A friend (?) of mine asked me if I would write something about Christmas. Now, I might not be the ripest banana in the bunch but even I could figure out that was code for:

SLAM ST. NICK.

Not a chance. Anyone that wants to knock Christmas can do it on their own time. A lot of good people do a lot of good things in the spirit of Christmas.  Tax deductible giving and 50% off sales are only two of them.  TV presents shows like Miracle on 34th Street and A Christmas Carol.  Great stuff.

People like to find fault with corporations at this time of year, but look what they have done.  Millions are spent on commercials that bring us Christmas music, not  just for a measly few days, but for weeks.  And without the  social pressures that cause spending, many retail businesses would face difficult times.  It cannot be easy for executives to hear themselves be targeted as money grubbing cynics when all they are trying to do is keep the economy moving and provide much needed jobs.

I feel particularly bad for the people at companies like Wal-Mart or Nike.  These are not the only outfits that are denigrated for their efforts to provide jobs in poor countries, but they are often singled out for abuse.  If some of those do-gooders had to face the problems such companies encounter daily they might not be so quick to criticize.

When you see that a girl (most of the workers are girls) gets less than a dollar from a hundred dollar pair of sneakers it would seem easy to double her income.  And so it would be.  The retailer could offer a little, maybe forty cents, from their $50 markup. And the star athlete could match it from his multi- million dollar endorsement contract. No problem.  Even the transnational  could squeeze out twenty cents from their end.  Voila, a pay increase of over 100 per cent   But it is not that simple. 

This workforce is the result of years of learning to live in poverty.  For many of these girls their only marketable skill is the knowledge of how to live on next to nothing.  It would be reckless and cruel for some brutal Trans- National Corporation to disrupt their life on a whim.  Oh sure, we could blame it on the Spirit of Christmas.  We could just explain we got carried away by watching Scrooge save Tiny Tim.

But the fact is, by irresponsibly raising wages to a decent level, we would cause jealousy and resentment.  Our girls would lose their friends and their former neighbors.  It would be embarrassing for them to be earning more than twice as much as their former friends. Friends who had been left undisturbed in their happy poverty.  Strikes might break out, maybe even revolutions.

So it is important for us, we who are not faced with the agonizing decisions needed to keep peace in far-off lands, to understand the difficulties the CEO of a large company faces. Not for him the luxury of saying “Santa made me do it”. No! Even in the face of rising profits he must stand fast.  Even when the stockholders rebel over the growing dividends he must stand firm.  His company, his management of that company, must never be accused of driving another poor country into prosperity. Just because it was Christmas.