Simon Waller (00:01)
Hello and welcome to the future of Christmas. This is going to be the last episode of the Future of Friends for the year and I thought what better way to celebrate than to invite back one of, well, our favourite guest of the year it turns out, the incredible Steph Clark. Welcome back Steph.

Steph Clarke (00:17)
And do I get, is this where you award me best friend of the year? that the, get my certificate, my certificate will just kind of appear in the side or something. Yeah, little trophy.

Simon Waller (00:23)
So it’s.

Steph and I have had a running joke all year because her first episode that she did on the future of friends and friendships has turned out to actually be the most popular episode of the year. I got the stats, I got the creator recap. So you don’t get this Spotify recap. I got one as a creator. It turns out that Steph’s episode is listened to on average 180 % more than any other than the other episodes.

Steph Clarke (00:54)
put in a pretty good effort I think as well though didn’t he but yeah sadly not quite.

Simon Waller (01:00)
Yeah. So it turns out, yes, you are my best friend now, but some of this only for this year. Exactly. All counts reset next year. We’ll try again. But, ⁓ there was actually some really cool stats because, know, you do these things and I suppose you kind of throw it out into the ether and you don’t really know who’s listening. ⁓ and

Steph Clarke (01:15)
Mm.

Yeah. And

there is a certain irony that I’ve turned the future of friendship conversation into a popularity contest as well. I’m not sure that goes against everything that I was talking about, but sure. Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, yeah.

Simon Waller (01:30)
Yeah, there’s that. Yeah. But I want to share a couple of other stats with you because I’m pretty cool

with this. So apparently the Future of Friends was in the top 20 % of all videos on Spotify. Like all videos on Spotify. It was more popular than 88 % of other new shows this year. And it had more shares than 92 % of shows on Spotify. Which I think like that’s

Steph Clarke (01:43)
pretty good. Yeah.

Stephen Bartlett

could only dream of those sorts of stats.

Simon Waller (02:00)
Sure. Look, I

look, I was kind of originally probably aiming lower, but now I think diary of a CEO that’s very firmly in my sights. Yeah. ⁓ it’s been so fun and I’ve had such great time and I love the idea that I invite my friends on and we have these cool conversations and that other people then might listen to them. but this today we are exploring something a little bit different and the format has been switched up a little bit. So

Steph Clarke (02:09)
Yeah, yeah, right.

Simon Waller (02:29)
In the past, the theory of it has been that I invite a friend on, they might be an expert or have a deep interest in a particular thing. I challenge them to write a scenario about the future of that thing. And then we kind of spend the rest of the show kind of dissecting that and kind of trying to understand what it all means. But for this show, we thought we’re going to do as a little bit different. We’re actually we’ve both written a scenario. So Steph’s written a scenario about the future of Christmas. I have also written a

scenario about the future of Christmas. And we’re to have dueling scenarios, which will play right into Steph’s competitive streak.

Steph Clarke (03:01)
The competition. Yeah.

Simon Waller (03:09)
⁓ but before that, let’s talk about your jumper.

Steph Clarke (03:12)
I mean my Christmas jumper might have to like sort of stand up slightly to show it in its full glory. So this is a ghost of Christmas past, this jumper. This was created so, I think it was 2000 and maybe 2011?

should have actually looked that up. yeah, me and some my sort of school friends, we all made each other a Christmas jumper. So it was like a secret Santa. So you pulled it, you know, pulled the name out of the hat that was, you know, who you were going to be making the jumper for. And then you made the Christmas jumper for that person. So this is my friend Emma made this one. And then but we would all we do have like the crafternoons together to make the jumpers for each other. So we kind of knew what was being made, but it was quite cool to kind of see it take take shape. So yeah, this is still going strong.

Simon Waller (03:47)
Yeah.

Steph Clarke (03:59)
you know, what we all thought maybe 30 years later. It was a little bit stressful putting it on this morning. I was like, oh, hang on, I didn’t think about that. yeah, Thanks. Yeah. You can hear that little jingles as we go through.

