19 January 2013
13 January 2013
6 January 2013
This House Believes That: Father Christmas really does exist!
Roland Bouillot is FOR the motion
Hello everybody! Father Christmas really does
exist! You believe in him, no matter how old you are, or where you come from!
Father Christmas is a familiar figure, but how
much do we know about him? Santa Claus, as everyone knows, lives somewhere in
the North Pole, and his job is giving lots of presents to all the children of
the world every Christmas. He was first known as Saint Nicholas and he came
from Asia Minor. He was a kind bishop with a white beard and a red coat who
travelled around Europe on a donkey making miracles. The Dutch call Saint
Nicholas Sinter Klaas, which gave us the American “Santa Claus”.
In 1863, Thomas Nast, a journalist for the
American newspaper “Harper’s Illustrated Weekly” met Santa Claus for real,
which is a rare privilege of course. Nast made an accurate drawing of him: an
impressively tall, large man with a white beard wearing a red coat trimmed with
white fur and a huge black belt with a gold buckle. Over the next thirty years
Nast was allowed to draw Father Christmas on several occasions. In 1885, he
even went to the North Pole to draw the house of Father Christmas and the busy
factory run by elves where most of the toys are made.
In 1931, the Coca Cola Company hired Santa as
an official representative of the brand, because of his nice red and white coat
(red and white are the colors of the Coca Cola brand). Santa was pleased
because he was allowed to drink as much soda as he wanted to and it gave him
that extra energy to be able to finish his job on time.
Some people think Santa Claus is more popular
than Jesus, but if this is true, it’s not Father Christmas’ fault; he just had
the help of the Coca Cola advertising executives!
I don’t understand how you cannot believe
Father Christmas exists! I mean, my cousin sent me this bonnet (show bonnet) he
says he borrowed from one of the elves working in Father Christmas’ factory!
Isn’t that the proof that there are people working for him?
And if that isn’t proof enough for you, check
this out: here is overwhelming proof of his existence (show slide of myself and
Father Christmas)!
Millions of people know Father Christmas
exists; they surely cannot all be wrong! Nobody will be able to make me change
my mind, and I would like the audience, if you agree with me, to say nice and
loud and all together “Ho, ho, ho!”
Quentin Berthaud
is AGAINST the motion
Santa Claus must not exist! Santa Claus is just
an advertising gimmick for over-priced toys! Santa Claus promotes over-consumption!
Santa Claus is guilty of the monstrous amounts of waste and pollution that
result from so-called Christmas celebrations! Worse still: Santa Claus is a
lie!
Kids are told that telling fibs is bad, and
what do parents do? They try to make their kids believe that there’s a fat man,
several hundreds of years old, who lives in the North Pole, who flies around
with a bunch of reindeer and comes down millions of chimneys in just one night
to give everyone presents… Why can’t he come through the front door like
everybody else?! And why flying reindeer?! And why has he never been seen for
real; what’s he got to hide!? And who is this guy anyway?!
Sorry to disappoint you folks, but Santa Claus
was created by Coca-Cola to promote its fizzy drink! Santa Claus has little to
do with the Christmas spirit, with sharing, generosity or charity. The
advertising men who invented Santa Claus simply exploited the Christian
tradition of giving presents to make people feel they have to buy more and more
stuff...
To make their kids “happy”, parents have to buy
them lots of things; in other words, Santa Claus is just another device to
promote consumerism. Consumerism, according to Wikipedia, is “a social and
economic order that encourages the purchase of goods and services in
ever-greater amounts”. The Christmas period has become just that; it has gone
from a religious family event about peace in the world to a stressful frenzy en
famille of gluttony, jealousy and greed!
Santa Claus is a great symbol for the consumer
society: overweight, unthinking, and who takes up too much space in our lives.
The magic of Christmas is now the warmth and the lights of the shopping malls,
enticing people in...
In the USA, Christmas is not enough, there’s
also Black Friday and Thanksgiving too. During Thanksgiving 2011, 150 million
people spent 15 billion dollars shopping. During December 2011, Americans spent
something like 52 billion dollars! Crisis, what crisis? In France too things
get over-the-top: 200,000 people go to the Paris Galleries Lafayette every day
in December.
Christmas is also an ecological disaster. In
France, six million Christmas trees are sold each year, including one million
plastic ones. High-tech gadgets, mostly made in China, have become the new
toys; their ecological impact is very high.
If Father Christmas really does exist, we would
have to get rid of him, quick! We think he, like some pagan God, brings affluence
and happiness; it’s not surprising that people are disappointed when they
realize real life is not like the Christmas the shops promised it would be…
There is scientific evidence that Father Xmas
does not exist: with 378 million presents to deliver to 91.8 million homes and
31 hours to do the work, Father Christmas and his reindeer would have to travel
at 3,000 times the speed of sound; the reindeer would be vaporized within
0.00426 of a second and Santa would be killed by 4,315,000lb of force! Plus,
need I remind you folks: humans and reindeer simply do not know how to fly!
Augustin Lafoy is AGAINST the motion
If I hike across the North Pole, am I likely to
meet Father Christmas, his wife, and Rudolph the reindeer too? No, of course
not!
