I once took issue in print with a jolly vicar, being jolly about the jolly Christmas lights in the streets of Newcastle. In a special feature in The Journal (our local paper) he waxed lyrical about the coming of the lights, many thousands of pounds worth presumably, which hung across all the main shopping streets that year as they had in previous years, and doubtless will again this year. He painted a picture suggesting unbridled and universal Joy, a Dickensian scene of happy shoppers, all delighting in the lights which lit all, rich and poor alike. To read his piece one could almost see, running beneath the lights through crisp white snow, fat boys laden with huge turkeys and parcels.
My concern then, as it is even more so now, some ten years on, was the many families for whom the lights might be a painful, if colourful, reminder of how little they had, or could give, for Christmas. At worst the lights, and the unending sales patter on TV, in the papers and in the shops, might drive those already heavily indebted to borrow far more than they could ever repay, to ensure that they and their families, children especially, would not be left out. At one level, who can blame them?
Expenditure on the bright lights, probably replicated in every town and city in the country to a greater or lesser extent, begs the question ‘whose money is this, and should it be spent in this way?’ It is the Council’s money of course, which means it comes from you and me. My own concern with the way the money is spent is that in Newcastle, and perhaps in most of those other towns and cities, there are problems with the budget. Money is found for jolly lights, which are indeed there for every citizen, rich or poor, to enjoy, if they really feel able. But these are towns or cities in which in many cases there are food banks set up for families who cannot feed themselves, where there are people sleeping rough, where services for the elderly are being cut, libraries and swimming pools shut… the list goes on. But then, the money from the lights would only fund these for another month or so, if that.
My three visits to India (led by David Paterson) have each begun just a few days after Christmas. So the lead up to Christmas, its lights, its commercialism, the mad rush involving everybody in spending as much as they could have been coloured, and not in a good light, by anticipation of India. The parts in which we travelled were a different world, a sharp contrast to Newcastle and its ever-jingling tills. We visited families who lived on the most basic of diets, where the children had virtually no toys, certainly not the newest, the latest. They had never known most of the services which we tend to take for granted, and cause outcry when these are closed. Most of the people seem relatively happy with their lot, never having known much different.
How should I, we, respond to this year’s lights? Should I see them as a civic amenity… a generous gift back to the people, something to brighten their lives, rather than the squandering of scarce resources? I suppose I must just grin and bear it all, Scrooge-like, for towns and city authorities are unlikely to be easily persuaded to do away with lights, not least as they are party to a drive, a quite conscious one I guess, for theirs to be the best in the area.
Is Christmas, in any case, an institution that overtakes everybody, rich or poor alike? Christmas lights or trees adorn not just the public spaces but can be seen in the front rooms in all areas… from the massive displays in the windows of the grandest double or triple-fronted mansions of Gosforth to a miniature twinkling symbol high up in tiny flat in the far-flung East or West of the city.
I do worry lest we force people to spend what they cannot afford, partly through our own lavish ways, some of us that is, or do they force themselves?
Dr John Pearson is Chair of SOF trustees. He lives in Newcastle.