The Vajra Parrot Squawks!

When I was a kid the first day of Advent was a biggie.

I would get up at the crack of dawn,while the rest of the family were still asleep, and sneak downstairs to be the first to nab the chocolate from the advent calendar. Having done so I would think about Christmas and all the goodies my parents would be pushing in my direction while I ate breakfast and luxuriated in happy thoughts. Dreams, morning television, Christmas music, twinkling lights, the smell of pinecones and coffee all merge into one big, cosy, festive memory of yesteryear.

The sinister thing about Corporate Christmas (I'm not talking about the religious festival) is that it taps into these innocent memories of youth in order to exploit.

Coca Cola ads are not there to entertain you, as much as you might like to think so. They're there to manipulate you psychologically. The purpose is to make you think that, over the festive period, you will buy Coca Cola. Simple as. There's no altruism or goodwill at all flowing from them towards you - corporations like them wouldn't look twice in your direction if you were starving to death in the street outside their HQ.

During this festive season you will be assailed from all directions by symbols and music designed to hook into your subconscious memories and evoke a response. It will be a relentless onslaught against you. Make no mistake, Corporate Christmas exists solely to make money and perpetuate the dangerous, consumeristic mania that forces people go into debt to buy things they can't afford and that others don't need, or even causes upset when people don't get what they don't want or didn't even ask for. Crazy! And sinister.

You know, this planet can only sustain so much activity. Already, we're pillaging and raping it of its resources to an unsustainable degree; the irresponsible, get-rich-quick-and-fuck-the consequences attitude that is at the heart of Western consumerism is just hastening the inevitable. It is a fundamentally selfish attitude born of ignorance and greed.

We might stop and pause for breath when we consider this, but when we see twinkling lights or hear Nat King Cole crooning in the distance, reason vanishes and we're hooked. We're being exploited on a subtle level and we often don't realise it; or we allow ourselves to be sucked back into the coziness of our youthful memories to escape the unpleasantness of the present; or (if we didn't have a happy childhood) we try and recapture something of the innocence of what was supposed to be a happy time by buying into a projection, a dream, made by others.

This is not my dream anymore.

Really, we're no better than Pavlov's dog, trained to consume, subconsciously primed to part with our hard-earned cash in order to make some greedy, selfish, irresponsible people a big profit whenever we see the twinkle of tree lights flash across the TV screen or a shop window, or see Jamie Oliver lisping 'mince pies' on those vile Sainsbury's ads.

I'm not asking you to abandon Corporate Christmas. That would be too much. Maybe just consider what you're doing and maybe - perish the thought - make it easy on yourself by not going into debt or wasting all your money. Just buy less. We have to start somewhere.

Wishing a happy Corporate Christmas to one and all.

God bless America!