Santa Claus was invented to make Christmas more
exciting for children but also because he is very useful to parents too…
Parents emotionally blackmail their kids with the promise that if they’re extra
good, an overweight man in a red suit will come with a sleigh-load of goodies
as reward.
It is surely important to think about what we
tell our kids… If Santa Claus rewards children for being good, then how is it
that children in wealthy families have more gifts? Are they “better” children?
I think too much emphasis is put on presents
and the real meaning of Christmas is forgotten. The (quantity of) gifts you
give to your child for Christmas has become a measure of your affection, and
this is sad… One or two presents should be enough, surely?
Also, why hide your affection by persuading
them that it is a stranger who has brought them these gifts? Isn’t the
parent-child relationship already complicated enough?! Your child is going to
be grateful if you tell him or her that the gifts are from you.
Be worthy of the trust your children places in
you; don’t lie to them by making them believe some fictional character really
does exist! Sooner or later, the child will discover that Father Christmas does
not exist and he is going to be very disappointed (in you). Isn’t life
difficult for children to understand as it is? It could even be traumatizing
for them to think their parents are untrustworthy… Rather than having to admit
your guilt - you have lied for years to your own child! - simply never talk
about Father Christmas as if he were a real person! You will avoid feeling
ridiculous, or having your authority questioned, or your child’s trust in you
shattered.
What kind of respect do we have for our
children!? Believing in Father Christmas or the tooth fairy or whatever does
not help our children understand and appreciate the world better, on the
contrary, it just confuses them even more…
Refusing to believe in Santa Claus does not
mean rejecting Christmas of course. So, let us get back to the true spirit of
the festivities, for our children’s sake!
Aloïs Salgnac is FOR the motion
Father Christmas is real, he is alive, he
exists, I believe in him! And even if Father Christmas does not exist, well
then, we would have to invent him! Why? Well, basically, because he’s a nice
person! When we speak about him, everybody thinks about presents, parties, and
happy moments with the family. Life can be difficult sometimes, so a bit of
cheerfulness - ho, ho, ho! - can only be a good thing.
And parents do not lie to their children about
his existence, because he does exist! And even if parents were guilty of a
white lie, their children won’t blame them for wanting to make them happy!
And what is this humbug about Father Xmas being
a symbol of excess?! He’s a symbol of kindness and generosity, not of
consumerism! I do not understand why these people go crazy shopping at Xmas
time; can’t they be content just with what Santa brings them down the chimney?!
That way people everywhere would get the same amount of presents and there
would be no unfairness. It’s not his fault if people go nuts at this time of
year!
We cannot make children believe Father Xmas
does not exist, that would be cruel. They are so excited on Christmas Eve,
impatient for the surprises which will mysteriously appear under the tree
during the night…
None of us here has ever seen him, I don’t
think, but we know he is impressive, with a big white beard, but that he is
very patient, kind and generous… We should have faith in his existence!
Louis Buyssens is AGAINST the motion
“There are none so deaf as those who will not
hear”, so I shall now only address the sensible people here present!
Some have said he exists, others that he
definitely does not… “Father Xmas” is nonsensical codswallop; it’s even an
immoral concept! If he does exist, we should get rid of him fast!
Some of you believe that Santa Claus is a
universal blessing, the embodiment of kindness. But what is “kindness”? Father
Christmas symbolizes a very Western notion of what is good. His attributes are
very familiar to us: the wise beard, jolly red garments, a snow sleigh, etc.
I’m not sure in Sub-Saharan Africa this fat old white man is understood as
being “Mr Kind”...
You could say Father Christmas is a necessary
mythological character, but even that sounds odd to me. Father Christmas does
not have much to do with Saint Nicholas anymore! By making this Saint into a
symbol for the whole world, adaptable to every culture, we’ve kind of sold his soul; he is no longer a Saint,
but has become an instrument of the rife consumerism of globalized capitalism! Santa
Claus is an American imperialist! As such, he has no legitimacy as a symbol of
goodness for the whole world.
Just imagine for a moment if he were real, what
would happen? He would encourage the consumption of mostly useless things (toys
and such) everywhere he went, in the name of “good” and “joy”… To me, a gift is
far more precious when offered freely, for no particular reason. If we need a
pretext to give things, do we need pretexts to be nice?
And if Santa Claus offers things only to nice people,
how can you be 100% sure they are not acting nice only to receive gifts? Do we
want to be nice on the odd occasion or nice all the time? Is being nice only a
means to get something in return?
Father Xmas actually wants us to consume “religiously”.
That’s what it is all about: religion and manipulation. Who, precisely, are
Santa’s target customers? Children! Santa is sick! This pervert assaults our
kids and exploits their weakness to make his sect thrive! He wants us to
believe in him from the earliest age, because “believing is beautiful”. And
this man is said to bring genuine happiness! Note how he has the complete guru gear:
a beard, a creepy costume, obscure symbols, etc.
Dreams and believing in something are hugely
important for children’s proper development, but Father Christmas is a symbol
of unhealthy materialism. We should tell kids the truth; Father Xmas does not
exist, thank God!
4 January 2013
Me myself, I personally think I'm really humble...
New year's resolutions:
- Be good to myself
- Spend more time and money on moi
- Be the best as usual
How narcissistic are YOU?!
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