The road to Spyhill

By Colby Cosh - Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 4:15 AM - 33 Comments

Economists have a sort of half-joke, inspired by Yale’s Joel Waldfogel, about the “deadweight loss of Christmas”. Every year we humans race around, spending, collectively, billions of dollars trying to find noncash items that other people in our lives will like. But we are less than perfect at intuiting the preferences of others, and it is the rare recipient who will value what he receives from everybody as much as he would what he could buy himself with the cash equivalent. The total worth of the gifts exchanged at Christmas thus inevitably ends up being smaller than the amount spent. Viewed this way—and it’s obviously not an unreasonable way—Christmas is a giant global potlatch, an orgy of value destruction.

The case for Christmas, of course, is as obvious and easy to make as the one for inefficiency/imbecility of Christmas. This 2001 Economist piece on Waldfogel’s idea offers several points in defence of the potlatch, making them in that charmingly autistic way economists are known for. Gift recipients aren’t perfectly conscious of their own potential preferences; some gifts may be items a person can’t obtain for himself at any price; and gifts—stop me if this sounds crazy—sometimes do have a sentimental value beyond the cash paid for the item itself.

But I couldn’t help thinking about Waldfogel’s Christmas when I encountered this engrossing local press item about a mislaid package of goods collected for fire-ravaged Slave Lake, Alberta:

A local man was surprised to find boxes of new clothes and donations that were slated for Slave Lake in the [Calgary] city landfill.

…Nielsen says there were dozens of sealed and neatly packed boxes in the trash.

Some of the items were brand new and still had the tags on them.

Nielsen says it was obvious someone had gone to a lot of work to try to help people who had lost everything.

“I opened the box and it was like a knife through my heart. I’ve seen lots of horror and this just shattered me. The box was full of children’s clothing. Someone had gone to a store, bought children’s clothing, and had the foresight to throw something in for the mother too,” said Nielsen.

One worries that Mr. Nielsen might have been slightly less horrified if the box had contained an actual child. The containers were labelled with the name of energy company Total E&P, whose employees had gathered clothing and toys for the victims of the fire. “Employees had held a month-long drive to collect donations for Slave Lake victims,” notes the CBC. “They carefully packed up the collection and addressed it to the Red Cross, and called their internal courier to take it away. The Red Cross, though, does not accept items for donation, only cash…”.

So while the packing was “careful”, the research…? Not so much. Someone located another Calgarian with good intentions, Melissa Gunning, who was gathering material to be sent to Slave Lake fire victims. Unfortunately, by that time, the brave people of Slave Lake were already becoming overburdened with donor goods.

Emergency workers in Edmonton soon told her to donate some of what was collected to local charities, which she tried to do. “We still had all this stuff left in storage. Nobody would come and pick it up and unfortunately we couldn’t get anybody else to drive it,” said Gunning.

This past weekend, swamped by the donations from the campaign, Gunning hired some help. A junk removal company was hired to go through the remaining storage bins and sort what was good to a local charity and take the rest to the dump.

Unfortunately, the “Just Junk” removal firm seems to have treated the entire load as, well, just junk. And since salvage is strictly forbidden at the Spyhill dump, the good work of Total’s employees has gone for naught. I am, of course, using the phrase “good work” to refer to work that has good intentions, not work that accomplishes anything good. Total E&P is a subsidiary of a publicly traded company; the employees have access to a share-ownership plan. Literally ten seconds’ research would have revealed that the Red Cross is happy to take gifts of stocks and mutual funds. But that kind of thing isn’t in the Christmas spirit, is it?

I fear Paul Nielsen, the appalled discoverer of the items in the landfill, unwittingly saw straight to the heart of the matter. Someone went to a clothing store, bought a bunch of cute outfits for somebody’s else’s children, and “had the foresight to throw something in for the mother”, without the much less impressive foresight required to ask “Hey, will the Red Cross actually take this crap?” This is a “someone” who probably thought herself very clever in finding a absolutely bulletproof excuse for a shopping excursion, perhaps even on company time. The value of her “aid” turned out to be significantly less than zero, but that was surely beside the point to begin with. If it weren’t, the incessant entreaties of professional charitable organizations everywhere—“Please stop showing up with bundles of blankets and cans, and just give us cash already”—would actually have had some effect by now. And we would have fewer grotesque comedies like this one from Okotoks.