Simon Waller (04:00)
That’s amazing. ⁓ And the fact that even still fits you after that amount time, I’m not sure I would fit into my jumpers from that.

It’s very beautiful. and have what a cool little, yeah.

And so I probably should just ask and check in on the book. Um, how is the book on the future on friendships going? And does this, is that a feature story in the book as well about making Christmas jumpers?

Steph Clarke (04:23)
Mm.

Click here!

It’s

not in there, but it probably should be actually. That’s a very good point. So I now have more content for the book, which is good. So the way I’ve been describing it is through the meme that I saw the other week and saved to my phone, which is writing a book is like reading a book, except the book hates you. So that is the current experience of writing the book. But I’ve had some three friends who have done some pre-reading for me very recently and have given some excellent feedback. They love the content. There’s some structure.

Simon Waller (04:36)
Yeah.

you

Steph Clarke (04:59)
stuff to work on so it feels like there’s some good hope for the book in the next few months so this is good so yeah using the summer to kind of do some writing.

Simon Waller (05:07)
Yeah. So obviously not a

stocking filler for this Christmas, but maybe a stocking filler for Easter or…

Steph Clarke (05:10)
No, definitely not. Well,

I mean, come back to that question after we do my scenarios. Yeah.

Simon Waller (05:20)
Okay, cool. All

right. So as I said, we’ve both written the scenarios, we’re to take it in turn, Steph’s going to go first, she’s going to read her scenario, we’ll have a little bit of a chat about what went into it. Then we have a swap over, I’m going to have to go and then we’re going to see what happens with the rest of the conversation. But before we get to that bit, we also did because we’re both writing scenarios, we kind of colluded on the timeframe. And we’ve agreed somewhere around 25 years. So

just because we don’t want to necessarily round number. Let’s say it’s 20, 51.

Okay. I just feel like just landed that on you now. It’s like, shit, I’d only gone, I’d only gone for 20, 50 and that extra year could really throw things. that.

Steph Clarke (05:57)
I think that’s not what’s in mind, but that’s fine. I mean, it all

changes. I mean, that’s the thing. But anyway, it’s 2050, 2051-ish. So yeah.

Simon Waller (06:09)
Okay, well, Steph, let’s throw to you, the microphone is all yours. Please tell us your understanding and scenario about the future of Christmas in 2051.

Steph Clarke (06:23)
It was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring not even a possum.

That’s right, it’s July the 15th, 2050 and it’s Christmas Eve. In Australia, it was the supermarkets who nudged Christmas into July. It just worked better for their financial year. Summer holidays and New Year’s Eve in December and January, Easter in March, April, and now the six different sporting national holidays in October, it just worked for their quarterly sales cycles, but they needed something to prop up Q1. By the late 2030s, moving Christmas to July was taking candy canes from a baby. The influx of European refugees who had fled to Australia during the 2029

Simon Waller (06:57)
you

Steph Clarke (07:00)
to 2035 war with Russia meant that Christmas in July had suddenly become more than just a fun mid-year lunch thrown by whinging poms fed up with sweating under their Christmas jumpers in December.

The 2047 Royal Commission into Christmas revealed that the supermarkets had quietly colluded to keep upping and upping the promotion of Christmas in July and making less and less effort for the historic December celebrations, eventually limiting selling foods like mince pies and Christmas pudding to only during June and July. Whilst there was a messy decade with many people celebrating two Christmases,

Simon Waller (07:16)
.

Steph Clarke (07:32)
by the time the commission report was released in 2038, nobody really cared. The government finally caught on and officially changed the public holidays in 2049 off the back of a referendum.

