The Most Dangerous Christmas Song

Christmas music. The hallmark of the holiday season. The avalanche of joy. The sleigh bells that outlast the horn of Gabriel. The eternal yulelog.

Many melt into the music, the melodies, the merry marshmallow mood. The year is ending, the Messiah is coming, the Christmas spirit is here. Huddled under warm comforters and hot cocoa, we consecrate our cochleas with Michael Bublé. 

We are safe and sheltered and loved.

Others are not so fortunate. One scroll through Twitter induces a migraine. Atrocities, violence, war. A timeline of division and sin.

So much suffering. So little hope.

Perhaps you watch a BBC news documentary about a famine threatening a fifth of the Ethiopian population. Droughts and insect infestations eviscerated food supply with one province losing 80% percent of its crops. Ethiopians forced to walk 50–60 miles to overburdened food shelters and relief centers. Many do not survive the journey.

Images of starving kids have seized the mental space Bublé once occupied. Anyone with a heart would repost, donate, utter a prayer. 

Bob Geldof and Midge Ure wrote a song.

Partnering with famous Irish and British musicians, Geldof and Ure formed the 80's supergroup Band Aid to sing a Christmas charity single to raise money for the victims of the 1983–1985 Ethiopian famine.

An all-star ensemble emerged: Sting, Phil Collins, Duran Duran, Heaven 17 Status Quo, The Boomtown Rats, Culture Club, Bananarama, Jody Watley, Paul Weller, Paul Young, Spandau Ballet, Kool and the Gang, and U2.

Oh, and the Last Christmas crooner is here, too.

"Do They Know It's Christmas" was born.

Selling this charity single was never going to be an immaculate conception.

The framing has to be perfect. The song must bring joy and inspire action. The artists must demonstrate altruistic intentions and understanding. The donations must actively assist the poor. Even then, detractors will point to the unattainable wealth of the performers, questioning the method of crowdfunding over the celebrities offering their own paychecks.

Nonetheless, the job was simple enough.

All Geldof and Ure had to do was compose a feel-good, family-friendly sing-along with cursory ties to the Ethiopian cause. As Ure reckoned, the goal was to "touch people's heartstrings and to loosen the purse strings."

It's Christmas time and there's no need to be afraid

At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade

And in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy

Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time

These lyrics may be corny, but who cares?!

But say a prayer, pray for the other ones

At Christmas time it's hard, but when you're having fun

No one needs their holiday music to arouse the scholar. No one asks for sad social commentary between Bobby Helms and Kelly Clarkson.

We are all about spreading holiday hospitality!

There's a world outside your window and it's a world of dread and fear

Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears

Wait… what?

And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom

EXCUSE ME?!

Well, tonight thank God it's them instead of you!

The celebrity charity single is more fragile than the Texas power grid in a blizzard. Geldof and Ure created a Christmas song that left an entire continent more powerless.

Through white hegemony and colonialism, Western civilization has held an abusive relationship with Africa. Many Europeans perceive "Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril."

Upon entering this battlefield, the privileged expect the primitive. They anticipate warfare, starvation, savage dialects, tears and doom.

While these observations of poverty and hunger have some merit, they neglect the nuance of these atrocities.

After the 1974 overthrow of Emperor Haile Selaisse created a national power shift, the Soviet Union quickly sought influence in Ethiopia. By 1983, Ethiopia received over $2.3 billion of Soviet military assistance, which surged to $13 billion by 1990. The largest Soviet-supported military unit in sub-Saharan Africa.

Furthermore, the Ethiopian regime was deliberately inciting a famine. Mengistu Haile Mariam was installing Stalin-esque agricultural policies to deprive inhabitants of food. This manufactured misery was weaponized to weaken insurgents and win a civil war.

Amid these authoritarian shift of Ethiopia, Western powers severely cut developmental assistance to Ethiopia. From 1982 to 1984, the Reagan administration slashed 8,172 metric tons of Ethiopian food aid to zero.

As world powers were pulling out, the media was pulled in.

Michael Buerk's broadcast of the "biblical famine" shook the world. Aired on over 400 television stations worldwide, the images of widespread starvation haunted the global community.

Despite this attention, media coverage was depressingly sanitized. Lacking the social and political context of the man-made malnourishment, the story was framed as a natural disaster and a standard African atrocity.

Band Aid duplicates this stereotypical simplification.

Well, tonight thank God it's them instead of you!

To Geldof and Ure, these catastrophes merely manifested from God's will. As if God deliberates who celebrates Christmas. As if we need to thank God for the suffering of Africans to soften our own injustices.

Pray for the other ones.

And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time

The greatest gift they'll get this year is life

Where nothing ever grows, no rain or river flows

Do they know it's Christmas time?

Any resource is a luxury in Africa. Any snowless, non-white Christmas season is invalid. Any semblance of agriculture or higher-education is nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

These lyrics are saturated in snark and prejudice: a reflex suppressing a continent's people, culture, and topography into the xenophobia of our white forefathers.