I suspect the diversion of the Total donations to the landfill is an example of something that happens a lot more often than we dare imagine. There is a thin worldwide layer of iridium that marks the extinction of the dinosaurs. Perhaps future geologists delving down into the leavings of our time will find an equally pervasive stratum of useless goods, purchased on incoherent charitable impulse by the fabled “middle class” after pictures of calamity have been shown on television. Teddy bears, soccer balls, Playstations, soap-on-a-rope: will the Cuviers and Lyells of tomorrow be able to infer the meaning of it all?

It is about time, anyway, that some cynic observed that responding to a natural disaster is not like Christmas gift-giving. At Christmas, you’re guessing at a loved one’s potential preferences. In essence, you are playing a game. Analogous behaviour in the face of a disaster—guessing at what people need, when you could give cash immediately for experienced responders to spend on life-or-death logistical priorities—is crass and arrogant, literally the opposite of charitableness. But of course, the impersonal gift of a cheque in an envelope doesn’t give you the chance to show off to co-workers or other relevant audiences what a lovely and decent person you are.

Deck the halls—again

By Colby Cosh - Friday, January 7, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 6 Comments

Many non-Ukrainians enjoy the 12-course dinner | Photography Roman Petriw

Every year, Lisa Dusseault brings Ukrainian Christmas to Silicon Valley. In California, she says sadly, “frozen burritos seem to take the place of the Canadian-standard freezer space for perogies.” But Dusseault, a systems engineer from Edmonton who works on the Second Life virtual universe at San Francisco’s Linden Lab, agonizes annually over a 12-course, meatless, dairy-free dinner of the type Ukrainians traditionally eat on Jan. 6, the eve of their nativity. She makes perogies from scratch, soaks wheat for kutia pudding, prays the cabbage rolls won’t fall apart, and invites friends over when it’s all assembled.

Yet this busy chef has no Ukrainian ancestry. “My mom adopted Ukrainian cooking from living in northern Manitoba, from her neighbours,” says the French-Scottish-Canadian Dusseault. When she was a child, her family enjoyed a Ukrainian Christmas feast every year because her mother believed that “everybody should be able to adopt the culture of their choice.”

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An NDP Christmas

By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, December 28, 2010 at 3:37 PM - 6 Comments

NDP MPs gathered for their annual Christmas dinner. Below, Glenn Thibeault.

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Glenn Thibeault back in the day.

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Nathan Cullen.

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How to conquer your fear of Christmas

By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images; Istock; Illustration by Taylor Shute

Last Sunday, neighbours with a view into the Parkdale Prana Room, a “bodymind” studio in an emerging but still gritty section of west end Toronto, had the chance to witness a curious procession: about half a dozen men and women circling through the second-floor space wearing masks they’d made themselves using things like multi-coloured construction paper, string, glitter, crayon and clothespins. Participants in the masquerade—part of a 3½-hour workshop designed for people who find Christmas emotionally challenging—had been instructed to recreate the mask they wear to cope with the holidays. Some were wild affairs—slathered in sequins, feathers and trailing loopy tentacles—while others bore glued-on tree bark or were eerily happy-faced. Attendees jabbered in make-believe languages, approximating the chit-chat of Christmas get-togethers, closely inspected the masks that intrigued them, or listened to the sound of breathing against paper.

An odd way to spend a Sunday in the hectic weeks before Christmas. But probably no stranger than a typical encounter over the holidays for many of us, what with all that forced bonhomie, performed within the pressure cooker of a turkey dinner or boozy office party. “I personally have a window of about three hours in which I’m able to be joyous with others,” says Pilates teacher and Gestalt therapist Suzy Lebec, who along with Luisa de Amaral facilitated and wrote the curriculum for the “Christmas! . . . My Way” workshop. “Then I have to take a break. There is a lot of people-pleasing that goes on that’s so stressful.” She says of her own holidays, spent with a Croatian grandmother: “We take bets on whether she’ll make a scene.”

