It all started at Stewart’s Garden Centre, the saga of global warming and Santa. I was upbeat when I bought some primulas because they were in the new recyclable pots. The route to the tills took me past the Christmas displays. I was narked by sparkle, tons and tons of plastic tat, isle after isle. A sudden despair came over me. At the tills, elderly women cradled angels with wings of glitter. The glitter turned to gloom; I saw the oil dug out of the desert, shipped to China, turned into pseudo Christian images by Maoists on the breadline, containers shipped to the UK, the tat sold at Stewart’s, then, Santa’s companions dumped in landfill. The sheer futility, the absurdity of it all, shook me.

Hot under the collar

Days later, I attended the public meeting of the Planning Committee at New Milton for their new crematorium. That night, at 3am I am lying in bed, fretting, unable to sleep. The council chairman at the meeting assured everyone that, having studied all the emissions data, there was nothing to worry about. For me, having spent 45 years working with cremators and aware of how little we know about incineration, that was a hard sell. In the past few years alone, the understanding that microparticulates, tiny unburnt particles, are far more harmful than previously realised has come to the fore. I read the website for the Westerleigh Group, who will run this facility along with 30 other crematoria. The website is a model for greenwashing and you would never know that they operate an industrial incinerator, or two, at each of their sites. For instance, what happens to metal waste?

The end of the world is nigh

None of this was helped when I read that the church now accepts that Christianity has contributed to global warming. In other words it appears that putting one God up there, somewhere, distant from the world was a mistake. The pagan gods he replaced lived here, all around us, so we embraced and placated them. Then God made it worse by giving Adam dominion over all things; a licence to kill. The wild world was the place of the brute and had to be tamed.

Global warming and Santa

Please excuse me but I won’t be sending any Christmas cards this year. For certain, I will keep my gloom to myself and not spoil your festive cheer. I will celebrate the winter solstice and pretend that Christmas was never invented; that Santa is not a saint. However, as a little token I will leave you with the time honoured proverb, ‘beware of people bearing gifts made of plastic and glitter’.