a bumper crop of poppies (heroin) can be raised, processed and exported to our streets to kill and addict the very Canadians our troops are pledged to protect. It is incomprehensible that any leader would think that aggressive actions, bullying and going around wrecking death and destruction make you a “player or leader” on the world stage. I cannot in any way comprehend how it is that Harper thinks the size of our military and his willingness to waste their lives and our countries treasures in military adventurism in any way enhances the size of his cojones.

On point 1 – Yes I believe in punishing crime. I do however suspect, based on your statements about “rights and freedoms” that we do have a very different view about our legal system. I believe everyone is entitled to the same “rights and freedoms”. Based on your words, you and your fellow conservatives advocate that some have or should have more “rights and freedoms” than others. Just what are the criteria you use for deciding which rights and freedoms someone should have? Where you were born, skin colour, religious beliefs? Does the amount of money you have and the size of donations to the conservative party entitle one to more “rights and freedoms” than those with less money and who vote Green? My personal beliefs is that our legal system should be as level a playing field as possible and that everyone should have the same “rights and freedoms”.

Your point that jailing pushers would solve addiction is a fallacy. Let us be perfectly clear on one point about the drug trade and that is, in one of those huge ironic twists that the Universe seems to abound in, the drug trade is the ultimate expression of Capitalism. Supply and demand is the foundation upon which the drug trade (legal and illegal) is built. No matter how many pushers you lock up, the lure of big bucks and all the things money buys ensure a ready supply of people willing to sell drugs to make the $$$. Similar to the way in which tobacco companies had and have no trouble finding people to make, distribute and sell a product causing death and suffering. If your approach to this group of issues is throwing pushers in jail, then you are doomed to failure as our society’s worship of the $$$ guaranties an endless supply of those willing to sell harmful products – of any shape or form. The only way to drive pushers out of business is to eliminate demand. This whole area of discussion demonstrates that what sounds good and appeals to ones personal world view often, when viewed rationally and through the lens of reality, will not accomplish your goal – unless your goal is to fill up prisons. We know from the experience of the USA that using incarceration to address drug use only fills up the prisons and makes rich those involved in the building and running of prisons. Yet another of those Universal ironies, another legal way to get rich from the illegal drug trade.

I have nothing against locking up pushers. I just firmly believe that for ethical, moral and spiritual values we should be concentrating our resources and time on helping the addicts as opposed to the conservatives desire to pour unlimited dollars into jailing pushers and then claiming we have no money to build detox beds. Build the detox beds, help the addicts get sober, you eliminate the demand, which eliminates the $$$ and thus the pushers. You and the conservatives may not find this approach nearly as soul satisfying as throwing lots of people in jail, but it has at least the possibility of working and it will help addicts.

Point 2: Another illustration of differing viewpoints. You see “down-and-outers” were I see my fellow human beings in pain and in need of help. As to your compassion and willingness to “give time, money and your home” – this is an important piece of what is needed to help those suffering with or from such challenges as addictions, mental health, homelessness or pure bad luck to get back on their feet. If some of the badly needed changes can be brought into being, I will be calling upon you to help execute those changes. Although there will be need of monies, properly spent, it is personal time and caring that will be the deciding factors in how successful we as a community will be in reclaiming lost lives.

This belief, that the soul of a community is determined by the involvement of citizens in volunteering, is why I also volunteer my time with organizations and activities that have nothing to do with poverty and homeless issues.

I think I will just pass on the issue of who gives more; it would be entering a pointless snake pit of definitions. Any decent accountant can build support for either side of your statement. There is far to much that needs doing and far to many who need help to waste time in semantically debates. I do not care where the giving comes from. What I do care about is that all the resources are used to take actions that efficiently and effectively produce positive results.

Point 3. I apologize for the following verbal jab but while I am much healthier mentally I do fail sometimes and this jab is just to good to pass up. Apologies. I bow to your working prowess. While I have, in a factory setting, occasionally worked 2 eight hour shifts I found that by the end of the second week I had to cut back the hours and get some more sleep and rest. As for your having “worked two eight hour jobs and sometimes three” there is nothing I can say as I always had to get some sleep and as I said by the end of the second week of 16 hour days I had to cut-back to get more rest. I could not, I would not even be willing to try, work three eight hour jobs as I have always had to get some sleep each day. No, going 24 (3 X 8) hours a day without rest is beyond me.

