Yesterday I paid a visit to The Marketplace, and whilst there I met with a revelation about bogans and Christmas!
The Marketplace is the shopping complex in my hometown, and if you’re lucky enough NOT to be acquainted with it, it’s more than likely you know the type of place I’m talking about: One of those medium-sized suburban complexes with a newsagent, a liquor store, a slew of cheap clothing outlets and a token Indian woman who sadly wipes down tables in the food court and wonders where her life went wrong. You can hear the sounds of items being scanned and checked out at the supermarket: the “beep… beep… beep” sadder than the ticking of a clock, because you know you’re frittering away moments of your life in a depressing, fluorescent scum-bucket that cashes in on the human soul.
Of course bogans don’t see The Marketplace this way. The Marketplace is a Mecca; a complex of convenience where they can check their Lotto ticket, pick up a pack of Peter Jackson’s and find like-minded people to complain to about the Carbon Tax (“It’s just another bloody tax! Next that ranga will be taxin’ us for breathin’!”) and gay marriage (“What’s this society comin’ to?”- even though they have four children by three different women). Yes, I’m being facetious and mean, but I’m also being kind of incredibly accurate, right?
Yesterday The Marketplace was going insane. “Traffic gridlock!”, buzzing more than the bogan after a first hit of meth. There’s only two weeks until Christmas! That’s just one paycheque away… or, should I say, one Centrelink payment…
Amongst the hysteria in Big W (“Has Tyson got the new Guitar Hero yet? They’re sellin’ out!” and “Nah, I’ve got Keyhara-Lee’s present already, I’ve just got ta find somethin’ for Aunty Bev”) it dawned on me: Bogans LOVE Christmas.
“But everyone loves Christmas” I hear you say, amid accusations I’m a Scrooge. But I swear I’m not a Grinch. I love Christmas. I like the movies and songs. I like hanging out with my family. I enjoy giving people stuff. And, obviously, I enjoy receiving stuff. But bogans don’t love Christmas like normal people do. They LOVE Christmas. They love it like the Kardashians love attention or like Tiger Woods loves a five dollar hooker. They’re unsure who Jesus is, but it’s for sure their favourite holiday. Bogans adore meat raffles and the X-Factor and seeing their own name on a Coke can, but they love Christmas more than all of these things put together!
I don’t want to make too much fun of people at this time of year, though. After all I was at The Marketplace too. Am I a bogan?! A couple of years ago my extended family watched Step Brothers on Christmas Day, an activity that was undoubtably being conducted in trailer parks and commission homes across the nation. A few years before that we watched Kenny! Can you believe it? Kenny! That movie about the port-a-loo guy! That alone has GOT to be more bogan than chugging a Jim Beam in a Commodore on a drag race to Bonnie Doon!
But, unlike the bogan, feverish consumerism makes me kind of sad. Ringing cash registers are supposed to incite excitement and positivism, but in me they conjure up dread. “Why are these people spending money they don’t have on presents no one is really going to care about?” I ponder. Because my sense of rationalism probably outweighs my sense of emotion.
Last month I spent some time in hospital and I shared a room with a woman in her seventies who was, I hate to say, one of them. An old bogan, but a bogan none the less. She lived in a poorer suburb, had a wrinkled tattoo down her arm and protected her family with a kind of pugnacious tenacity that would have made her the Judy Moran matriarch on her block. Without fail her rats-tailed teenaged grandson would come to see her twice a day. The old lady clearly lived for these visits, and after getting to know her I realised that beneath her rough exterior was a woman who was gentle and kind. One time as we sat there, both pathetic in our hospital gowns, she told me, “I just want ta get outta here before Christmas. I gotta get home. Give my grandkids and ma great-grandkids the prezzies that they deserve”. It was a weirdly touching moment, where I realised that love is love and sometimes that love comes in the form of a Metallica: Live In Concert double-disc DVD.
I guess trolleys piled high with presents being pushed by bogans should make smile and not spew, because with these items comes a deranged sense of happiness, fulfilment and family. On Christmas night, when half a dozen cases of VB have been sunk and the wrapping paper is but a shredded pile in the corner, the bogan will feel all the more loved for having received a whole lot of useless crap including, it’s important to mention, season 6 of Two and A Half Men and a copy of The Stig’s autobiography (the only book they will ever read). Ignorance is most definitely bliss.
What about me, you ask? Of course I’m not unhappy. ‘Tis the season to be jolly and I get a great amount of festive cheer watching fist-fights break out between young mums for the last Bratz doll in the toy aisle of Big W during the Boxing Day sales.
“Boxing Day Sales?” The bogan’s ears prick up with excitement. If there’s only one thing a bogan LOVES more than Christmas, it’s the Boxing Day sales. “Whoever said money can’t buy ya happiness hasn’t picked up a great bargain!”
Merry Christmas!