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Jean Charest wishes you an obedient Christmas

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 4:09 PM - 4 Comments

(Been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve missed you, too.)

The official-looking letter I’ve posted above was sent out to Quebecers purporting to be holiday greetings from Jean Charest. As you can see, the letter is written on government letterhead, bears Jean Charest’s signature, and features the premier’s office phone number at the bottom. As far as hoaxes go, this is pretty well done.

That said, it’s the text of the letter that gives it away. It doesn’t so much mock Charest as paint him as a dark and venal man. And that seems to be the difference between now and Charest’s first few years in office, doesn’t it? Continue…

Christmas Eve at Bethlehem International

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 11 Comments

Try telling the agent that you forgot to check the myrrh, and that those clothes are so swaddling because he’s a baby | Getty Images; AP; Illustration by Taylor Shute

Christmas story: 2010 version
Scene: The Bethlehem International Airport.

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TSA agent: Next, please.

Joseph: You go first, honey. I’ll hold Jesus.

Mary steps forward. Joseph turns to continue a conversation with a man in line behind him.

Joseph: We finally get there and the girl at the desk is all, “Sorry, there’s no record of your reservation.” And I’m like, “Then I guess I just invented this confirmation number, right?” So that’s the last time we use Travelocity. We ended up having to spend the night in an old hovel with just a terrible animal smell.

Traveller: I think I’ve stayed at that Holiday Inn.

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Wal-Mart's star

By Erica Alini - Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 1 Comment

Michael Tran/FilmMagic/Getty Images

How to prop up Christmas shopping at a time of stubbornly low retail sales? At Wal-Mart this holiday season, the stimulus is called Justin Bieber. The retail giant is betting on the teenage Canadian pop superstar to help lure customers (especially young, female ones) with a host of exclusive Bieber products. That includes “My World,” a new unisex fragrance named after the title of Bieber’s debut release. The perfume comes in four scents, priced at $14 each, as well as scented wristbands and dog tags. Another perk for fans will be a line of Bieber-designed Nicole by OPI nail polish. Both products will be available in the next few weeks—and will hit Wal-Mart shelves first. In another exclusive deal with the retailer, Bieber told followers on Twitter (they number 5.6 million) to look for his new acoustic album at Wal-Mart on Nov. 22, a day ahead of the general release.

Let's consider the prorogue from Stephen Harper's side

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 4:28 PM - 112 Comments

Canadians have been hard on the PM since he made the decision to “prorogue,” and not just because doing so forced some of us to learn a new word. We don’t like that he’s treating parliamentarians with contempt and disdain. After all, that’s our job.

But let’s try to see things from Stephen Harper’s perspective. Yes, he abruptly shut down the institutions of our democracy over the holidays for a second straight year. (Once more and it will become a Christmas tradition on par with watching It’s a Wonderful Life and trimming Mike Duffy.) And yes, he didn’t even bother to cross the street to visit the Governor General—he just picked up the phone and ordered the No. 2 from Rideau Hall: prorogation with a side of crazy bread.
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The year Amazon.com replaced Santa

By Colby Cosh - Friday, December 25, 2009 at 1:31 PM - 3 Comments

This Guardian story about holiday shopping leaves the slightly unsettling impression that “Boxing Day”, for the purposes of retailing, now begins in the UK at about 6 p.m. on the 24th of December. Maybe those billboards that plead with us to keep the Christ in Christmas should just be changed to request that the Christmas be kept in it?

