When New Year comes

The year is running towards the end. Festive spirit can be felt every day a bit more and every big city has their magical lights already lit up. Glowing, twinkling stars and angels with wings on their backs are flying through the nights sky, and beneath those, long rows of even brighter festive booths for the New Year’s market are shining. The streets smell like cinnamon and mulled wine, and on every step you see St. Nicholas, Father Christmas and Santa Claus. The wonderful season of presents has started… This year, around the same time, I myself was roaming around Sri Lanka and of course, also snapped some photography’s along the way. But the more I was looking around, the more I felt a fear of this seasonal hysteria, which is like an ill-intended pandemic, infecting more and more citizens in our sugar-coated country beneath the Alps. And when I hear that we even adapted the so-called Slovenian version of “Black Friday”, my vision blackened out. This was the only day in the season, so I heard, in which you could actually find an empty parking space in the center of town. For those of you who don’t know (like myself), just a brief explanation: this Friday evening every upright Slovene made his way to shopping centers and bought their presents there, instead of the usually busy town centers, because the word “discount” lead them there. Ah, what a beautiful phrase we have in Slovene, which is called “like flies to the shit” (aka light)... I, on the other hand, spend my days looking at tea gatherers in Sri Lanka, fishermen, manufacturers of coconut oil, textile workers and a bunch of others, who search their work in the even bigger growing world capital, which invents words like “Black Friday”. Of course, only with the intent to shave those mindless sheep easier than usual. Well, I don’t get shaved as much as I used to, like others, and the words like Christmas gift bearing and New Year’s presents are not in my repertoire. Because, if somebody (you just know who that is) is forcing this, almost necessary, “citizen’s duty” to shop in the style of “Shop until you drop!«, I refuse to take part with all my might. And what are we facing soon because of this? Earth overshoot day, which was on the 8th August this year. This day is an evaluation of each year, marking the date when humanity has exhausted the ecosystems natural resources for the year. Each year the date shifts earlier on. In the year 2007 it was marked on 26th of October, in 2016 on the early 8th August. This year, and every year that follows, earlier and earlier, so our planet is living “on debt” – we are borrowing from future generations. To substantiate our current lifestyle, we would already need 1.5 planets… Well then, back to the presents! Of course, it is always nice to gift somebody now and then, but what does this have to do with you running around like cattle in the festively decorated towns and thinking: “Well, I already bought presents for Jožica and Francek, now I need to buy presents for Franci, Tone, Jože and all of their parents as well!”? And then, of course, you buy just to buy, and the presents are stupid anyway, whereas the fat capitalists in big furry coats and with cylinders on their heads (do you remember how they use to draw them in the time of Marx and Engels? ) are rubbing their hands in happiness. Why don’t we rather look around ourselves and use this energy for something better? We should rather visit friends and chat with them, laugh and enjoy ourselves, much rather than staring in monitors of mobile applications or “chat with” friends in the virtual world of social networks, and a good bottle of wine doesn’t really fit on the New Year’s present list, but it’s always welcome. Or we could visit our aunt in the retirement home and rather than giving her some cheap present, which will only gather dust, give her the present of company and stay with her for a longer time than usual, so she won’t be lonely so much? Or just simply and spontaneously go to your parents and tell that we love them even without them giving us (or us giving them) presents or not? That is why I turn to all of you, all of you obsessed New Year’s Eve buyers out there, who run from one discount to another and I tell you this little marketing secret: “For every product that you do not buy, you get a 100% discount!!!” In the enclosure I also sent some photos about how the Sri Lankans prepare themselves for the, in Slovenia known as, “Happy December” 2016-17.



































Photo: Arne Hodalič