The Example Of The Christmas Market
Commonplace Newsletter #73
It could just be the Glühwein talking but I’m feeling pretty good about life at the moment, pretty optimistic. Now I know that this isn’t a popular sentiment to express in these troubled and troubling times, times where intelligence and savviness are apparently directly proportional to your level of cynicism and despair. But the fact remains.
See, I’m at my city’s annual Christmas market as I scribble these notes into my tiny detective-style spiral notepad, at the annual Christmas market with its wooden chalets and its currywurst and its artisanal cheeses and booze and chocolate and preserves, and yes its overpriced thimbles of hot wine (where they now also sting you for an extra quid or two for a reusable cup) and as far as I can tell life appears to be good. Because this market itself- temporary and cliche as it may be- is good and is, I believe, an indication of the direction that we all need to take if we are to transcend the mess that is our present moment.
Now it’s cold out here and it’s getting a little late and my already bad handwriting is getting worse with each sip and with each degree drop of the thermometer. But before I head home to the warmth and consolation of a stew and a few spins of Christmas With Dino on the turntable I’m going to scrawl down a few paragraphs about markets (in both senses of that word) and localism and how letting go is what will save us from the drudgery of the world that the fearful would have us live in.
A Market Is For Life, Not Just For Christmas
Here’s the thing. All of these wooden stalls are ostensibly competing, but they aren’t really. They each have their unique products and their niches and so their individual set audiences. (If your heart is set on a Gyros, the Thai curry place was never going to entice you to make a purchase.) If anything they all seem to be helping each other- a moment ago the hot chocolate lady took a couple of steaming cups to the red faced guys selling hog roast rolls with gravy. Perhaps one of the guys earlier broke some notes into change for her when she was running short on coins. Who knows?
The point is that no one is trying to monopolise here, the bratwurst guy is not scheming on how to drive down prices so he can dominate and destroy the rival bratwurst peddler operating at then other end of the cathedral green. If anything I suspect Bratwurst East would help out Bratwurst West and give him some extra hotdog rolls if his west side competitor ran out. I can’t prove any of this of course, but this is the impression I’m getting. And the other impression I’m getting is that all of these cooks and hawkers have worked out their expenses and their margins and their potential profits and they are simply looking to sell their days quota before grabbing themselves a bite and a drink and a seat at one of the treestump-like tables that are dotted around the place.
The work, then, is a necessary prelude to having a sit down and a few laughs under the twinkling fairy lights and the piped in Christmas songs (Paul McCartney is simply having a wonderful Christmastime as I write this). The work is important and meaningful and everyone clearly takes pride in what they are offering but the work is not the be all and end all.
Everything has its time and its place. Which is how it should be.
I mention this because this approach seems far more sensible, humane and genuinely wise than the way in which I see people operating in the so-called real world outside of this liminal and temporary winter wonderland. It gives a new meaning to that old song ‘I wish it could be Christmas every day’. Because why can’t it be? Why can’t we buy the things we need from independent local sellers who have proven to us that they have no interest in poisoning either the minds or the bodies, or indeed the environments, of their customers if doing so would mean that they could increase profits by a few percentage points?
Local Produce
Why do we prop up the corporations that are either indifferent to us or indeed seemingly appear to hate and despise so many of us? Why don’t we champion those producers and creators who make our localities unique rather than defaulting to monoculture, monocrop slop? And if we are aware of the poisoning and stultifying nature of this top-down global supply chain of dross (whether it be bland tasteless tomatoes or bland tasteless movies) why don’t we just ignore it all and give our money to the independents in our own areas?
Now these are not rhetorical questions, I’m genuinely asking and I am asking myself as much as I am asking the reader.
Are we so lazy that the tiny extra bit of effort to either go to a farmers market or order online from an independent seller or search for non brain-rotting art that is not propped up by a partisan major label, studio or publisher is too much for us to face? Are we so spoiled and demanding that we would rather import a piece of fruit from halfway around the world than learn the seasonality of our own region and actually adhere to it?
Now, I know that this localism is much easier in some areas rather than others, but the point is one of orientation, of trying, of doing what you can. I have noticed that people have this perfect-is-the-enemy of the good idea whereby they will not slowly transition from corporate to independent- it either has to be all or nothing and in the inevitable absence of that immediate all they slide back to the supermarket and mass media led nothing.