Tales of over-the-top Christmas

By Brian Bethune - Monday, December 14, 2009 at 9:26 AM - 4 Comments

Christmas. No other day on the Western calendar is so pregnant with meaning and emotion. Through a long and winding road, our society’s dominant religion, our deepest and also most ambivalent feelings about our families, the instinctive way we demonstrate (and accept) love in a commercial culture, and the ancient rhythms of the year, have all became bound up in one shiny wrapped package. The family-Christmas tie, relentlessly reinforced by everything from advertising to sermons, means that Christmas and excess—in food and drink, in decoration and, above all, in gift-giving—go together like eggnog and rum.

More and better is the day’s unspoken motto, moan as we do—for a good century and a half now—about its frenzied and ever-accelerating consumerism. Christmas’s cultural sway cuts right across Western society. The handful of us who strive to avoid its weirdly compelling blend of faith, traditions (faux and real) and appalling expense—a mix of devout Christians seeking a more austere celebration of their saviour’s birth in a stable, those stressed beyond endurance by combustible forced intimacy with their families, and all-around Scrooges—find it near impossible to escape. Even the website antichristmas.org, which fulminates against “plastic Santa Clauses, cardboard reindeers and other trashy decorations,” nonetheless carries ads for Christmas cards and lights.

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Econowatch

By Jason Kirby - Monday, November 30, 2009 at 11:45 AM - 5 Comments

When a report this week from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed the United Kingdom was the only one of the Group of Seven economies to shrink during the third quarter, Fleet Street wailed at the national embarrassment of being dead last. But they could have taken some comfort from the asterisks in the report next to Canada’s name. The data from Canada for September won’t be released until this coming Monday, Nov. 30, and we might still beat the British to the bottom.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Two months ago, when the Bank of Canada forecast the economy would grow two per cent during the July to September period, that target seemed wholly within reach. Canada’s resilience during the recession was expected to hold us in good stead come better days. But then the strengthening loonie and worsening employment got in the way. Growth flatlined in July, then dipped in August. Last week the Bank of Canada slashed its forecast, while still holding on to the prospect for “softer growth.” Continue…

How to get along with the in-laws

By Julia McKinnell - Monday, November 30, 2009 at 9:35 AM - 18 Comments

“I have been married for two years. For Christmas, I received a girdle from my mother-in-law. I opened it in front of the whole family. Um, thank you, I guess,” writes an insulted daughter-in-law on a forum devoted to the worst gifts from a mother-in-law. A response comes back: “For Mother’s Day, don’t hesitate to give her really slinky, tiny, tacky lingerie as a present.” The British psychologist who moderates the forum, Dr. Terri Apter, has advice for dealing with problematic relatives in a new book, What Do You Want From Me?: Learning to Get Along With In-Laws. Many women, Apter writes, “complain about subliminal insults, such as being given a size ‘large’ sweater by a mother-in-law who explains, ‘You probably didn’t realize the ones you have are too tight.’ ”

Apter’s advice is to get your husband onside. Tell him, “It would be helpful if you could say, at least once, in your mother’s presence, ‘I think my wife looks just fine as she is.’ ” Gently solicit his help. Do not insist, “You should support me and not your mother.” Do not make a global complaint, “You never stand up for me.” Tell him, “When I feel uncomfortable with your mother, I’ll reach out my hand for you. Will you take it? That’s all you have to do to make me feel you’re supporting me.”

Apter surveyed 150 couples in the U.K. and U.S. and found that housekeeping is the No. 1 bone of contention between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law: 80 per cent of mothers-in-law admit “the standard of cleanliness in a home was an important issue in whether they could warm to their daughter-in-law.” Many of those mothers-in-law, writes Apter, “say in all sincerity that they are keen to raise sons to be new men who are as responsive to children and as domestically responsible as their partners. Yet, on a deeper level, they may want a daughter-in-law who puts her husband first.”

Take Sammi, 34, who is thrown into self-doubt every time her mother-in-law visits. “She’s always rushing around muttering to herself as she cleans up. ‘Let me save you a job,’ she says as she picks Tim’s clothes out of the dryer and starts folding them. I tell her, ‘Marge, it’s Tim’s job to iron his own shirts, so you’re not saving me a job, you’re saving Tim a job and I hope he thanks you.’ I never know if she gets it, or if one more thing has flown out of my mouth to put her in a sulk.”