Such simplification favors the Ethiopian regime. Without considering the sources of famine, aid agencies and their donors were blindly giving without clear direction. Ethiopia misappropriated many contributions, diverting donations to feed militia, fund military strategies, and execute lethal large-scale resettlement programs.

Band Aid denies that their donations were embezzled by Ethiopia. Allegations of relief embezzlement could not be corroborated.

Any compassion from Band Aid is squandered by their complicity. They could have challenged the global system, asking listeners to question the coverage and causes of the famine. They could have considered that their outsider perspective limited their understanding of a complex situation.

Instead, Band Aid reinforced the global system by dumbing down their messaging for mass appeal and resorting to African stereotyping.

Meanwhile, some of their donations were allegedly funding an authoritarian regime that persecuted and killed millions.

We let in light and we banish shade, indeed.

Most publications rightfully condemn these racist remarks. A casual skim through the lyric sheet is usually enough to flush this filth into the annals of obscurity. However, "Do They Know It's Christmas" remains a choir selection. A singing competition standard. A Glee cover. A radio staple.

Something Paul McCartney, Freddie Mercury, and David Bowie all participated in.

The song even features in Daddy's Home 2 as a ploy to convince John Cena to stay with his dysfunctional family at the movie theater during Christmas.

And Mark Walberg belts out the fateful line.

The more things change, I guess...

Where is this blind support coming from?

Chinua Achebe, an African literature critic, conducted a similar analysis on a beloved yet bigoted work : Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The narrative follows a European explorer deceptively depicting barbarity and cannibalism in the Congo.

Such blunt framing leaves no illusion to the prejudices seething in the story. Knowing this, Conrad altered his strategy:

Generally, normal readers are well armed to detect and resist such underhand activity. But Conrad chose his subject well –  one which was guaranteed not to put him in conflict with the psychological predisposition of his readers or raise the need for him to contend with their resistance. He chose the role of purveyor of comforting myths.

Chinua Achebe, An Image of Africa (1977)

Conrad preyed on the European caricature of Africa as savage. He depicts the Congolese as diseased, otherworldly, subhuman. These accounts activate the confirmation bias of his audience, neatly satisfying the perversions of white society.

"Do They Know It's Christmas" mutates these African stereotypes with the Christmas genome.

Christmas spirit is ubiquitous: its garlands adorn chapels, courtyards, and civil courts, its festivities clog highway and digital traffic, its commerce smothers every sense. Every institution perennially perpetuates the comforting backdrop of Christmas.

We are conditioned to feel good. We are trained to forget our worries. We hear those Christmas bells ring and our mouths salivate like dogs.

Christmas can create good times. Christmas can reunite families, kindle childlike nostalgia, and muster up some well-earned, guilt-free happiness. No one wants to take away the gift-giving and Santa greetings from a child. No one wants the good times to melt away.

But Christmas should be more than just good times.

Our world does not freeze its miseries for a snowglobe utopia. Tragedies relent, suffering persists. Families are not a given. Poverty is not paused.

Christmas should enable depression, outrage, and loneliness. We should be free to express negativity and criticism without spoiling the party.

Yet, our protests are muffled by the panoptic Good Time™.

"Do They Know It's Christmas" exploits the Christmas mirage. Framed as the ultimate good, Christmas is prescribed as the antidote to African affliction. These foreigners must celebrate Christmas. They must participate in our hyperstimulated holiday frenzy. Their integration into our Christmas culture is necessary for the vitality of our race.  

Please contribute to the salvation of Christmas! Help these heathens reach the promised land! For every silent night needs its white knight!

As if the majority of Ethiopians did not worship under a Christian denomination. As if their agony has obliterated their sense of time.

As if Christmas has obliterated our sense of scrutiny.

Geldof has defended the second-highest selling UK single of all time.

"Please, it's a pop song. Relax."

"It's not a doctoral thesis. It is a song that has nothing to do with music. It was all about generating money… The song didn't matter: the song was secondary, almost irrelevant."

"This little pop song has kept millions of people alive. Why would Band Aid scrap feeding thousands of children dependent on us for a meal? Why not keep doing that? Because of an abstract wealthy-world argument, regardless of its legitimacy? No abstract theory  –  regardless of how sincerely held –  should impede or distract from that hideous, concrete real-world reality."

"Fuck off."

The song does matter. Notching 3.83 million sales with a sterile synth-pop, imperialist manifesto should matter. Inspiring the United States to create "We Are The World" a year later should matter.

This wealthy-world argument matters. Treating Africa as a charity case, yet only providing a pretty penny during the holiday season should matter. Relegating every woman and person of color to background vocals while propping up pasty, white men should matter.

Spotify and iHeartMedia plausibly taking a cut of the proceeds should matter. Churches and children performing this racist rhetoric should matter. And that goddamn album cover unequivocally matters.

SAY A PRAYER, they preach. FEED THE WORLD, they sing.

Our Christmas fever is a capital investment, a charity stretch goal, a market. We are spoonfed a steady stream of manufactured magic.

Thus, we succumb to the culture of Christmas  – a culture that treats Africa like a shithole and treats us like subservient receptacles of cash.