That eventual referendum was a landslide, as so many workers across the country were already enjoying this shift, which even before the referendum was made possible by floating public holidays that most organisations use to accommodate the range of cultures and religions in Australia. Australia’s historic pattern of having everyone save their annual leave for one forced shutdown break at the end of the year leading to an annual cycle of very tired people by November was finally interrupted by this mid-year holiday.

Simon Waller (07:45)
you

you

Steph Clarke (08:07)
Not everyone was happy, course. There were the usual protests and op-eds by more conservative Christian groups. The Kcidm keep Christmas in December movement, dressed in their telltale all red outfits, were out throwing mince pies at the doors of the supermarkets, vandalising public space Christmas trees and plastering posters throughout the cities. But there were other industries that weren’t happy either. Trade unions for construction workers were annoyed because July is one of the only two months now where they don’t usually have to shut down sites due to excessive heat. So they had lobbied hard against losing products.

activity during this time. Queensland actually decided not to recognise New Christmas as they call it and the selling of Christmas goods before September is actually banned making the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales now a mid-year Christmas tourism hub.

people escape over the border for their festive hit. An unexpected seasonal boon for a once popular area that teetered on abandonment due to inhospitable levels of climate change related weather events during the 2030s and 40s. Airlines on the other hand are delighted. The different Christmas holidays celebrated in different countries around the world mean that they can pump up prices at multiple times a year as people travel to see different family members for the same holiday. The end.

Simon Waller (09:18)
Nice. So this is like almost the ultimate consumerism Christmas. Yeah. So you must have had fun writing this.

Steph Clarke (09:23)
Yeah.

I did. Yes. Yeah. And it was hard because I was like, do I go like this hyper consumerism kind of which is this is but it’s almost like I suppose it’s a version of the hyper consumerism version or do I go kind of the almost the opposite way and do the kind of everyone’s you know, giving it up and it will going back to you know, just doing a solstice kind of thing or something along those lines. Yeah, so I decided to to choose this and there’s a few signals that ⁓ nudged me in this direction.

Simon Waller (09:56)
So, yeah, so I actually wonder like that when you talk about the hyper-consumerist aspect of this, in some ways this is like, it’s so consumerist that we’ve actually empowered retailers to shift the date. And it’s almost like under the current model, there’s not much sure about how much more consumer in we can do. You know, we’ve already got like, you know, Black Friday and this pre-Christmas and we’ve got the post-Christmas hours. It’s like, if you really wanted to maximize the consumer focus of Christmas.

Steph Clarke (10:01)
Hmm.

Mm. Yeah, yeah.

Simon Waller (10:26)
There’s a certain legitimacy or like rationale behind it was need to shift the date so we can really blow this thing out a bit further. And how inconvenient that people might be at the beach for instance, when you want them to be at the shops buying stuff.

Steph Clarke (10:37)
Yeah. Yep.

Yep.

Yeah, and actually, it’s funny, the Black Friday thing is one of the signals that I use because this Black Friday in the last probably two years has become kind of Black November. Like it doesn’t mean, I mean, it didn’t mean anything anyway. It doesn’t, it isn’t anything. It’s just been made up, but it kind of means even less now because it’s just this like month or six weeks long kind of period of this sale that no one really knows what it’s for, but we’ll kind of buy into it anyway and pun intended. So there’s, there’s kind of that, that piece was very much the, you know, kind of a leading signal for it. But there’s a bunch of other things as well. There was,

I mean, there’s actually a, it’s not really a signal. It’s more of an idea of sort of inspired by the book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, where in that world that that is the book is set in. The years are actually sponsored by brands. So you don’t have like 2035 anymore. You have like the year of the, you know, the adult, the adult diaper is like one of them. It’s like the brand of the adult diaper. And yeah, there is, there’s a lot of this in they just, because again, it’s that kind of sense of

Simon Waller (11:33)
you

Steph Clarke (11:38)
those things can be bought. the other thing actually just I’d already come up with this, this sort of skeleton of the scenario. And then last week, Trump removed free access to national parks on Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Day, but added it on his own birthday. So it’s just this sense of like unchecked power means all of these things come up for grabs the stuff that we think is kind of somewhat set just because I did actually have a secondary kind of like almost storyline in here about in the US. ⁓ Christmas was now on the 14th of June, which is

Simon Waller (12:00)
Mmm.