When both parties suppress the conflict, Apter calls this “the good-behaviour syndrome.” The challenge, she writes, “is to learn how to speak out, without setting off the alarms that lead straight back to silencing.” Appeal to your mother-in-law’s understanding, advises Apter. Say, “I sometimes worry that my home is not as well organized as yours. But it would mean a lot to me if you realized I did my best.” Avoid accusatory mind reading. Do not say to your mother-in-law, “You’re angry.” In turn, Apter warns mothers-in-law, “watch out for the bias toward your own son. There is nothing wrong with a parent seeing her own son’s career or comforts at twice their normal size. But if this parental bias minimizes the achievements of your daughter-in-law, it will generate conflict.”

Sometimes in-law conflicts arise between siblings-in-law. If a sister thinks her brother is “bending toward his spouse at the expense of a parent,” writes Apter, “then they may step in to shift the balance.” Apter talks about Kelly, whose husband, Jared, promised her she’d “love” his older sister Gail—they were “two peas in a pod,” he said. “You can imagine how intrigued I was to meet Gail. Who was this woman who was, in my lover’s eyes, so much like me? I tried at first,” says Kelly. “But she seems to resent every single success I have. My mother-in-law is really proud of me and I’m not sure Gail likes that!” Gail’s mother is ill. Gail believes that Kelly keeps her brother away from her mother. Gail told Apter, “Kelly’s favourite stupid line is that he needs to separate. But that doesn’t stop her from being on the phone to her mother three times a day! That selfish streak of hers is taking him away from our mother and from me.”

Discuss the situation with your spouse, advises Apter. Don’t forget there’s always hope that “over time, people learn to appreciate and respect their in-laws.” Even in-laws who “initially believe that a son or daughter could have done better and are disappointed in their choice realize, many years on, that the chosen partner has qualities that ‘lasted,’ ” she writes. “For many people, in-laws become a combination of friend and relative.”

The only good xmas present

By Cathy Gulli - Monday, November 9, 2009 at 11:24 AM - 5 Comments

Joel Waldfogel doesn’t think we should bother buying Christmas presents. Not because the annual ritual commercializes a religious occasion or goes against the very spirit of the holidays. Rather, the economist says he’s against gift-giving because most of the time we’re just not good at it—and that results in a massive waste of money. “The problem when other folks buy stuff for us is that no matter how well-intentioned they are,” explains Waldfogel, “they buy the wrong stuff.”

The reason, according to Waldfogel’s new book, Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays, is because no one knows our own likes, dislikes and needs as well as we do. Givers are almost guaranteed to fail at finding that perfect present. At Christmas, this affliction is compounded by the throng of people we’re obliged to buy for—bosses, third cousins, the neighbour and the nanny, maybe her dog, too. The result is what Waldfogel calls the “red tornado,” referring to the alpha giver, Santa. “It just lifts stuff up and almost randomly drops it under our tree.” Brass golf tees? Plink. Innocuous scented candle? Plunk. Tribal walking stick? Urgh. Continue…

Everyone wants a piece of Scrooge

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, November 6, 2009 at 1:05 PM - 3 Comments

He did it for the money. An indebted Charles Dickens dashed off A Christmas Carol in six weeks and saw it published, with opportune timing, six days before Christmas, in 1843. The first 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve and the book has never been out of print. With his blockbuster novella, Dickens founded a franchise and reinvented the Christmas spirit, making a plea for joy and generosity in dour industrial England. But had he been visited by the Ghost of Xmas 2009, he would be shocked to see what’s become of his creation—a monstrous, half-human Ebenezer Scrooge who glowers from 3-D movie screens, heralding a Yuletide blitz of getting and spending more than six weeks before Christmas Day. And in Jim Carrey, the star of Disney’s A Christmas Carol, he’d see an actor who out-Scrooges Scrooge by hoarding five of the story’s roles—Ebenezer as an old man and a young boy, plus all three Christmas ghosts.

