Crism (and Sainsbury's)

It's that time of year where I set out my stall when it comes to Christmas.

First things first, I love Christmas. I haven't always; indeed for a long time I was pretty ambivalent about it. (As I was, ironically, about having children!) But when I separated from my first wife, I decided to make Christmas special for my daughters and threw myself right into it.

Over the following years, I have come to genuinely love Christmas but I've also developed a rule about Christmas related activities and that is that they should not occur before the first of December or after January the fifth, a period that I call Chrism, which is what my eldest daughter, Charlie, first called Father Christmas.

So, for the next thirteen days I will be maintaining my grinch-like attitude towards Christmas and that includes grumbling about displays like this one, as well as civic lighting ceremonies and television adverts. Not that I have a television, of course, but the other day I was pointed in the direction of the new Sainsbury's advert, which I then went and found on YouTube.

Now, this was a well-intentioned referral. I am, at heart, a sentimental and nostalgic soul, and I am quite happy to be manipulated by John Lewis, for example, with their tear-jerking Christmas adverts (2010 being the one that affected me most). So, I think there was an expectation that I would be similarly moved by the Sainsbury's one, which is based on the first world war story about how young men from the German and British forces played football on No Man's Land on Christmas Day.

I'm afraid that I hated it.

The historical fact of the football match itself is strange, unpredictable and, yes, beautiful. Yet, from a hundred years on, it's also pretty incomprehensible. Just how do you grasp the context? Sainsbury's airbrushed rendition of the trenches wilfully denies the condition in which these young men were living. The enemy, a few hundred yards away and often much closer, were, daily, killing their friends and they were doing the same in return. How absolutely bloody extraordinary then to venture out and shake hands, exchange small gifts and play a game together on Christmas Day, like the children that they pretty much were.

For Sainsbury's to hijack this story seems pretty disgusting to me. Sure, they've worked with the British Legion but they, of course, are unlikely to turn down such a major sponsorship that will financially support the people they care for. The money arises from the sale of the 'specially produced chocolate bars. Sainsbury's are giving all the profits to the British Legion but, you'll notice, not giving anything themselves.

People are very much into Remembrance Day, these days, whilst we still send our young men out to pointless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This unhealthy nostalgia seems to me to be part of the same combination of hardship, nationalism and despair that is fuelling UKIP's current success. Sainsbury's advert simply fuels these erroneous ideas about our history and helps to ensure we'll make the same mistakes again. Try spending 20 minutes reading about like in the trenches and then watch the Sainsbury's advert again.