POLITICAL CHRISTMAS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22593, 24 December 1938, Page 21

POLITICAL CHRISTMAS

Belinda Sees Mr Savage In a New Role

(SPECIALLY WHITTEN POH THE PRESS.) [By L. R. HOBBS]

THE overseas journalists who described the result of this year’s election in the phrase: “No one wants to kill Santa Claus,” found an appreciative reader in Belinda. She has often repeated the phrase since, and now the traditional season for Santa Claus has arrived, she thinks that something ought to be done about it. Belinda thinks that Mr Savage and his colleagues missed a great opportunity when they did not decide this year to go on a grand Christmas tour of the country. Think, she says, of the effect of a monster procession in Christchurch, with Mr Savage as Father Christmas, and the rest of the Cabinet supporting him in secondary festive roles. Perhaps to keep in touch with modern methods, they could also play, these other members of the Cabinet, their own Parliament version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Picture Mr Semple as the slim Snow White, and the seven dwarfs could be recruited from some of the shorter members of the party. The big advertising stunts that the modern drapery stores put on would be nothing to it, Belinda claims. There are only a few drawbacks, one of the worst being that the traditional Santa Claus wore no spectacles. But I am sure, and Belinda is, too, that if the country and the party needed it, Mr Savage would go in procession, behind a benign white beard, without his spectacles. The whole thing would introduce a personal touch. Think of the relief workers being paid their Christmas bonuses by Father Christmas in person, instead of impersonal clerks. A throne for Father Christmas, too, could be erected in the Pensions Department, and just for once in the year the pensioners could receive their December payment in an envelope specially decorated with holly. With it they could be given an autographed slice of plum pudding, guaranteed to contain at least one threepenny bit—New Zealand currency only—and a free copy of the Social Security Act. Model Bulldozers The idea has vast political and propaganda possibilities. Think of the farmers who are to have their land cleared fay the most modern machinery being presented, while the Christmas procession halts momentarily outside the farm, with a model bulldozer, handed over by Mr Semple, well-dressed as ever, as Snow White. Or Mr J. A. Lee presenting model State houses in the form of money-boxes for the kiddies. There might be a special Christmas ceremony, too, for the dairy factory Christmas pay-outs under the guaranteed price, with a trained choir of politicians singing appropriate carols. A huge Christmas tree could be put up in Hagley Park, lit with 40 candles, one for each hour’s work in the new working week, and Santa Claus’s gifts for the whole com-

munity hung from it. Manufacturers would have a special branch, and each could go away with a huge teddy bear, which pressed in the middle, would emit instead of the traditional squeak, a summary of the Government’s promise of a subsidy for new industries, and of the protection promised for existing ones. Importers on another branch could select their special Christmas gifts of boxes of raspberries. Newspaper editors could take from another branch their own Christmas gift—a gramophone record of a speech by Mr Savage in which ne says what he thinks of them, and bunches of sour grapes would be hung from another bough, especially marked “National Party.” However, as it is a season of goodwill, a lot of other good ideas on the same subject that Father Christmas might have would possibly be abandoned. Then Snow White and' the Seven Dwarfs could make a round of the week-end gaols where the drunken drivers are being kept, taking each of the inmates Christmas cheer in the form of temperance tracts disguised as Christmas cards, and a huge plum pudding, with non-alco-holic syrup in place of the usual brandy sauce. The new Minister for Labour and Minister for Mines could make another trip, this time to the racing people, mounted on a white horse from his own stable, and present warrants of fitness to the steeds starting at the Christmas and New Year race meetings. Think what a Christmas present that would be to the punter thus assured by Government guarantee that his chosen horse is sound in wind and fetlock. To place the whole business of Christmas on a sound industrial footing, too, the position of the

Father Christmases in the drapery shops could be dealt with on the grand tour. They are one section of the working world not organised into unions, and the Christmas Eve celebrations could also include the formal investiture of the Father Christmases’ award, with union regulations stipulating the length of beard to be worn, and making a maximum of children to be dandled on the knee in one afternoon. These are only a few of Belinda’s suggestions for the right sort of political Christmas. Mr Savage or any of the others can have a lot more if they care to ask. But Belinda fears they have left it too late. She is bitterly disappointed. Why be called a Father Christmas and not act the part at the proper time? she asks.