Good Stuff

Evil Santa

I had a meeting yesterday with John Grant. Among other things we talked about our little 'let's change Christmas' project. We agreed it would be great if we could create a small forum for developing ideas on this.

One route we both got quite excited about was to find a brand that would be willing to sponsor our hatred ie. give us some media space. Maybe The Guardian or The Ecologist? Anyway, that got me thinking...

...and I woke up this morning with a really clear idea of how we might do this.

Evil Santa.

Imagine Bernard Manning/Ricky Tomlinson in a dirty santa suit. He is the living personification of a modern comsumer Christmas. Bloated, wasteful, and mindless. Of course he doesn't drive a sled, he probably has a fleet of trucks (diesel). He probably doesn't have a grotto full of little helpers. He would employ children and poor people to work in shitty conditions for next to nothing. I'm not sure where he lives but it sure ain't pretty. He's probably carved off a tidy profit and bought a nice house for himself. Oh, and he probably smells a little.

Anyway, through this grumpy sod we could tell the true story of Christmas. I could imagine loads of fun stuff. Viral films where he is evil to kids and old people. Grumpy print and web banners directing people to evil santa's grotto. This doesn't have to be a huge deal. Maybe it's even just a blog where we meet the guy behind the ugly Christmas we've created. Maybe it's better if it's 'real'.

The tricky bit is putting a positive spin on something like this. Maybe the campaign would mearly drive people to a site that would give people advice on how to make Christmas better.

Pissing on Santa would help us side step any anti-religious pitfalls.

Anyway, does anyone have any thoughts? What do you think?

Shitmas

This interesting peice comes via John Grant.

A group of Chinese students have appealed to us (the west) to stop all the terrible wastefulness around Chritmas time.

I love the idea of redefining Christmas somehow. I have to confess I HATE CHRISTMAS and all the mindless consumerism that is attached. I've long thought about some sort of personal protest to this in the form of some kind of culture jamming/street art but reading this post started me thinking that people should be presented with some useful alternatives.

What if there was a place/brand/community/movement that encouraged the giving of more sustainable gifts. ie. six hours babysitting, a sexy massage or an offer to repair a garden wall or paint a ceiling.

Maybe there could be some sort of customisable downloadable gift certificates, so people could print them and give something physical?

They could be assigned catagories to make it more useable. For an example, I love cycling. The perfect gift ofr me isn't a bike or any amount of equipment. Actually, time to ride my bike(s) is far more valuable to me. If someone offered to wash them for me as well, then I'd be over the moon.

My point is, this kind of gift insight is useful. To me, to the giver, and to everybody else who'll benefit in the long run if Shimano don't manufacture so many small carbon fibre thing-a-me-jigs next year.

I could see this being in the spirit of 'change the world for a fiver'.

What do you reckon? Anyone fancy changing next Christmas fr the better? I know I'll be a lot happier come November if I knew I was doing something else this year.