Austerity is grim at any time and worse at Christmas. This is the one time of the year when we would like to spend on luxuries. This is when “we can’t afford it” takes a break and we can afford perfumes and jewellery, a new pair of shoes or the latest gadget. This year we seem to have our minds focused more on the next batch of electricity bills and less on the annual relaxation of the purse strings.
No matter what, we will try to give our children a good Christmas. We always have. We may also find that we have enjoyed Christmas with them in spite of the absence of the seasonal extravagances we craved.
The change in government in 1987 had brought in the feel-good-factor era. Almost overnight people who had money were not shy about showing it. People who had less money discovered the ambition to acquire it in the hope of flaunting it. Many who did not have it felt the need to pretend that they did.
Thrift and modesty disappeared as social values and were replaced by ostentation and virtual wealth. Many of us who clung to the old school tenets felt ourselves dragged along by our peers. If we still enjoyed making a bargain, we also found ourselves buying lots of things we did not need. We enjoyed buying them or thought that we did. Someone around us would enjoy possessing some utterly useless trinket. It looked cute at the time and such a good idea.
If our houses are not chock-a-block with knick-knacks and toys for young and old it must be because we have also become very good at throwing things away. Few of our purchases will ever make it to family heirloom status and we know it. Our clothes become unwearable long before they wear out. Our cars, our second greatest investment, have to be replaced every few years. Houses built 10 or 20 years ago have been knocked down to be rebuilt as apartments that will never be sold.. Nothing lasts long even if we have more money than ever and everything costs more.
Consumerism has changed us and new generations have no memory of thrift or savings. Our faith in the future led us to believe that we would forever continue to earn more and to be able to spend more. Our recent past had put us on that trajectory and we felt no reason to believe that it would not go on forever.
Who would have guessed that we would be energy-taxed back into the Eighties just as we come to the end of the Noughties? The fact of the matter is that we have been and we have to grin and bear it.
Still, there may be a silver lining to this cloud of gloom. Consumerism has been fun but it was also the Junk Era and if that comes to an end who will mourn it for long? Along the way we have become slightly more discerning purchasers. We appreciate quality a little more. Good design does a little more for us than it did before. We are prepared to pay a little more for something that shows some intelligence or art.
Here comes the next step: as the world moves into the post-Copenhagen era on climate change still struggling to recover from the worst economic crisis ever recorded, we are about to discover a new elegance.
Achieving our aims in style will require a little more than buying the most expensive or the item best advertised. Extravagance never was elegant, it was ostentation. The age of the Hummer is over. From here on for the foreseeable future, buying the biggest, the noisiest or the most wasteful beast to run will begin to be seen to be as stupid as it always has been, stupid and anti-social.
The race is on to achieve more with less. At every point the latest development will cost a little more than the one before and provide the status surge for the well to do. Minimalist will not mean miserable but smart.
Hopefully we will not go back to the false modesty of the Eighties when the wealthy hid their wealth in deference to the envy of the poor or in fear of the taxman’s draconian exactions. We can expect those with money to display their intelligence as well as their bulging pockets by acquiring the finest, the most efficient and the most technologically advanced items. Trendsetting for all others in this way, we can expect them to lead the consuming masses in the same direction.
On the brink of global cataclysm, the ecological has become sexy at last. No more hairshirted Cassandras lead the way but the fastest moving entrepreneurs. The future is upon us and greed has been joined by the need for survival as a driver of industry and commerce.
Next Christmas we will still be feeling the bite of 2010 but we will have begun to feel slightly less sorry for ourselves. We may already be stepping just that bit more lightly on the earth and liking it. We may have more time to think about Christmas as a time to feel good and for making others feel better.
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