Carols for Shoppers?

St James’s Eco Church team member Penelope Turton reflects on the devastating impact of waste at Christmas, emphasising the birth of Jesus as the One who brings ‘new hope to the poorest and most marginalised in society.’

Background Shape
Church Window Mask

As Mariama observed in her recent Advent sermon, the capitalist system requires us to spend lots of money ‘whether we have it or not’. Perhaps the most florid example of the consumption economy is to be seen right now, in the Christmas shopping season.  Crowds of people, those we might call ‘the haves’, mill around in Malls and High Streets while digital tills go into overdrive amidst the glittering lights and the carols. But for the ‘have nots’, whose household debts are reaching unprecedented proportions, relationships are breaking down, driving people into homelessness, mental health crisis and suicide. And for the growing millions of people living in extreme poverty, the great spending fest is completely out of reach. Their choice of gift to loved ones on Christmas Day has to be between a cosier home or food on the table.  Recent research by the Social Justice Commission indicates the gap between those who have and those who don’t is in danger of becoming a “chasm”. The UK is at risk of slipping back to a social divide not seen since the Victorian era, it reports.

 

The brutal irony of all this is intensified by research data on additional waste at Christmas each year:

  • only 34% of Christmas presents are appreciated for longer than one month.
  • an estimated £733 million is spent on unwanted Christmas gifts for children.
  • 61% of toys are never played with after Christmas day.
  • The additional waste from Christmas equates to approximately 3 million tonnes. This includes:
  • 54 million platefuls of food waste over the period.
  • Approximately 500 tonnes of Christmas lights.
  • the equivalent of 108 million rolls of wrapping paper.
  • more than 100 million bags of rubbish sent to landfills each Christmas.

It is tempting to believe that buying online or donating to charity shops is a more environmentally friendly way to shop. But nearly 5 billion pounds of retail returns will end up in landfills and 84 percent of clothing donated to charity shops ends up in landfills and incinerators or is exported overseas.

All the while, the earth and ocean ecosystems are breaking down as C02 and toxins are belched into them by the extra manufacturing, transportation, consumption and waste processes associated with the festive season. How on earth did our society deem all this a good way to celebrate a Jewish Palestinian baby, born into a poor family fleeing persecution – an infant who grew up to warn against the perils of riches, who was steeped in the wonder and beauty of the natural world and who gave new hope to the poorest and most marginalised in society? I am left wondering, again, what Cuguano would say about the church appearing to condone such ecocidal injustice.

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of plastic waste are exported overseas every year.  A girl carrying fruit on her head descends on a village at the Olusosun landfill site, Nigeria's largest trash heap comprising over 100 acres of garbage. Credit: Jacob Silberberg / Panos

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of plastic waste are exported overseas every year. A girl carrying fruit on her head descends on a village at the Olusosun landfill site, Nigeria’s largest trash heap comprising over 100 acres of garbage.
Credit: Jacob Silberberg / Panos