I must also apologize as I must have misunderstood your politics as I had thought you supported the conservative party. I must be mistaken about your supporting the conservatives since you want your taxes to go to a responsible government. On top of this you want a government to “re-steer the homeless addict through rehab into a self fulfilling job in society”. I think I will also apologize for stealing your words because, although I will drop the re- in re-steer, the goal of “steering the homeless addict through rehab into a self fulfilling job in society” is an expression of a goal I can get behind and support. So with you demanding both responsible government and sound social policy it is obvious you cannot be a conservative supporter. To be truthful, I do not see how you can support any of our current political parties using your stated criteria.

Point 4. This point forces me to take my tongue “out of my cheek”. I am not sure whether the current conservative government fooled you (and many others) completely or if you were so desperate for a responsible government that you became self-delusional. It does not matter. Let us be clear on one important fiscal point – this current conservative government does not behave in a fiscally responsible manner. Actually, they do not behave in a responsible manner in most of their actions. That aside, I base my judgement of their fiscal idiocy and irresponsibility upon my education and background – Bachelor of Commerce, Chartered Accountancy and wide experience in accounting and business. A fiscally responsible government does not cut taxes, it does not even promise to cut taxes during an election campaign. A fiscally responsible government takes every cent it can muster and applies it to reducing the government debt levels you cited. A fiscally responsible government does not tout a surplus when that surplus is an illusion. The so-called surplus exists only as long as interest rates remain low. Currently they are rising and are going to continue to rise, eventually reaching and surpassing the point where increased interest costs turn the “surplus” into debt. To increase the recklessness of this, the conservative government has committed to pour out of our coffers hundreds of billions of dollars, in following their ideology, on programs or assets that will add nothing of economic benefit to our country or its citizens.

Worse, in the pursuit of their ideology the conservative government fails to think. For example, in the area of their ideological based childcare program they failed miserably to consider what effect the additional $200 would have on the working poor. I recently heard, and agreed with, the indignation someone was feeling over hardships this unthinking, ideological policy making had. She was trying to come up with someway to overcome the disaster looming for a family in jeopardy of going hungry because the $200 placed the family over the income limits for accessing the food bank. Apparently the conservatives only worry about helping the working person who is able to donate to their party. The working poor who, needing every dollar just to survive, cannot afford to waste a dollar supporting any political party appear, in the conservative world view, to be unworthy of sparing a thought about. The conservatives are so busy pursuing their ideology they have no time to behave responsibly.

I have to admit to having no understanding of your comment citing our debt having gone to pay for a rich sheik in Asia. Should you choose to clarify what you are speaking of I would be glad to address this point. Currently that statement seems incongruous to being linked to paying for roads, hospitals or helping the homeless.

Point 5. I agree people need to be engaged in their community, province and country an a daily basis. The true problem with voting is that so many fail to vote and so many of those who do vote fail to expend the effort to actually think. They would rather just hear something they like, something they want to believe is true or promises of easy, fast fixes for difficult problems thus it is you have our current political situation. If people actually took the trouble to think and apply common sense to the issues and challenges that face us, they would ignore the existing parties and forming a new political collaboration based on acting in a responsible manner based on reality – not ideologies or world view.

As to your analogy of the bridge and ambulances: I think you are viewing the situation completely wrong. I would say that in pointing out what actually results from current policies and practices, then calling for the changes necessary to act in the manner required to help steer people into fulfilling places in society, I am standing on your imaginary bridge attempting to change the direction of travel from the disastrous path over the edge. In seeking to perpetuate the current policies and actions, to remain on the same old path onto the bridge and over the edge into the abyss, thus adding to the carnage of the pileup at the bottom of the gorge (or society), you are standing at the bottom of the gorge beside the river. Perhaps you would care to join me in switching from the old path over the edge onto a new path leading upwards and outwards.

Municipal

Reality tends to put things into perspective.

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Sigh! I hate to lose, but there was a good turnout, close to the numbers for our last municipal. Besides, it was impossible to get worked up about the vote results on Plan A when standing in the lobby of the Council Chambers looking through the bank of windows at the snow falling. I could not avoid thinking of all the people I know who would be out on the streets, homeless and trying to survive the night. Not to mention all the city’s homeless that I don’t know, but who also share the city’s streets and face the challenge of surviving the weather. Standing there watching the snow fall and remembering last year when I was on the same streets – let’s just say that it tends to put losing a vote about what are ultimately luxuries for the better off of our city’s citizens in a very different perspective.

