Father's Day is all well and good, but how about some new special occasions to revitalise the economy?
Today is Father's Day. You wouldn't think that was where the apostrophe went but apparently it is. So it doesn't belong to all fathers, just one of them. Maybe fans of Father's Day would claim that's the point: it is about one person, about your father. In the context of your family, it belongs to him alone ? because your father's unique and special. Like every father. Like every person. We're all as unique and special as our national insurance numbers.
Father's Day presents a conundrum for the cynic: it has long been established that it's all a scam to sell greetings cards and power tools, and cynics don't like to feel they've been duped. But then few of us are sufficiently confident that we've adequately expressed how much we value our parents over the years to feel able pointedly to reject an obvious opportunity to do so again, however meretriciously it's advertised. It causes mental conversations like this:
"Give me �20 if you love your parents!" the world's retailers demand.
"That's ridiculous!" you reply. "What sort of system is that where I suddenly have to?"
"They're watching you. They've noticed you haven't reached for �20."
"I'm quite sure that they realise?"
"Do you not have �20?"
"No, I do have �20, it's just?"
"Tears are welling up in their eyes."
"What ? but that's?"
"Only �20."
"But the �20 goes to you."
"After all our efforts, they're thinking."
"To them, it's only a gesture!"
"Yes, a simple gesture of love," concludes the shop monster, trousering �20.
Unless your relationship with your parent is genuinely communicative ? a rare state of affairs and one that I frankly consider un-British ? then ignoring Father's Day is making the following statement: I'm happier to risk my father thinking that I don't care about him than society at large thinking I'm a mug. Now, that's cold.
What a brilliant form of extortion. It works on the same principle as kidnapping ? that people's concern for their family usually outstrips their aversion to being ripped off ? but doesn't have the attendant legal problems.
Of course the perfect scenario is if your father happens to own a chain of greetings card shops. Then you can lavish him with gifts from his own outlets which, depending on his personality, will either strike him as win-win or force him to confront the irony of his own child struggling in the retail web he's spun.
With high street sales now falling after the spike in April caused by people's lavish celebrations of the royal wedding and the crucifixion of Jesus, Father's Day is exactly the sort of thing we need to encourage. In May, sales were down 1.4%, with food and fuel now accounting for more than half of all spending. Food and fuel! Necessities! Our economy can't recover if people restrict themselves to purchasing what they need. They must keep buying crap and, if they won't do it out of greed, we'll have to make them do it out of duty.
So let the recovery start with an outpouring of guilt-tripped filial generosity, but then we need to step it up a notch. Here are some of the new spending opportunities that a consortium of restaurateurs, greetings card manufacturers, florists and chocolatiers have come up with now that Father's Day, Halloween and Valentine's Day have exhausted their potential for growth:
Acquaintances' Day
Falling on the first Saturday in March, this would be dedicated to all the people you feel guilty for not having kept in touch with and who are falling out of your life for no better reason that your own shortage of time and energy. People would celebrate it by sending fake change-of-address cards to everyone who persists in writing them a Christmas card despite never getting one back. Arriving on such a day, the implication would be clear and so, for 24 hours each year, the taboo against breaking off contact with those you don't give a damn about would be lifted. The blow of rejection could be softened with flowers or chocolates.
Pet showers
Isn't it ridiculous that, when people buy a new pet, there's no deluge of gifts from friends and well-wishers, no party, no pseudo-religious ceremony to welcome the new creature into human society? This is particularly cruel to childless couples who, as well as missing out on the rewards of parenthood, aren't even accorded the respect of a social occasion to mark their attempts at baby substitution.
Virginity funerals
Great for teens. Let's turn this milestone in life into a party ? a wake for the end of innocence and a toast to the post-pubescent future. Friends of the cherry-poppee would organise a venue and get everyone to bring suggestively shaped chocolate gifts and food-flavoured sex toys. The ex-virgin's childhood possessions would be ritually destroyed in an alcopop-fuelled frenzy while family members would be encouraged to bring presents appropriate to the forthcoming adult life of the new sophisticate. Handbags, pens, wallets, that sort of thing. A wonderful occasion, completely in keeping with our more sexualised age.
Injunction anniversaries
Celebrities will take the lead popularising this. Simply take your wife out for dinner and don't tell her why.
Pancake Day
Already a favourite but insufficiently monetised. Sales of lemon, sugar and ready-made pancake batter aren't enough: this could be a day for the exchange of all sorts of disc-shaped objects. CDs and DVDs, obviously, but also crockery, biscuits, Frisbees and whole bries. And instead of heralding a lenten fast, people could be encouraged to commemorate Jesus's 40 days in the barren wilderness with inexpensive weekend breaks in the north African sun.
Television Centre Day
Always the last Tuesday in August, the day before the department stores put up their Christmas decorations. This should be a day when the nation comes together to celebrate its proud tradition of masochistic decision-making, the unique British characteristic of allowing ourselves to destroy things that almost everyone likes, to be able to accept a line of argument, however nonsensical, purely because it leads to a conclusion that will cause us pain. The day will feature a parade of bendy buses from Euston station to a block of flats in Shepherd's Bush where they used to make TV programmes. The media coverage should generate business for local hotels as a large number of journalists are expected to travel down from Manchester.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/19/fathers-day-economic-growth-mitchell
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