Steph Clarke (12:08)
Trump’s birthday but that divided everyone so much they actually abandoned Christmas all together so that and they just do Thanksgiving now because the the move of Christmas became too difficult and Santa then became blue for some people who weren’t kind of ⁓ wanting to celebrate kind of Trump Christmas you know in kind of June so anyway that was a whole other thing I didn’t quite really

Simon Waller (12:27)
Yeah, we may

need to pause this conversation until you’ve heard my scenario.

Steph Clarke (12:30)
really? Okay cool, we’ll come back to that.

⁓ yeah,

but I think there’s other things as well, you know, that I lent on, is just a sense that a lot more things that are set are becoming optional and yeah, fruits from higher education, which in many countries was like, well, that’s what you do. And you go and do these things and work to an extent as well, or certainly, you know, career paths in that way feels kind a bit more optional. Now, a lot of organisations are already giving people the option to, choose their own public holidays based on, you know, what they celebrate or where they’re from and things like that, which is, you know, around, I think, good.

thing. You know, remixing, there’s a sense of even like remixing religions as well, like people kind of choosing elements of the ones, the good bits of all of them almost and being like, I’ll take that bit. I like this piece of know, Buddhism and I like that bit of ⁓ that like that holiday or whatever. Yeah, and then this thing as well. You’ve got, you know, Easter eggs in the shops on Boxing Day and stuff like that. We’re like none of these things that will just becomes this nonsense after a while.

Simon Waller (13:13)
Mmm.

Yeah, I love that concept of remixed religion. ⁓ But more broadly, like it’s almost remixing how we celebrate our lives, right? Like, and, you know, I find I had this conversation recently with a CEO, we’ll catch up for lunch. And it’s like, I’ve gone away from saying to people, I hope you have a great Christmas. Because you can’t assume that they would treat that period as being a Christian or religious thing.

Steph Clarke (13:33)
Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Waller (13:58)
So it’s almost like, have a great festive season. And she’s like, yeah, festive season, New Year. was like, well, you can’t even say New Year because kind of for the Chinese and a lot of other culture around the world, New Year doesn’t actually fall on the 1st of January. So it’s really kind of almost like, hey, have a great two weeks. Yeah, yeah, have a good summer break. It’s like, and.

Steph Clarke (14:07)
Amen.

Yeah, well, let’s say have a good summer. Have a good summer break. that’s, yeah, think here,

like here it does kind of fit neatly into that. can, you know, people don’t kind of reappear again until end of Jan or early February, whatever. So you can actually kind of bundle it all up from just be like, oh, don’t, you know, whatever you’re doing, enjoy the season kind of thing. Yeah.

Simon Waller (14:33)
Hmm. Yeah. And

I do like some of the other things that came into this about this, this influx or wave of migrants coming out of Europe, uh, following the war with Russia. And, and again, one of those things that, you know, is, is something that we could see unfolding and has kind of these unintended consequences or unexpected consequences. And I think just kind of to set back in terms of looking at that stuff through the lens of futures.

Steph Clarke (14:43)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (15:02)
as a more general concept is this idea that, you know, often we went like, I don’t know if it’s a worker, it’s the day we could Dave Snowden and I remember this piece he wrote on LinkedIn already, he was talking about like in complex systems, the more oblique the intervention, then the less we can predict about what will happen next. So when you talk about something like a war in Europe, which is a very oblique event,

Steph Clarke (15:30)
Mm.

Mm. Yeah.