This difference in viewpoint was driven home during a conversation with a member of city council. We were shaking hands about the outcome when I commented that I could not help thinking more about those on our city streets than I could dwell on the vote outcome. Just then the council member’s spouse came up to us and stated “that it was very nice that the “pretty” snow was falling on a weekend when it could be “enjoyed” without causing major problems”. In light of our conversation the council member winced at their spouse’s comment. This conversation did underscore the different perspective one gains when one has experienced the streets. It also underlines the willful ignorance of so many of Abbotsford’s citizens. That the spouse of a council member is so unable to see the cruel reality of Abbotsford’s streets, says something about the attitude of council, senior city staff and the citizenry at large.

We are willing to spend $85,000,000+ on buildings to play in, while others wander the city streets. Oh, I forgot – that is somebody else’s responsibility so we can ignore our neighbours plight. The city spent $300,000+ on consultants, $250,000+ on the referendum, $30,000+ (such as city workers on overtime putting back up YES signs blown down) and $60,000+ donated from supporters – but the city has not a penny to spare for those in desperate need.

We had better pay careful attention to taking a look at our values or we will find ourselves, a few years from now, a city with three fancy new buildings – and no more soul than our current behaviours demonstrate. The true worth of a City as a place to live is not in its nice buildings and the amusements it provides for residents, but in its soul and the values the community lives by.

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win,
you’re still a rat. Lily Tomlin

Municipal

Interesting things I learned at “public” meetings:

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It became very obvious that the reason that I could not get a clear idea of exactly what it is that council and city staff are proposing we build for facilities is because council and city staff have NO CLEAR IDEA of what exactly it is they will build. The know the types of facilities (entertainment center, recreation complex and art gallery/museum), they have a wish lists of what they want in those facilities (eg. Basketball court, ice surface) and they have a price they propose to pay. But as to what exactly the city will get for spending all that money – they have no idea.

They will tell you that this is because it makes no sense to spend money to come up with any kind of actual plans or hard numbers because it would be wasted if the plan was turned down. They would rather spend those dollars on a high pressure sales campaign than developing actual ideas and plans they could present to the public so they had layouts and numbers of a real nature for the public. They would appear to be so lacking in vision and leadership that vague generalities and snake-oil salesmanship is their way of operating on this and many other pressing issues facing Abbotsford.

In a nutshell they planning/proposing to put out their building types, wish lists and the price they will pay in what is referred to as design/build. They seek offers to build a facility at that price. The company then designs and builds the building. You know what it is you paid for and are getting when they are finished. You better hope their vision of the wish list and what a, say, entertainment complex looks like are reasonable close to what you thought you were getting/wanted/needed.

As I said lacking vision and leadership. If you believe that the City needs facilities you make that part of your platform at election time. You do not avoid this subject to get elected, so that you can then use access to taxpayer money, city staff and facilities to steamroll vague promises and proposals over any opposition by denying their rights of free speech and answers to questions and fool the public into thinking they have a good idea of what the final shape of these facilities will be, when nobody knows or has a good idea what the final structure will be.

You present your vision, your reasoning and your plans in the public forum and more level playing field of a municipal election. You design the facilities, hiring reputable engineers and architects; you come up with business plans, projected income or losses at which point you present this information to the citizens. Then you listen to them. The concerns are addressed or you explain why you are not going to address a particular point. Listening is the key, they have a right to be heard, to present their views and above all they have a right to access city facilities in presenting their views to their fellow citizens.
City Staff and Council are so use to ignoring citizens that even at a session they claimed was for public questions to be answered they repeatedly gave answers that did not answer the question asked by a citizen/taxpayer. Which may help to explain their time limit on questions – it provides an excuse to avoid those pesky follow up questions if the citizen tries to insist the City answer the actual question posed. Especially when the moderator is one of the city staff selling these mirages to the public.

They have no interest in explaining why the management fees paid to Global Spectrum to manage the facility are apparently not considered an expense by the city since in answering questions about operating costs, they failed to include fees paid to Global Spectrum in the entertainment facility costs. But then they also chose to ignore maintenance and upkeep costs for the facility. Perhaps they plan on using they profits they choose to imagine for the complex to pay fees, maintenance and upkeep. Which raises the question: if big profits are such a sure-fire guarantee, why is it that Global Spectrum wants a management fee? Should they, since the company speaks so blithely about big profits be rewarded via a profit sharing plan? If they are promising profits and the city is depending on a profit, should not Global Spectrum have the incentive of being compensated out of any profits, profits net of all operating and maintenance costs? Should Global Spectrum, based on their promises and assurances of profit share with the city’s taxpayers the risk that there will in fact be no profits?

