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| The spirit of things |
| Papi Menon / Jan 10, 2010, 00:44 IST |
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In any festive season, shoppers call on a higher power.
Another Christmas come and gone, and I can heave a sigh of relief that I managed to get through it without clubbing supermarket elves or ripping the fake beard and false bonhomie off a mall Santa. Christmas has long since ceased to be anything other than an orgy of consumer spending in the US. Any reference to the celebration of the birth of Christ has been carefully excised, with the anaemic “Happy holidays” replacing the traditional “Merry Christmas” as the greeting of choice. What remains is Giftmas — a celebration of the power of the credit card.
The new, improved festival comes with its own traditions and rituals, as meaningful in their own way as the ones they’ve replaced. Most important of all is the day known as Black Friday, the start of the Giftmas shopping season. It’s supposed to be the day that retail businesses across the country finally go “into the black”, presumably after wallowing in red ink the rest of the year, and that’s the ostensible reason for its name. But it could just as easily have been named for the collective black eye that consumers get while trampling over each other in the mad rush to buy five DVD players at the price of one. Nothing brings in the holiday cheer quite like a discreet elbow to a rival shopper’s ribs in a no-holds-barred contest to get the last Xbox going on sale at 80 per cent off.
One quaint ritual that I’m particularly fond of is called “Musical Parking Spaces”. This involves several crazed drivers steering gigantic cars round and round mall parking lots in a playful maniacal dance. One only has to look at the vacant glazed eyes, the bloodless death grip on the steering wheel, and the occasional hoarse cry of “Jesus!” to know that the participants in this ritual are in a state of grace, experiencing a kind of intense spiritual ecstasy. If it weren’t a dirty word, one would almost call it a religious experience.
In fact, despite the best efforts of secularists, the rituals of Giftmas are suffused with the presence of God. At one shopping mall, I heard more references to his holy presence than I ever have in a place of worship. In a most charming fashion, holiday shoppers seem to have a very personal and intimate relationship with the Almighty, addressing to him the most mundane questions related to their pursuits of the moment. I heard one shopper ask, “Oh God, could this line move any slower?” I did not hear the answer — the only booming voice from the sky was the mall PA system playing “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” — but from the angry shake of her head, I could tell that she was not pleased with God’s reply.
Another man behind me addressed his God in similar terms. “Jesus Christ,” he said “I can’t believe they’re out of plasma screens.” He paused a while and then uttered a few expletives, but I’m sure he was forgiven, for it was clear that he knew not what he did.
(Papi Menon is a writer and technologist based in San Francisco)
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