Sydneysider

At Home Base X Marks The Spot

Another Davis Cup, another Sydney-to tfobart yacht race, another Christmas are behind us. The food eaten, the grog drunk, the sunburn peeling—and a beautiful un touched year ahead in which to prepare for :he next Festive Season.

Like the exhausted Sydney departmental >tore Santa Claus on this page, we can take i load off our feet, a cup of tea in hand and >ay: “Thank God, it’s another 11 months to Christmas”.

SVEN months before every üburban mother begins to feel Lgain that she has to take her ichool offspring “into town to Santa”, even if it kills them, veen late November and >tmas, in any Sydney depart store, above the background of shoppers and the recorded itmas carols, are the screams iguished infants who feel they icing crushed to death in lifts, pled under foot around the y counter or who have mislaid amongst the travel goods). ven months before the brewery ers again threaten to strike throw the whole question of Christmas beer supply into rdy; eleven months before that 7 about Christmas cards. i may, of course, be the mt type who organises his tmas cards in August, and i them off by sea mail to it places, at low rate. Or you wait until the last minute ae forced to sent them to the distant places by air mail at )er time. You may be the = minded type who makes a of friends and foes to be red and sticks to it; or the uncertain sort who works on >rinciple of a card-for-a-card, yaits for them to roll in before ig others back in their place. whichever you are, the tmas card becomes a bigger to be reckoned with each year,

whether it comes in the form of the simple snow scene with red robin, Santa Claus and his reindeer, or a more complicated gimmick put out by the largter advertising agencies. Some Sydney business firms this year donated the money they would have spent on cards to charity—and some of them wrote a note to tell you about it so that the Post Office didn’t lose out.

Apart from greeting card manu facturers, the organisation that gains most from the Christmas card business is the Postmaster General’s Department.

Pre-Christmas, the Post Offices of Australia handled about 230,000,000 articles and as the lowest form of postal article requires a 5d stamp, it seems that, even if those millions of articles were all Christmas cards, Consolidated Revenue still benefits by about £5,500,000.

They Say Its

Commercialised

I wonder what Christ would have thought of what we’ve done with his birthday. Coming back through the city on Christmas Eve about half an hour after the pubs had closed, I followed a police van for about half a mile. It was one of those made partially of wire mesh and they had been scraping the

drunks up off the footpaths and carting them off to the cells.

The rule is that while you can stagger you are left alone; but if you become a public nuisance or a hazard to navigation generally—in you go. Some of those who had qualified for the higher echelons were peering out through the wire mesh. Dogs in a dog catcher’s cart would have looked more sensible.

And, when the factories closed early the previous day for the Christmas break, most laid on their own nine-gallon kegs, or made a bee-line to the nearest pub—to cele brate the fact that 1,960 years ago in Bethlehem was born a child who was to propound a philosophy that became the basis of Western civilisation.

The Churches feel strongly about the commercialising of Christmas, and, of course, have been cam paigning to put “Christ” back into it, instead of that “X”—to the ex tent, at least, that about five per cent, of the Christmas cards this year are religious in concept.

But whether the festival you celebrate is Christmas or Xmas, it’s likely we are now stuck with what we have made of it. If we all resolved for just one year to devote the money we spend on it to a good cause —like cancer research— then the chances are we’d have a full scale economic depression on our hands. (Over)

eleven months ahead it be on again: The toys and sistors for over-indulged brats; ; drunks for the police van; ing tills for commerce; ons for consolidated revenue; much grog; too much food; i trying to keep the bread fresh our days while the bakers take ;t; Dad worried about his bank ice; Death riding the roads in ?h powered car.

:er of Opinion

d, of course, the charity quietly hed; the lame dog helped over ;yle; a helping hand to a iger; a friendship rekindled; ook of wonder in a child’s eyes. >t lived for only 30 years probably learned that humans i queer, mixed bag. Nothing could do in celebrating the fersary of his natal day, almost years later, would likely ise him, one way or the other, it before Christmas I asked an lintance how he was enjoying ’estive season. He bent down in a loud whisper said: “We celebrate Christmas. Christ ’t born in December”. He back to see how I was taking one and when it was obvious I was looking suitably ised, continued: “No, he was orn in December. He was born ;tober”. He then marched off. takes all religions to make tendom but that’s a new one 3. Let’s hope the idea doesn’t on. What would that make it oly nine months before we had ;art beating our brains out g with those blasted Christmas again. cpy New Year, folks.