by Carlos Hurworth

Created on: December 15, 2009

I was in India recently, and nearing Christmas and engaging in sometimes frivolous conversation with rickshaw drivers and the like, I often asked “what happens at Christmas time here?”  - The general consensus amongst all that I asked was “a really big party”. - Nothing unusual there.  But I had to ask, because I had to wonder.  – There aren't decorations sprawling streetwards from businesses, or climbing lightpoles and strangling trees.  Christmas music doesn't filter from speakers in lifts or lobbies or halls or rooms.  And there is very little (if any) advertising for “Christmas bargains!” or anything of the sort.

Across one small span of ocean from India's east coast however, you will find Christmas has taken on a traditional flavour of the sort we are more used to here in the western world.  In Singapore, carols infest almost every space, with version upon version of all of the tunes we’ve come to know.  There’s advertising on walls, televisions, radios, buses, trains and their stations – the list is almost endless.  And I realize finally, after much detachment from the Christmas that I am used to, that we’re only a matter of days away, and the typical push for consumption and money that we see in the western world is indeed, slowly filtering in to the east.  Ah modern consumer culture.

But why not yet in India?  - Is this some measure of capitalism's impression on a nation’s thinking?  Is it a sign of just how far Singapore has come, and how far India is from really being the player on the world stage that they are hoping to be? (Don’t tell them).  Look up how they celebrate Christmas in for example, Vietnam, Africa, Peru, Samoa or Uzbekistan (all of which aren’t yet dictated by capitalist ideas) and the focus seems to invariably be on celebrating family and feasting (just like India) - not spending and consuming.

The fact of the matter is that now – more so than ever – Christmas is a time when retailers can push consumers to give their profits one last positive kick for the year.  It’s the months leading in to it that determine whether or not salespeople hit their targets, and if you’re part of this machine (as we inevitably are in western society), you’ll jump right on to the train of thought that Christmas capitalism teaches.  What’s the point of really pushing

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