BY INFAMOUST

The Great Winter Distraction is almost upon us. Christmas as it was once commonly called – but that is too exclusive now, even though the name of the festival still clings doggedly on. It is only in very isolated pockets that one finds any sort of seriously pious observance of this time of the year. The Orgy of Consumption is all encompassing, Santa merely a marketing meme. The willing descent into societal infantilisation brings with it a comfortable, nostalgic feeling to the mind, the omnipresent jingles a relentless aural wallpaper.

It seems odd to me that whilst I see reports from across the Western world of Christians and Christianity being openly reviled, that everyone who isn’t Christian themselves are being encouraged to celebrate his birth, (regardless of historical accuracy).

Or is it?

Christmas has been rebranded. Repurposed. It’s already under new management. It had a good run, but the market has changed. Let us extrapolate: where will a Christian Christmas be in 10 – 20 years’ time, if current trends are anything to go by?

A little fuzzy logic allows for a window into the future with a certain probability attached. Inept thinkers refer to this as a ‘slippery slope’ argument, but it isn’t: it’s maths. It’s how markets work, and Christmas is the very pinnacle of Capitalism. Even the Communists join in. Markets dictate that a demographic such as the Muslim population presents needs to be targeted and actively marketed towards. It would be bad business not to. Idiotic in fact.

From the Druids and the Pagans on, this time of year has been worshipped – every part of the world has their own version, history and myths… so it’s not as if Christmas hasn’t had numerous makeovers before. The copyright free marketing opportunities are too enormous to be ignored – one can slap a Santa on the packaging of almost any old tat these days and get a return; and for the venal marketeers the distracted state of mind; as everyone plans out their plans… so much to organise, eh? Well, the mass hysteria makes everyone easy meat in the thrashing frenzy of unbridled consumerism.

I wonder what Core Brand Values will be retained once the rebranding is complete?

“Peace on Earth and goodwill to all Men” I hope.

Christmas should have the Rainbow makeover and be re-marketed as ‘Winter Pride’. Makes perfect sense.  You couldn’t get more postmodern if you tried. In terms of mass psychology, the entire thing truly is the opiate of the people, an opportunity to literally level out everyone’s brain chemistry and make them receptive and suggestible.

Christmas itself has become a fully alive transmedia organism. It rather makes a mockery of all politics now, as they try to wrestle the beast under control. It waxes and wanes like an enormous global pustule, a reddish itch that grows from October onward into a great glittery carbuncle that erupts on the day in a shower of tinsel, angst and family meltdowns. Divorce rates shall rocket, and ever more lonely people shall take their own lives. The sore open wound stays just long enough to make one feel guilty for one’s own excess and resolve to be ‘better’ in the coming year. This digital entity that Christmas has become is possibly the single most powerful way of shaping the masses, so it makes perfect sense to make it as inclusive – and propagandist – as possible, and it lays bare the structure we see emerging as we wind forward through time on our extrapolative journey into the fuzzy future.

Capitalism rules and shall always rule for those at the top table on Mount Olympus. Ironically, they can use intersectional postmodernism to brainwash the masses into what they think is some kind of communism, but isn’t – it couldn’t be more commercialised. The zealots shall get their Year Zero, Google will have rewritten all of history and the ‘natural’ state of human beings will be transgender with great swathes of the population reliant on Big Pharma and medical interventions for life. Yeah, that’s postmodern alright.

What with people openly bragging of wanting to see old people die this winter on Twitter – yes, that does appear to have become acceptable now – I have no difficulty in seeing how the ‘Winter Pride’ of the future becomes a ritual thinning of the herd. A great gleeful cull of the aged and infirm. The postmodern Utopia has no place for the nuclear family. The lost and lonely will be hunted down. The unlucky, the tragic. The losers in the game of life.

The world is changing, accelerating ever faster and maybe the mass induced idiocy of postmodernism locking everyone into a permanently infantilised state of mind is the only way to cope with the ever-strengthening fusion of our digital and corporeal selves. We have all been destined to become mere avatars in The Game for ages now.

Santa is too old and too white, too Patriarchal, too European looking… Santa is the personification of systemic white male oppression. He represents slavery too, of course, in his oppression of the indigenous Elvish population of the North Pole, (which he colonised). One cannot help but wonder how much longer the prevailing mood shall put up with him. Maybe he’ll be the very first to be culled?

Tamsin Sutherland, (formerly Tarquin) aka. The infamousT is a rather mysterious character. Born the youngest of three sons to a then-world-famous orchestral conductor and who left school at 16 without any qualifications. From that moment on, Tamsin walked both the proverbial less-beaten path and the Wild Side. A journey that has seen Tamsin experience everything from being homeless to becoming the MD of her own company, mixing with everyone from Hell’s Angels to Members of Parliament and everything and everyone in between along the way. An outspoken Transsexual, she – or indeed ‘he’ depending on your politics – doesn’t care as one might expect her to in today’s identity politics maelstrom.