Last Christmas: Claus & Effect

"My god I thought you were someone to rely on": Last Christmas, Wham, 1984

NORAD has reported Santa’s location on 24th December to millions of children and families across the world for over 65 years

A belated, Happy New Year! I was going blame the delay of this post on Royal Mail, but in reality I've had a chest infection...but after a few rounds of antibiotics, a lot of afternoon naps and that many 'cough assists', that I'm thinking of selling whatever internal organs I have left to pay the electric bill.

So when the clock struck midnight on 31st December 2024, I hope the sound of the chimes didn't just say goodbye to the old year, but signalled the start of a great year for you. May 2025 bring you good health, much happiness and love.

I was not expecting to see Christmas 2023, so to have experienced last Christmas was an incredible blessing. Having spent the year at home in bed, it's remarkable how quickly the 12-months seemed to go...how did I ever fit work in? November and December especially went past in the blink of an eye.

It only feels like two-minutes since it was Guy Fawkes Day, the anniversary of the attempt to blow up Parliament during its State Opening on 5th November 1605. Enraged at King James I for refusing to grant greater religious tolerance to Catholics (despite his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots having been a devout Catholic), a small group of English Catholics intended to kill the Protestant King and members of Parliament to clear the way to re-establishing Catholic rule in England. Just 419-years later, as people listened to the flames of the bonfire crackle and spit around the stolen wooden pallets, Grandma's old hat stand and the burning effigy of Guy, I wonder if they thought about Fawkes and his surviving co-conspirators who were sentenced for treason and then dragged behind a horse along the streets of London to Westminster, where they were promptly hanged, drawn and quartered? Probably not.

Although to be fair, if the 'gunpowder plot' was to have happened last year, there would have been pro-Guy marches through London every Saturday; the CPS would have said there wasn't enough evidence to meet the threshold for a treason or terrorism prosecution; Fawkes would have had a visit from the Met to record a non-crime hate incident (NCHI) and to warn him not to share anything on Facebook; and the Pope would have been fast-tracked through the court system and 'tried in absentia' for Incitement, as he had liked a post on X from Father Ted.

"Ha, those Protestants, up to no good as usual" - Father Ted

With the loud whizz and bang of fireworks still ringing in our ears, and the ashes of the bonfires still warm, we then had the predictable seven-week pre-Christmas run in. The endless jingle of sleigh bells on the TV Christmas ads, DPD drivers playing 'knock a door run', video clips of cats decimating beautifully decorated trees, and Wham’s 'Last Christmas' reaching No.1, again.

Christmas Eve arrived faster than a rubber dinghy on a Kent beach. The date had finally arrived for the festively plump chap in a red suit and matching bobble hat to set out on his magical journey, delivering gifts to homes across the world whilst struggling to meet his net-zero emissions target. Apparently, like cows, reindeers also produce methane gas, but despite Rudolf and the gang letting rip all night, the big man refuses to subject them to a Bovaer laced diet.

On the eve of the big day, I managed to see a bit of the live video of Santa Claus' globetrotting, courtesy of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) website. Santa's repeated violations of sovereign airspace were tracked and monitored, and pictures of his sleigh laying chemtrails, to try to off-set the fart blitzen, were captured in glorious colour. However, this video raises a few questions. Is the live-feed real or fake? If real, given the subjective criteria for his 'naughty list', is Claus guilty of coercive and controlling behaviour? If fake, are NORAD creating and distributing fabricated video?

Whilst we can have a wry smile about NORAD's fake Santa Tracker (as everyone knows he freezes time), over the Christmas and New Year period, and up to the time of writing, I've spent way too much time on X passively watching, laughing and coughing at video clips which have clearly been altered in someway. The internet, especially social media, is increasingly populated with manipulated and obviously faked videos, known as 'cheapfakes', created by various groups of people with different methods of manipulating them, and the truth along with it, to suit their aims.

"Digitally manipulated media do not have to appear authentic to successfully spread misinformation. Cheapfakes on social media can alter public opinion even after they are debunked" - Carly Minsky, Financial Times

The Washington Post (in the USA, not Tyne & Wear) published a great article on the three main ways digital video is being altered:

• Footage taken out of context - videos that misrepresent the situation by only showing a piece of selected footage in isolation

• Deceptively edited - videos that are edited to omit parts that may not fit the narrative desired, or even splicing the footage with images and/or sounds from other recordings

• Deliberately altered - videos that are maliciously transformed to create an entirely different version of events. This could include doctoring the footage, say by replacing faces or voices, or with inexpensive software, even fabricate the whole video

More often than not, the manipulated videos I watched, fell in to the category of deliberately altered. These cheapfakes were often very funny and clearly intended to be a parody or to poke fun. It seems that nobody is exempt from this mocking and taunting, from doctored clips of the new US President Donald Trump making silly and hilarious statements, to the unemployed former US Vice President Kamala Harris walking down the road swigging a beer, to the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying something batshit crazy or clearly untrue. Although, a lot of the footage of our Prime Minister is probably real. If you have a broad mind and you fancy watching fake Kamala strutting her stuff on X, here's the link: https://x.com/Old_SchoolEddie/status/1880818177476866386

There were also numerous examples of footage taken out of context, with sensationalist 'click bait' titled posts that purported to show evidence of unprovoked incidents, which later transpired to be untrue when the full videos of these events were shared. However, the most surprising footage I stumbled across was an attempt to deceptively edit the video of my Top 50 Singles Chart, the one I created and shared on this blog just before Christmas.

Unfortunately, this cheapfake edit is as cheap as you can get. It clearly does not reflect the values of Christmas, such as kindness, charity, gratitude, love, and hope. However, if you would like to watch it, please note that it contains strong profanities, discriminatory insinuations and cultural stereotypes that are inconsistent with good standards of inclusion and tolerance. You can find the clip in the Sound & Vision section of this blog, and/or via this link: https://www.vitabaccano.blog/videos?wix-vod-video-id=97e30d5f7f054f3f95169dd8da9bfb99&wix-vod-comp-id=comp-jcuhobq1

"My god, I thought people could be relied on

Me? I guess I was a punter to pry on

A blog from a bloke with a chart in his heart

A man sharing tunes, but you tried to tear it apart

Now I know what's real 'n' fake. You'll never fool me again

Last Christmas

I gave you my chart

But by New Year's day you gave it away

This year

To save me from tears

I'll cheapfake you something special"