It was fascinating to learn that Councilor Beck, through words out of his own mouth, sees no difference between an Abbotsford citizen and taxpayer who questions the wisdom of proceeding with such vague plans for unneeded facilities while needed facilities go un-built – and an American company wanting to build SE2 and pollute our air-shed. Personally I have no idea what this comparison was meant to mean, you will have to ask Councilor Beck. I suppose this insult should have come as no surprise in light of the distain and disregard the council and city staff has shown for anyone who would dare question their infallibility.

I was amazed to learn that the city has a fairy godmother? Leprechaun? whom magically fills and refills the reserve fund. How else is it that taking money out of the reserve fund is not spending taxpayers money – at least according to city staff and council. After all, when asked if the cost of the land should not be included in the proposed entertainment complex the question was told “No, it came out of the reserve fund” and thus was not an expense. Which begs the questions: Where exactly does this money come from if not from the taxpayers?; If it does come from taxpayers, does that not mean that buying the land was an expense paid out by taxpayers? And just how bad is the city staff’s and council’s grasp on basic financial principals that they see money in and out of the reserve as magical not revenue/expense in nature?

It is clear that what staff and council have is labels such as “entertainment complex” and wish lists but no definitive plans for the proposed facility. So what it comes down to is handing them a blank cheque for $85 million and hoping/praying. I was talking to a non-senior (pity!) staff member who was willing to listen and discuss ideas, questions and Reality about Plan A. S/he was correct what the city’s Plan A boils down to is blind faith. I just cannot support turning all that money over to a group I would not trust to build an outhouse. So I must vote NO.

Municipal

Entire Process Tainted by Conflict of Interest

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At the UCFV Plan A meeting it was very clear that Councilor John Smith, with his ties to UCFV, badly wants University status for UCFV and believes (as do many) that the entertainment complex is necessary part of UCFV’s bid for University status. The problem? As a city councilor Mr. Councilor Smith is in a position to have exerted undue influence on the entire process, from the “surveys” and “consultations” to the current slick high-pressure sales campaign.

Slanted survey questions and design; selected groups and persons to “consult”; influence and/or pressure to ensure the entertainment complex was chosen to build; a backroom deal to obtain the land from its owner; reasons found to build next to UCFV and nowhere else; pressure and promises to elicit support and backing.

Did all of this happen, some of this or none of this? We will never know, but we do know Councilor Smith was part of the process from beginning to end.

Ethical behaviour demands that someone with such a powerful Conflict of Interest, a position of influence and multiple opportunities to exert undue influence on the process and outcome declare that they are in a position of great conflict of interest, and then place wide distance between themselves and every aspect of the process use in arriving at the recommended projects.

They most certainly should not be acting as both booster of UCFV’s bid for University status, as one of the architects of Plan A and one of the slick, taxpayer funded, high-pressure salesmen for the very project(s) at the core of this Conflict of Interest.

Councilor Smith’s actions upon being in both a Conflict of Interest and a position to exert undue influence jeopardizes not only UCFV’s application for University status, but taints the entire Plan A process. The only way to cauterize this grievous wound to Abbotsford’s integrity is to start again at the beginning and carry out the entire process in a fully public and transparent way OR with a resounding and overwhelming NO vote on November 25, 2006.

Other Writers

The unbearable kitschness of Christmas

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THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE of America was up in arms in 2002 about an exhibition in Napa, California, which included the “caganer”, a traditional Catalan figurine who is placed squatting in the corner of the Christmas crib, trousers around his ankles.

Perhaps predictably, the Catholic League was offended by the presence of a defecating peasant in the holy stable. What it didn’t appreciate, however, is that the Christmas story is supposed to be offensive, and that the caganer is a reminder of the theological revolution that scandalized sophisticated opinion of the first few centuries of the Christian era: that God became human, that the sacred was no longer to be protected from the profane.

In his great masterpiece, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Czech novelist Milan Kundera develops an innovative moral vocabulary around the notion of kitsch. Kitsch, he argues, isn’t primarily about bad taste or the vulgarities of popular devotional images: kitsch is “the absolute denial of shit”. Kitsch is that vision of the world in which nothing unwholesome or indecent is allowed to come into view. It’s the aesthetics of wanting to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. Kitsch excludes shit in order to paint a picture of perfection, a world of purity and moral decency.