Simon Waller (15:31)
Like there’s a lot of conflict and then

as a result, there’s a lot of uncertainty. And the idea that this might throw up a situation where you have a mass migration to a place like Australia and you’re given Australia’s current relationship with immigration. You think that’d be like, we’d be really comfortable if most of our immigrants were coming from Europe. Rather than, yeah. So like we can still meet our expectations around kind of, you know, refugees and all the rest of it. But I do so in a way that feels a lot less conflicting for.

for white Australia or European Australians. ⁓

Steph Clarke (16:02)
Yeah.

Yeah,

think as well with that, there’s, know, in my head and again, I didn’t take that path, you know, go deeper into that part of the scenario, because that was kind of a, I suppose, a sort of side point, but it was one of the feeding parts was, you know, would it be a case where actually, for all the Europeans who already here, you then get four free passes to bring family members over or, know, that kind of thing. So you actually, that becomes a way of bringing people over, but with a connection here already. And that becomes, you know, the mechanism for there end up being an easier route for people from Europe.

to hear in that sort of situation.

Simon Waller (16:37)
We’re going to go in a second. We’re going to, um, I’m going to share mine and we can then talk about both of the scenarios together. Before we do that though, one question I would ask is to me, you know, when you do really good scenario work, there’s a need to kind of find a sense of like almost like balance, like an energetic balance in the scenarios so that they don’t come across as either, either being overly optimistic or pessimistic. Like there’s an

Steph Clarke (16:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Simon Waller (17:06)
There’s like good in the bad and bad in the good. When you look at this and perhaps in the writing of this, what did you perceive to be the light and shade in the scenario? Where was the optimism and where was your, where did your pessimism sit in it?

Steph Clarke (17:22)
The optimism is the getting rid of shutdowns at the end of the year. I think I’ve been angry about that for 11 and a half years. that was like, for a personal, as a whinging pom myself, like that was like.

Simon Waller (17:33)
As a seasoned whinging pom

Steph Clarke (17:35)
Yeah, I’ve been

whinging for a long time. That for me was one of the light parts. I mean, there was obviously the dark, the shade bit around, the refugee influx from Europe because of a war. Yeah, that’s obviously pretty bad. But I think the other piece that was the, because I guess, relatively speaking, this is fairly low stakes, I’d say, in terms of all the different things. However,

It is another way of people being divided on something in my mind. it becomes, because it is, you know, has a religious element to it, because it has this really long standing cultural element to it as well. It feels like something that people would get really get themselves worked up about and would call.

Simon Waller (18:15)
100%.

Yeah.

Steph Clarke (18:16)
Yeah, and

yeah, would cause quite considerable stresses in families and all of those kind of ripple effects as well. you know, another reason that, you know, employers would have to make a stand around that, which one do they, you know, recognise as a public holiday and pay people double time for, you know, whatever it is. yeah, that was, suppose, the, you know, it’s not super loud, I don’t think in that way, but it’s definitely would be, would ⁓ come, that was how it would play out, I’d imagine.

Simon Waller (18:42)
I particularly

like the part of it as well where Queensland chooses to abstain. My feeling is though that it would potentially also be Western Australia.

Steph Clarke (18:45)
⁓ yeah.

I thought that and then I thought you’d think I was picking on you. So felt like Queensland was like neutral picking on ground for this conversation. So originally I had put WA and I was like, oh no, you’re going to be like, no, why did you pick WA?

Simon Waller (19:01)
Right, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. This is all part of their recession plan. But I do like that. But also think about that. You said the Northern Rivers region, Northern New South Wales, and you kind of almost have this interface zone where some people would almost like, almost like some people therefore choose to never celebrate Christmas and some would choose to celebrate it twice. You know, like, they are like something like, I like, I always knew this whole thing was a sham. I’m not doing either Christmas.

Steph Clarke (19:10)
Exactly, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm-mm.

Yeah, yeah,

Simon Waller (19:34)
And

Steph Clarke (19:35)
yeah, yeah.

Simon Waller (19:35)
that’s legitimate, like actually go across the border to not celebrate.

