This is one of nine documentary ideas I had to come up with for the Short Form Documentary module.
Yeah, make of it what you will...
Why is it interesting?
As we celebrate it today, Christmas is a very complex thing; it is no longer just about celebrating the birth of Christ, it's acquired so many other elements. If you pick apart Christmas you see that it is this great amalgamation of so many different elements, from so many different traditions of so many different cultures. But people don't celebrate it as an international event, nobody sees that, Christmas has just become about celebrating consumerist madness and I think that is a terrible shame! Even in our economically challenged times most people still spend ridiculous amounts of money on Christmas. Why? Save your money, cut down - it's completely irrational! Not only that, everyone buys into the established template of Christmas, you move from house to house and every Christmas is exactly the same, every year - everyone buys a flat packed Christams. I think, because Christmas is this great hybrid of so many different elements of traditions and cultures that people should celebrate Christmas on their own terms, as big or as small as or as religious or as un-religiously as they want. You shouldn't just buy into something because that is how it's always been and it's what everyone else does. At the moment, Christmas is peer pressure on an unprecedented scale and the true meaning of what Christmas can be is lost on most people because it has become so bloated and familiar it's like it's invisible, nobody can see it anymore.
What will you add or what will we learn?
I realise this is quite a vast idea for a 6 minute documentary, but I think my rant provides multiple options to be explored further on their own. You could even disagree with what I've said and argue that people do celebrate Christmas on their own terms. However, the way I think it should be done would be to find somebody who celebrates the flat packed Christmas and someone who celebrates Christmas on their own terms. Then compare and contrast the two approaches to determine just what Christmas is, how complex it actually is and encourage people to make their own minds up about this very strange thing called Christmas. I think Christmas has been allowed to grow into a great big commercially bloated monster for far too long now. In short, it needs to be contested and it needs to be reassessed!
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