Stephen Bayley

Carnival of crassness

Stephen Bayley on why he despises December’s tawdry and sentimental retail landscape

issue 15 December 2007

Stephen Bayley on why he despises December’s tawdry and sentimental retail landscape

Christmas balls. This is a season to be forced into jollity. And one of mixed messages, dark ambiguities. Ghosts of Christmas past make me shudder. There is an old story about a Tokyo department store which, anxious to demonstrate its easy familiarity with sophisticated Western tastes, arranged for a vitrine to have an illuminated tableau of Santa Claus busy being crucified.

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