Steph Clarke (19:38)
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah, true. Yeah, they people go the other way as well. Yeah. Yeah. I can just imagine though as well, like they like almost like across the like the, the highway, think it’s the M1 or something that’s between Queensland and sort of Northern Rivers. They’d almost be like fairy lights over the over the highway kind of thing. Like welcome to Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Waller (19:58)
Yeah, and you are now leaving Christmas.

Okay.

So with the thought that we do this to kind of provide a little bit of a separation between your scenario and mine is we’re going to insert an ad from our future sponsor. So in the shows, it’s normally done in post-production. We, you know, I listened to the episode and then I kind of devise hopefully a slightly shitty fake ad from a future sponsor we don’t have yet, but would love to have.

some point in the future, even if it is in 2050. As a normal I’ve done this myself, but I actually said, oh, well, let’s do this together. Let’s actually get you Steph to create your own fake future sponsor, which you have done. So we’re going to play your fake future sponsors ad now. And then when we come back, we’re going to flip the script and we’re going to share a second scenario. Sound good?

Steph Clarke (20:58)
Sounds great, I’m looking forward to hearing yours.

Simon Waller (21:00)
Okay, so let’s play your ad now.

That’s great. I love it. Mary Donna Blitz. I like that. That’s beautiful. Like it has a, there’s a playfulness to that as well. ⁓

Steph Clarke (21:38)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, I

had thought about doing like a Santa kind of future thing, but I was like, oh, it just feels a bit too, again, it’s breaking the rules of physics, which you’re kind of not really allowed to do in futures work typically. So I thought the way I can get around this is by using this in the fake ad.

Simon Waller (21:59)
Yes. And I do, but I do love as well, in this kind of world of hyper litigation, it feels like entirely legitimate that you would have a law firm. Yeah. Okay. So we’re good.

Steph Clarke (22:04)
Yeah, yeah, was definitely stuff that went, there was definitely like substance behind it. Yeah, ⁓

So the

thing with this one, guess, this episode, because normally you will have read the scenarios beforehand, which you hadn’t done. That was the first time you heard mine. And obviously this is then also means this is the first time I’ve heard yours. So this is, ⁓ again, different and fun.

Simon Waller (22:20)
Hmm.

Are you ready for that though? That’s the question. Are you ready for that much fun?

Steph Clarke (22:32)
Well I’ll let you know if I if you look up from reading and I’m not here because I’ve fallen on the floor because it’s so much fun you’ll know I was not ready.

Simon Waller (22:44)
Well, let’s hope that you don’t do yourself an injury. It is. All right. OK, let’s do this thing. Our second scenario on the future of Christmas.

Steph Clarke (22:46)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (22:57)
The scene was simultaneously familiar and eerily different. The raised dais, the gilded red velvet throne, the celebratory songs drifting out of banks of speakers lining the stage. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. The audience waited in anticipation. These were the true believers, the ones willing to brave the cold, huddled together for warmth only illuminated by the light of their holographic candles.

The ones willing to sing festive songs or eager to catch a glimpse of the big man himself. We gather here together to celebrate this day. And then he appears striding confidently across the stage, waving at the crowd, his red suit, a powerful symbol. No, a celebration of the political movement he now leads. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

We hold our banners high tonight and for our leader we do pray. Farron Clump stopped in the middle of the stage. He pauses, waiting for complete silence. And when the place was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. He waits a little longer. Farron was a student of history and he was acutely aware of how the greater arators of the past used long pauses and silence to build tension and ultimately complicity.

As many of you know, the 25th of December is an auspicious day in our movement. Today, where we celebrate the great work done by those who have come before us, the giants on the shoulders of which we now stand.

once again he pauses for effect. This is the day we celebrate those who made our world great again. The ones who were willing to make the sacrifices required to protect us, to build the walls that now surround us. And not just the physical walls on our southern and northern borders, the walls of missiles, the walls of sea mines, the tariffs and financial controls, the walls that deter all those people from all the shitholes around the world, the Grinch’s.

looking to steal our festive cheer.