And maybe even this was understandable at one point. But if there is one boon that we can build on from the pandemic it is that local artisans now invariably have clean and readable websites that actually work. I can now trust the payment processing services and delivery firm that my local farm uses. We have the technology, as the Six Million Dollar Man once said. What we don’t have, yet, is the will to fully commit to this independent business life. Or rather- and more generously- we still have a series of habits that we default to that we simple need to break.
As it is with food so it is with art and cultural productions.
Now, this food and art link may seem tenuous and forced but it really isn’t. The hipster mentality regarding artisan food and the hipster mentality regarding independent artists and vinyl and all the rest of it are at root very similar. Yes, there is snobbery and mimesis involved, and yes a lot of those people do themselves no favours but I wonder if one reason why the hipster is so maligned is because their boycotting and ethical spending works. (Spending driven by actual personal principles that is, not just the mindless buying of whatever spurious pap currently has an official ‘ethical’ label stuck to it this week). Which is to say, is the hipster way of ignoring the mainstream actually a threat to these soulless conglomerates?
If enough people simply ignore the news, the media, then advertising and buy local things and support independent online creators whose art they feel speaks to them will the global corporations and cultural gatekeepers feel it in the bottom line? Will they feel the sting of rejection and irrelevancy? Will they either change or better yet fade away?
The Christmas market and the warmth of the Glühwein tell me that the answer is yes. Or they tell me that it is worth making the effort to find out. Because life away from mass media and mass produced food is simply more fun. Life becomes within the realm of your control again (ask a local producer to sell a certain type of food and they probably will, give an independent creator feedback and they will probably take it on board). The fear and despair melt away and life returns to its correct and locality-specific scope and shape.
And life begins to look a lot like Christmas, that one day of the year when we find that we have our priorities in order.
Until next time,
Live well,
Tom.
TJB- As expected, and as you may have known thanks to The STSC, this essay hits a nerve with me as the child of parents who were American "monoculture/commerical" farmers and now as a native local fruit producer. The differences-income, lifestyle, venues, are very stark-and that goes for the consumer and producer ends! Your ponderings are well honed and I wanted to add some American insight into some actual answers.
1. Part of the problem I feel is that local artisan support is too much an "event". You yourself were at, it sounds like, a special Christmas time market. People view a local product as a special event, and not as the daily fabric of their lives. As you hint at, much of this is habit, and currently until voices like yours are louder, habit is controlled by the armada of "big farma" corporate food conglomerates who control government, farm bills, and tailor subsidies to the current regimen that eschews artisan culture and mastery. Now I know some critics will say that due to the cost of these artisan items, I have to make it a special event...I cannot afford to use the local farmers market or record store for my daily needs. Again though, much of the economy of scale advantage is due to subsidies (at least in the US) and lobbyist bought policies.
I have a soft modification of your point about the big conglomerates "fearing" hipster/artisan independence because it may cut into their financial bottomline. I believe the hipster mentality is demeaned and mocked because it works...but not via major profit reductions but rather because it encourages people to think for themselves. It encourages you to know who caught your fish and where they fish. It encourages you to do enough internet research to find a local blacksmith produced shovel. And yes, it will broaden your mind enough to actually eat within your locale's food season, and not insist on strawberries in the dead of winter. When you think for yourself, the algorithm has less clout and gasp, you may even turn it off. Lastly, I would be amiss if I did not mention a proponent of your mentioned type of life, and that is the late David Fleming who wrote the immense "Lean Logic", and its partner synopsis by Shaun Chamberlin, "Surviving the Future-Culture, Carnival, and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy". Thank you for this piece and the daring to simply say, "What if?" That really is the first step.
Based on my experiences, I would say that your impressions of the vendor culture are accurate. I have worked a number of UK festivals at my daughter's "Once in a Blue Moon" cafe. They trade meals with other vendors because after a few days you get tired of eating your own food. At the end of one festival, their rival (actually the Boy Scouts) had a surplus of eggs, which they split with us. The cafe, in turn, had loaned a can opener to a rival stand earlier in the festival. Other vendors often show up to help at crucial moments (like lifting the tent) during set-up or take down. I have also worked at craft shows and festivals in the USA and the same culture exists there. When I was working with a friend who makes jewelry, the vendor beside us offered to cover the booth so that we could go see the fire jugglers together. At a different festival, he traded a piece of quartz with another vendor for a something that I wanted.
If anyone is thinking about getting into the festival/craft show circuit in 2022--go for it! It is hard work but also a great adventure and incredibly fun. Best of all, you can create a magical space that will give people happy memories like the Christmas Market.
Merry Christmas to you...I raise a cup of cheer (although I doubt that I will get the same effect on the Aldi Glühwein).