John Lennon’s classic Christmas song, Happy Xmas (War is Over) (1971), also with the Portuguese language version “Então é Natal” (1995), has served in Brazil for decades as a backdrop for one of the most intermittent “rites of the cultural industry”: the consumption in stores, supermarkets, shopping centers, department stores, public markets, among others, at this time of the year.

Source: https://jc.ne10.uol.com.br/canal/cultura

If we stop to listen to it and, perhaps, understand it, the song by the former Beatle wants to bring up the idea that as we approach another Christmas and year-end period, we should rescue our actions and reflect on them. The very first verses tell us:

So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun

So I ask: Are we able to think critically and reflect when we are in places of consumption? John Lennon’s pop song and the act of consuming seem to subliminally share a common purpose: Let’s all go shopping! Without distinction of ethnic or racial origin or consumption power:

And so this is christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong

Source: http://g1.globo.com/

Discursively, all these words, expressions, and propositions within a social, historical, political, and economic context and, unconsciously, are introjected into the minds of citizens with the intention of mass consumption.

In a word-based switch with Descartes’ thought, “I think, so I exist” for “I shop, so I exist” thinking and reflecting at this time of the year can be a condition for just a few people. Mass consumption culture “is largely registered in modern leisure” because of the (re)configurations of cultural values tied to people’s shopping-consuming power.

According to contemporary social scientist Zygmunt Bauman (2007), we are well-known today as the “civilization of well-being,” which seeks embryonic participation in the acquisition of products, which generates a consumerist rationality that accompanies the individual from birth to death.

In light of Bauman (2007) modern men’s real needs have become uninterrupted, incoherent, and surprising: “in the consumer’s world there are endless possibilities”. Guidelines for “good living” and the necessary tools to do so have an expiration date and eventually become obsolete as new goods are offered to their consumers.

Source: https://www.anarquista.net/

According to Guy Debord’s assumption in “Society of the Spectacle” published in 1967, we live in a society of the spectacle of consumption, in which the alienating condition of the person, when he or she consumes, is a reflection of an “enriched privation of false needs”. In day-to-day life, we live the eternal and frenetic search for glamorous bodies, designer clothes, and luxury with all the latest digital gadgets. This consumption industry, therefore, depersonalizes us and makes us objects, almost unconscious of our actions, and, above all, makes us incapable of thinking and reflecting on them.

John Lennon’s Christmas song ends with the verses: A very merry Christmas / And a happy New Year / Let’s hope it’s a good one /
Without any fear. Let’s celebrate one more Christmas and New Year, aware of what, for what, and for whom we are acquiring products (gifts), reflecting on their symbolic and ideological subliminal values, using the humanistic reasoning: “We think, so we exist.

References:

ALMEIDA, Raquel Silvano . Então é Natal. Tribuna do Norte, Apucarana Paraná, 21 dez. 2017.

BAUMAN, Z. A vida para o consumo: a transformação das pessoas em mercadoria. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2007.

DEBORD, G. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red, 1967.

LENNON, J. Happy Xmas (War is Over). New York: Apple Records, 1971.

IMAGES:

It is available at https://jc.ne10.uol.com.br/canal/cultura/noticia/2016/01/02/entao-e-natal-com-simone-conheca-as-historias-da-cancao–214967.

It is available at http://g1.globo.com/sp/presidente-prudente-regiao/blog/psicoblog/post/o-natal-e-o-consumo-compulsivo.html.

It is available at https://www.anarquista.net/natal-do-consumismo-consumo-desenfreado/.