THE PROBLEM WITH KITSCH is not readily apparent because (by definition) the treatment of what is considered unwholesome takes place off stage. Think of those Nazi propaganda films of beautiful, healthy children skiing down the Bavarian Alps. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Of course there is. For this is a world that has been purified, where everything nasty or troubling has been eliminated. The logical conclusion of kitsch, argues Kundera, is the ghetto and the concentration camp – the means by which totalitarian regimes dispose of their shit, variously construed.

Opening the infamous exhibition of degenerate art in the summer of 1937, Hitler gave notice that “from now on in we will wage a war of purification against the last elements of putrefaction in our culture”. Kitsch turns out to be motivation to cleanse the world of pollution. It is the aesthetics of ethnic cleansing.

Kundera himself thinks theology to be the ultimate source of kitsch. He recounts how as a child an aimless thought experiment led him from God having a mouth to God having intestines – the implications of which struck the young Kundera as sacrilegious. This instant and visceral reaction against the association of the divine with the messiness of the human helps us appreciate something of the hostility of many early thinkers to the idea of the incarnation. God and the messiness of the world must be kept at the maximum possible distance. But what then of God become human? What of the word become flesh?

Even many who felt the attraction of the Christian story believed this was going too far. Convoluted ways were sought to mitigate the offence. Christ was not really human or Christ was not really divine. Others created a firewall between the sacred and the profane within the person of Jesus himself. For the second century Gnostic, Valentinius, Jesus “ate and drank but did not defecate”.

The Jesus of Valentinius is thus the kitsch Jesus. And it’s this same kitsch Jesus of sentimental benevolence that features in countless Christmas cards and community carol services. The baby in the manger now presides over a celebration of feel-good bonhomie that makes the true meaning of Christmas almost impossible to articulate. Boozed-up partygoers and proud grandparents demand the unreality of “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie”. Elsewhere Kundera writes of kitsch as “the need to gaze into the mirror and be moved to tears of gratification at one’s own reflection”. And it’s this gratifying reflection that many want to see when they gaze into the Christmas crib. Christmas has become unbearably self-satisfied.

THE CAGANER IS A REMINDER of another Jesus and another story. From the perspective of official Christian doctrine, the story of Christmas is a full-scale attack upon the notion of kitsch. Valentinius’s theology is declared heretical precisely because it denies the full reality of the incarnation. For Valentinius, Jesus only seemed human. “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see”, as the equally heretical carol puts it. Orthodoxy turns out to be vastly more radical, not because it provides a way of squaring the circle of a God-man, but because it refuses to separate the divine from material reality. God is born in a stable. The divine is re-imagined, not as existing in some pristine isolation, but among the shittiness of the world.

The temptation to disassociate the divine from material reality marks the beginnings of kitsch. For, once unhitched from the divine, the complexity of the world can be too easily by-passed and ignored. The orthodox formulation of the incarnation allows no way of avoiding politics, food, sex or money. Nor, as the Christian story of God goes on to make horribly clear, does it offer a way of avoiding suffering and death.

The problem isn’t that Christmas has become too materialistic – but rather that it isn’t materialistic enough. Kitsch Christmas is another way of uncoupling the divine from the material, thus spiritualizing God into incapacity. I am not being a killjoy attacking the kitsch version of Christmas. Three years ago, my wife gave birth to a baby boy. The labour ward was no place to be coy about the human body and all its functions. The talcum-powdered unreality of kitsch childbirth cannot compare with the exhaustion, pain and joy of the real thing.

But perhaps the most important corruption of Christmas kitsch is how it shapes our understanding of peace. This is the season where the word “peace” is ubiquitous. Written out in fancy calligraphy everywhere, “peace and good will to all” is the subscript of the season. It’s the peace of the sleeping child, peace as in “peace and quiet”, peace as a certain sort of mood. But this is not what they need in Bethlehem today. They need peace as in people not killing each other.

This sort of peace requires a stubborn engagement with the brute facts of oppression and violence – which is the very reality that the kitsch peace of Christmas wants to take us on holiday away from. How ironic: we don’t want the shittiness of the world pushed at us during this season of peace. This, then, is the debilitating consequence of kitsch. Kitsch peace is the unspoken desire that war takes place out of sight and mind – it’s the absolute denial of shit. Political leaders who are preparing for yet more fighting will be happy to oblige. Christmas has become a cultural danger to us all, not just a danger to orthodox Christianity.

Rev. Dr Giles Fraser is the vicar of Putney and lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford. This article was first published on Ship of Fools in 2002.