Another voice

The Father Christmas Idea

Auberon Waugh

Mr Tom Hunt, a scrap dealer in the east end of London, came briefly to pro

minence last week when his 15-year-old son, Graham, was sentenced to ten years for robbery and manslaughter of a little old lady of 85. Although she was only four and a half feet tall, and weighed only six stone, he and two other boys left her tied in a cupboard after they had beaten her up and robbed her of her life's savings of £600, so that when she was found nearly a week later she was dead. The boys cheerfully owned up to various other assaults and robberies, all of elderly people. The fathers of all these were interviewed in the press and asked if they were not shocked at the severity of the sentences. Two of them said they were deeply shocked, but Mr Tom Hunt was reported as saying: 'I spoiled that boy. 1 gave him everything he wanted. It's my fault. If he wanted a new bike he had one. If he wanted money, I gave it to him. I wasn't surprised at the sentence. I thought he'd get 14 years.'

One of the great consolations of life in socialist eastern Europe at this time of year must be that under socialism there is never, never, anything to buy in the shops. Once you have bought a few extra tins of mackerel and a couple of those interminable wooden dolls which fit inside each other you have done your Christmas shopping. Half the women of England go mad at this time of year from the pressures of it all, and I wonder whether this absence of anything to buy in the shops under socialism may not explain why so many otherwise sane middle-class women are attracted to the Workers' Revolutionary Party, Socialist Workers' Party, Communist Party of Great Britain, Militant Tendency and all the rest of that gloomy rubbish.

The rest of us, poised for our annual orgy of Christmas shopping, might ponder the words of Mr Tom Hunt before we lash out on ever more expensive presents for children. My wife and I have 25 children between us who seem to expect Christmas presents — nephews, nieces and godchildren included — and there must inevitably come a moment of doubt when we wonder if we are doing the right thing. Quite apart from the terrible suffering of elderly victims — they broke three of Mrs Rosa Lewis's ribs before gagging her and leaving her tied up.in the cupboard to die — there is the fact that one does not particularly want any of one's children, nephews, nieces or godchildren to spend ten or 12 years of their young lives in prison.

'I know what they did was serious, but you don't associate such long sentences with kids of 15,' said the father of Simon Marius, another of the three. Nor, of course, do you normally associate kids of 14 (as they then were) with a sustained campaign of torturing and robbing old people in their homes. Life is full of surprises. The third father, Mr Alf Vinyard, attributed his son Georgie's behaviour to the leniency of juvenile court magistrates on the lad's earlier appearances before them. Even if he is right — and my own experience of life, such as it is, does not convince me that heavier penalties necessarily act as greater deterrents to crime, although I agree it stands to reason that they should — few of us are in a position to do anything about it unless we happen to be juvenile court magistrates. Whereas all — or nearly all — of us are faced with the problem of buying enormous numbers of hideously expensive children's presents which will join a mountain of similar presents on Christmas Day. If Mr Hunt is right, the nation's elderly and infirm had better look sharpish and keep their doors locked in the weeks after Christmas. But the normal dilemma remains: should we, as responsible adults, acquiesce in this general corruption of the young?

The idea of Christmas as a specifically Kiddies' Festival seems to be of very recent origin. The present-giving ingredient in Christmas festivities derives from the an cient Roman feast of Saturnalia, held on 17 December and later extended for a full week when no work was done, presents were exchanged, many forms of moral laxi

ty were permitted and slaves were allowed to be impertinent to their masters. But there

was nothing much for children on these genial occasions. I suspect that children crept into the Christmas idea — perhaps it would be more accurate nowadays to talk of the Father Christmas Idea, and Father Christmas Day — with the decline of religious belief: religion was seen as a fairy story for kiddies, evoking happy, sentimental memories of one's own childhood when one believed in it all and honestly thought Father Christmas came down the chimney. So now Christmas has become quite simply an orgy of presents and sweets for kiddies, when grown-ups mince around waiting on them and trying to look sweet too.

None of which would matter much if it only happened for one day, but having stretched itself from the last week of November until the end of the weekend after New Year's Day, our new form of Saturnalia threatens to spread through all the year. Perhaps the nastiest expression of the Christmas season, or Father Christmas season, is to be found in the new 11 1/2p stamp, which seems to have been circulating for about three weeks already. This, we are told, is the design of Samantha Brown, aged five; it shows a grinning Father Christmas waving his arms

charismatically. Miss Brown won the Blue Peter competition held last January, and it obviously expresses everything that Christmas means to her.

I do not want to spoil Samantha's moment of glory. I am sure it is much better than anything I could have done at her age. But the fact remains that it is a five-year old's painting and five-year-olds' paintings are things to be admired extravagantly and then put in a drawer. Quite apart from the shameful ugliness of this particular design, there is something profoundly sick about a country which uses them to advertise its own warmheartedness.

And in a sinister way — or so it seems to me — Samantha Brown's disgusting little scrawl threatens to invade our national identity. The Father Christmas Idea has already overtaken large areas of public life, whereby public administration is seen as a matter of handing out goodies with a happy smile while the rest of us — the kiddies — clap our little hands and think how sweet we are. Mrs Thatcher's government is judged by its failure to hand out big enough parcels with a happy enough smile on its face. Men and women go into politics for no other reason than the pleasure of han ding out other people's money in this way.

Of course the goodies have to come from somewhere, and in this matter tensions are already beginning to appear. Christmas will see the launching of the Greater London Enterprise Board, a new extension of the Father Christmas Idea which will 'create employment' and 'generate industry' all over the Greater London area. All of which is absolutely grand, except that in order to do this it will be using the $486 million of the GLC Staff Association's pension fund, and the Association's 20,000 members — while full of the Christmas spirit in other ways — are understandably alarmed at the prospect of having no pensions. Exactly the same thing will happen to the bulk of the nation's savings — in banks, pension schemes and life insurance — when Mr Benn starts nationalising it all and directing the funds to socialist reconstruction. One can't help laughing...

There is little or nothing we can do about it, of course, in our own little circles of influence, but I would like to leave one thought in the minds of Spectator readers.

Father Christmas has absolutely nothing to do with the nativity of Our Lord. He is a filthy foreign importation. The presents he gives are usually rubbish. Many, if not

most, Father Christmases are male homosexualists in disguise. Sadly or not, there is a strong anti-homosexual drive among the nation's youth. Children have always enjoyed pulling Father Christmas's beard and humiliating him in other ways. If we could divert the nation's kiddies from the elderly and infirm for a moment, and teach them to persecute any and everY Father Christmas they see, we might eventually succeed in driving the brute from our shores. It may not be much, but it is a start.