Tis the season to be tight-fisted, and Scrooge has never been bigger. Tailor-made for these penny-pinching times, he’s the original bipolar capitalist—the boss from hell who turns into a bailout benefactor. Everyone wants a piece of him. As Margaret Atwood writes in her introduction to a new Dickens anthology, A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books, “Scrooge is one of those characters—like Hamlet—who has become detached from the story in which he had his birth, and has become instantly recognizable, even by those who have never read the book.” Recalling her childhood affection for Disney’s Scrooge McDuck, who splashed in a giant vault of coins, Atwood calls him “a sort of anti-Santa Claus—Santa Claus’s dark twin.” Continue…

The recession that saved Christmas

By Ken MacQueen and Cathy Gulli - Monday, December 22, 2008 at 6:00 PM - 15 Comments

You’d have to go back in Audrey and Owen Freeman’s lives to the Christmas of 1964 to find a time such as this—when bleak circumstances should doom the spirit of the season to wander lost in a fog of loneliness, dislocation and worry. It was their second Christmas together. They lived with their infant daughter in a bare apartment in Toronto—a city so foreign to Audrey that when she moved there from the outport of Carmanville, Nfld., she says: “If I had been going to the moon at the time, I wouldn’t have been more scared.” Owen was laid off just before Christmas. There wasn’t a spare cent once the rent was paid. They were too proud to tell their parents so they resigned themselves to a Christmas without presents, turkey or tree. “We were young and in love, I suppose,” says Audrey, “so we were willing to put up with most anything.”

Two days before Christmas, a trunk was delivered to their apartment, unannounced. Audrey’s parents had stuffed it with decorations and gifts; with candy, fruitcake and nuts; with a tiny red velvet dress and a stocking full of the things little girls love. There was a letter inside, too, and a cheque for $100, because there was no room in the trunk for a tree and dinner with all the trimmings. And so a Christmas that seemed destined to be marked with tears was instead celebrated with weepiness of the happy sort. Tears became a Freeman holiday tradition as three more children, then spouses, and then eight grandchildren joined the fold, all settling into communities near the Freeman’s home in Ajax, Ont. “If anybody walked into our place Christmas morning,” says Audrey, “they’d think we were all very sad.”

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The call-911 Christmas turkey

By Alex Shimo - Monday, December 22, 2008 at 5:00 PM - 4 Comments

Deep-fried turkey is a dish for people who want to live on the edge. Steve Pendergrass, a firefighter in Kern County, Calif., found this out on Christmas Day 2003. He’d invited about 20 people over for Christmas dinner and was preparing two medium-sized birds. After deep-frying the first one, he immersed the second into the large pot of oil. “A ball of fire” came up from the propane-fuelled cooker, he says. Panicking, he tried to pull the turkey out of the fryer, but the bird and the pot tipped over. Boiling oil spilled over him and the patio floor where he had been cooking. Suddenly, his clothes were on fire and his skin was burning—chunks of flesh were “falling off,” he says. As his wife and two young daughters watched horrified through the window, he stripped off his clothes and rolled around in the snow to put out the flames.

In recent years, a growing number of fires caused by deep-fried turkeys have been reported, according to the Underwriters Laboratories website, North America’s largest independent product-safety organization. It’s difficult to estimate exactly how many fires deep-fried turkeys cause in the U.S. or in Canada, since all types of cooking fires are usually lumped together. Nevertheless, in the U.S., where the cooking method originated, fire departments have issued safety demonstration videos and warnings, says Lorraine Carli, spokesperson for the U.S. National Fire Protection Association. Just a few weeks ago, a group of Canadians from Toronto witnessed local emergency services extinguishing a deep-fried turkey fire at a Buffalo Bills football game. Luckily, the fire was put out before anyone was hurt. Carli expects more incidents like these as the cooking method becomes more common. It’s a “recipe for disaster,” she says.

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