By Matt Whiteman
As a non-religious person, I’ve asked myself for a number of years, “what does Christmas even mean to me?” Without putting too fine a point on it, for me, the Christmas tree is a wasteful and empty symbol. I don’t need it to get together with my family, nor to feel festive… and the presents have certainly never needed shelter from the snow. Our decorations are tacky and possess no sentimental value to me, and the decorating process always feels tedious and inevitably sparks petty conflict. None of us have ever practiced religion. But like many Canadian families, we’ve celebrated Christmas every year, and it hasn’t really made sense to me for many years.
Since entering university, the wishlist I send my family every October has been fairly modest, but I couldn’t properly express my discontent for a long time. This year, the thought of a Christmas tree in my house stuffed with gifts felt particularly unpalatable. Without trying to seem pretentious or ungrateful, or to paint myself as a yuppie liberal in sympathetic cahoots with the poor (see the video “How Not to Write About Africa“), I felt our holiday as a whole lacked a level of consciousness that I strive to explore and sustain in the rest of my life.
This year, I asked my family members, as a gift to me, to volunteer a few hours of their time for the United Way. I asked them to offset flights for carbon. I asked them to watch The Girl Effect and consider how they might respond to it (I did also ask for my standard books, socks, and roasted pistachios). All these things I got from one person or another. My parents even surprised me by decorating my mother’s yucca plant before I arrived, rather than getting a tree (oh how I wish I’d remembered to take a photograph!). This was a fair (and hilarious) compromise between my request and the members of my family who do still value the tree.
But the coolest thing I got came from my parents. They live in Gordon O’Connor’s riding in Ottawa. O’Connor voted against Bill C-300, which was tabled to address the irresponsible Canadian mining practices abroad, most notably in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (for the real skinny on this issue, visit our friends over at ACAC).
I asked my parents to write a letter to him, urging him to vote in favour of the Bill at its third reading (can I get a woot! for our prorogued parliament?!).
I was so grateful for this that I was speechless. It is well written. The three of us think that the reply was a wholly inadequate response to a major global challenge. I won’t post the whole thing here; however, it concludes with the following:
“Passing Bill C-300 would represent a step backwards for Corporate Social Responsibility in Canada, and for Canadian business.
While the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development is currently studying the bill, this Government cannot support it because not only are there problems with the legislation, but if passed, Bill C-300 would undermine the competitive position of Canadian companies and potentially render Canada a less attractive jurisdiction for mining investment.”
We are not amused. There’s more, but I’ll leave it at that. The point is that I found a way for Christmas and I to more or less peacefully co-exist. Yes, UBC, you’ve trained me well, I’m now turning my private family matters into experiments in global citizenship. Little do you know my nefarious plan to turn every holiday into a super social justice extravaganza, mua ha ha ha.
