In the late days of autumn when the leaves are failing and the world takes a shade of amber, when the shift in temperature tends towards the icy weather to come, we begin to look towards an occasion with warmth and excitement - Christmas. It acts as a pathetic fallacy of happiness and hope to contradict the emotional effect of the dark cold.
Every year, the minute halloween passes, shops and towns flood the grounds in lights and decorations in a capitalist effort to remind people to start spending more in the “season of giving”. However, while some cynicalists may see putting festive decorations everywhere so early on as an effort from enterprises to profit maximise, it also reminds us of the hope those festive lights symbolise - Christmas; sharing, family and giving.
Those lights we see in the first week of November always sparks the same universal debate: when does the Christmas season start? Does it start right after halloween? Or when the lights go up in the shop windows? Or the first day of December, when the advent calendar starts? Well for many lives the hope and happiness of the Christmas season never comes.
Everyday, when I travel home from school and the blanket of clouds has already created its darkest shadow over Welwyn, a wave of sympathy radiates through me, a shiver not inspired by cold but by compassion. Since I was 11 I have had the same journey home from the train station, and now, more than ever there has been an increase in the number of homeless people flooding our streets. With no home, and possibly no family to welcome them, Christmas is not the cozy fire that brings warmth, but instead a gift everyone else can open while you only get to watch.
With reports of over three hundred thousand people living without a roof over their heads on any given night in Britain, we are reminded of the darker, colder aspect of christmas. When you do not have money, Christmas becomes out of reach for you. The Capitalist system of Christmas - where businesses try to profit maximise - completely denies the point of Christmas: Giving and sharing, not receiving. It's not about what you get for Christmas, it's about what you give.
This year, in the reminder that people are not as fortunate as you, we need to remind ourselves to be kind, and to give to those who cannot give. We should take responsibility for warmth and unity during Christmas for ourselves - being the light and hope people look to - not just assuming those traits come with a tree or a present, things which are out of reach for many.
