How the rich stole Christmas
The annual hysterics about a “war on Christmas” is a tradition almost as sacred as the Boxing Day shopping spree. This year, before we even broke December, Australian media, politicians and big business had the finger pointed at pro-Palestine activists and striking Woolworths warehouse workers.
Victorian Labor Premier Jacinta Allan was “furious” at “morons” for “politicising Christmas”, telling 3AW radio on 15 November that “we cannot let ugly protests ruin a beautiful Christmas tradition”, after a handful of Palestine solidarity protesters announced plans to disrupt the annual unveiling of Myers’ Christmas-themed storefront displays in Melbourne.
In the end, only a dozen gathered to protest on 17 November. Yet word somehow reached the British Isles, the UK tabloid Daily Mail running a headline just long enough to convey the enormity of the crime: “Shocking moment 70-year Christmas tradition is interrupted as clown-faced protester leads disgraceful demonstration in front of iconic display in Melbourne—ruining the fun for families”.
Next were the unionised Woolworths warehouse workers. On 14 November, the Sydney Morning Herald began warning of the “Strike threat to Christmas liquor supplies in NSW and Victoria” as the United Workers Union prepared for an indefinite shutdown of five Woolies warehouses.
The Australian Industry Group (AIG), a national association of employers, came out swinging for all the little boys and girls on the verge of Tiny Tim-dom. “Stop holding Australian families to ransom”, pleaded AIG chief executive Innes Wilcox. “[They] are struggling through soaring costs of living and trying to provide a happy Christmas for their loved ones. This is the last thing they need after a stressful year.”
The establishment is up in arms over all this unbridled Grinchian bloodlust. Interrupting grocery store super-profits, obstructing retail chain dioramas: What hallowed holiday custom will these godless, tinsel-burning leftie ferals target next? Will climate activists pinprick Big W’s stock of inflatable Santas-in-boardshorts ($99.99 a pop) and officially kill Christmas?
The pages of Red Flag might be an unusual place to stand up for the right to enjoy a bloody good Christmas season. But permit this socialist rag to ask: Who’s really ruining the festive season?
Stock is quickly returning to Woolworths shelves after the conclusion of a heroic seventeen-day strike. Yet who can afford any of it? Comprehensive research by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for its inquiry into supermarket price gouging calculated a 20 percent spike in grocery prices since 2019. The result is that 56 percent of the population plan to cut back on Christmas food and drink this year, with 48 percent buying fewer gifts, according to a November survey by the Salvation Army.
“Cossie livs” (slang for cost-of-living) Christmas, already last year’s theme, is set to get much worse as price hikes and the housing crisis churn on. Consumers plan to spend 16 percent less on gifts, decorations, travel and leisure over this holiday period than last—a drop to $1,002 from $1,192, according to Deloitte’s Retail Holiday Report 2024.
It’s the opposite story for company executives and shareholders. SANTA (Stopping At Nothing To Accumulate) has been very good to them this year. “Australian families struggling through the cost of living” has meant record super-profits for everyone over at the Australian Industry Group.
Take Woolworths. New CEO Amanda Bardwell has snatched a starting salary of $2.15 million this year, with up to $6.9m in possible bonuses. This would outstrip disgraced ex-CEO Brad “Can’t Get Throughcci One Interviewcci“ Banducci’s total take home pay of $8.6m for 2023. That’s equivalent to almost 150,000 Christmas lunches, based on an average cost of $62 per person calculated by YouGov.
In fact, the company’s record profits last financial year—an eye-boiling $1.7 billion—could buy a sumptuous meal for every single person in the country. Meanwhile, the Salvation Army’s survey found that half of those forced to access charity over the holiday period will be doing so for the first time. A Perth-based community food program called Backpack Buddies, which provides children in need with food for school, told the ABC in late November that demand has risen “from a handful of children at the start of this year to 135 each week”, and predicted being totally overwhelmed come Christmas.
At least we can all enjoy time spent with our families, right? Wrong. To make up for lost cash, a record 7 million people, or 57 percent of the working population, intend to work through Christmas to make ends meet. According to survey data by jobs listing provider Indeed, this is the first time that 5 million of them have ever considered it. It sounds like, to quote AIG again, the “last thing they need after a stressful year”. But Indeed career expert Sally McKibbin told Sky News it’s “positive news” that so many workers are hustling all the way to December 31 to “weather cost-of-living pressures”.
For the rich, every day is Christmas. For a growing number of workers, Christmas is starting to look like any other day.
That is, if you can get the work. Reserve Bank governor Michelle Bullock has told the country interest rates will remain high over Christmas, until the number of unemployed increases by at least another 75,000. ’Tis the season to be jobless.
“If they would rather die, they had better do it and decrease the surplus population”, Bullock said in a 28 November address. Apologies: I have Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol open next to the newspaper. That was Ebenezer Scrooge, not Michelle Bullock. She put it more politely: “Conditions in the labour market remain tighter than what would be consistent with low and stable inflation”.
Looks like everyone who doesn’t exploit another for a living is on the naughty list this year. What surprise will the bosses put in your stocking? A real wage cut? An extra shift on Christmas Day? Or maybe redundancy?
Just don’t expect the traditional lump of coal: they need to burn all that. The federal Labor government on 3 December refused a legal request to consider the climate impacts of three new mines, giving the green light to about 850 million tonnes of greenhouse emissions from the Boggabri, Caval Ridge and Lake Vermont projects, and providing an early Christmas present to the coal companies. It just wouldn’t be a 2020s Christmas without the risk of bushfire Armageddon.
If you’re thinking of cooling off from the record-breaking heat, just be careful where you swim. In an unprecedented move to stop kayak-borne protesters blocking ships to and from the world’s largest coal port, NSW Labor went so far as to impose a four-day exclusion zone around Newcastle harbour in late November, threatening fines and arrests for even setting foot in the water. This Boxing Day dip, ensure no-one nearby is trying to make the world a better place: it might be illegal to paddle there if you aren’t a gigantic coal-bearing SS Grinch.
It could be worse; you could be a little baby born in Bethlehem. None of our Christmas crusaders seem to care about a literal war on the scriptural birthplace of Jesus Christ: surrounded by an apartheid wall and facing down violent settlers accelerating their land theft under cover of an ever expanding genocide. Just last month, Israeli occupation forces fired tear gas at young Palestinian schoolgirls in a village adjoining Bethlehem. “Israeli soldiers hurled the toxic gas canisters directly as the students entered the school grounds, causing them to experience suffocation and breathing difficulties”, a 17 November report from Middle East news website The New Arab reads.
Yet for Labor Party leaders, calling attention to the crimes of an ironclad Australian ally is ruining the true meaning of Christmas: gawking at tacky window dioramas of upmarket retail chains. “[They’re] more distressed about Christmas windows than about stopping Israel’s genocide and its war on Palestinian children”, said Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network.
While millions struggle to eat, drink and be merry—or even just stay alive—this Christmas, be thankful that the strikes are over, the protests are repressed, and the mahogany tables of our betters can once more groan under the weight of champagne, cocaine and caviar.
If you’re lucky, you might get 31 December off to see in a New Year of price hikes, wage cuts, job losses and record quarterly profits. The Grinch will be gone by then, but Australia’s bosses and their lackeys will be watching the fireworks from helicopters and superyachts, plotting to steal another whole year through.
