Do We Know It’s Christmas? | Santa’s Ghetto

Advent. One of my favourite times of year. A time to wait. To anticipate. Or open cardboard windows and eat bland chocolates. And get pissed at work. Sometimes I wonder if, to bastardize Geldof et al, we know it’s Christmas time at all.

Some trickster work to nudge us back in the right direction:

paperlesschristmas.org is a project some friends of mine have put together – a short video for each day of advent, dressed up in a calendar style. More thought-provoking than a mini Mars bar.

Santa’s Ghetto. I went to the first one of these in Carnaby Street (I think) years ago. Then it was just an old shop taken over for a couple of weeks to tout Banksy et al’s work. Which was great. It seems his visit to Palestine and the horrific Israeli wall has made him think some though, and this year the Ghetto is based in Bethlehem itself – “you know, the place Santa Claus was actually born” as they so brilliantly put it.

Two things I love about this: firstly, every shekel goes to help local kids’ projects. And secondly one of the pieces – the scale model of Jerusalem made entirely from memory by a Christian Palestinian forcefully ejected from the city many years ago – is by the father of a friend of ours, Wisam Salaa. I wish the shop every success.

Technorati: Advent | Banksy | Bethlehem | Santa’s Ghetto