Another lengthy pause.

But because of that protection, we celebrate the abundance of food, the abundance of health, and the abundance of love that you have for your party, your nation, and for me, your great leader. The crowd launches into thunderous applause. Of course, the picture that Farron painted didn’t necessarily fit everyone’s reality, or anyone’s for that matter, but following the total inshitification of the internet and the party’s comprehensive control of the synthetic news media,

It was impossible for anyone to know what was really real anymore. And although Mauga Day still felt a little uncomfortable, you were told it was like a new pair of shoes that you just hadn’t worn in yet. And there was no end of news articles pointing out that before Mauga Day, there was a consumer driven abomination called Christmas, a version of Christmas that most people didn’t miss and even less could afford. course, a small number of

People still hold on to the religious traditions that came before the post-Christmas, pre-Christmas and pre-pre-Christmas sales. But if you weren’t very careful and very discreet, you risked receiving a visit from ICE, the illegal institutions and custom enforcement agency. And somewhere, far away from this rally, there were still a handful of communities that remembered the distant origins of Christmas. Christmas, the pagan festivals that celebrated the winter solstice and the abundance of food that followed the harvests.

But whether it be the people gathered together at a political rally, the making and gifting of small trinkets, a family joined in sinful prayer, or a group of friends gathered around a small fire that had been lit inside a barn to avoid satellite detection, some things about Christmas hadn’t changed. Christmas was still a time when friends and families gathered, when bread was broken and food was shared. Despite another attempt at the co-option of Christmas, it was still a time of gratitude, celebration.

and connection with the people we love.

Steph Clarke (27:20)
Did you have to put that last bit in just to make it somewhat nice? Like again, light and shade. You know what? Oh, it’s all shade. need to light, there’s a little bit of light at the end.

Simon Waller (27:26)
Light and Shade

Well,

no, but this actually was the conclusion I came to having written the whole thing was that, so this concept that Christmas has been co-opted over time is real. You know, there is a kind of a distant pagan aspect of, of Christmas, which is around the, you know, the winter solstice and there’s an abundance of the harvest. And obviously this was co-opted, ⁓ you know, by Christianity somewhere a couple of thousand years ago, ⁓ has since really kind of been co-opted by.

Steph Clarke (27:39)
Yeah, yeah.

Set,

Simon Waller (27:57)
What is kind of this consumerist version of Christmas that a lot of us feel ourselves existing at the moment, very reasonable that it would be co-opted again in this case by a political movement. But if you look through all of those versions of it, whether it be the pagan version, whether it be the Christian version or even the current consumers version, this bit about us coming together with our friends and families, actually the thing that still the bit that ties it together. In fact, that’s the bit that people are trying to co-opt. They’re trying to co-opt the bit and go, how do we associate this thing that

Steph Clarke (28:19)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (28:27)
we think is important with the thing that you love. It’s almost like how Facebook managed to co-opt our friends and call it a social platform. You know, it’s like they took something that was dear to us and that we weren’t willing to let go of and tried to add themselves into the mix. So in some ways I look at it like quite legitimately, I mean, there was a darkness to this, but I generally did look at the end of it and go like, but there is actually a deeper truth to Christmas, which provided its own light, so to speak. ⁓

Steph Clarke (28:46)
you

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Even though the light can’t be detected or shouldn’t be detected by satellites. Drones. ⁓ Grinch drones. Yeah, and I think it’s interesting as well when I think about the conversations I’ve been having with more and more people this year, it feels more so, you know, just in real life is that’s almost the bit that people actually all try and keep coming back to is like, I just want to get together with the people I really like.

Simon Waller (29:00)
Yes. ⁓

Steph Clarke (29:22)
And so people kind of opting out of certain things that have become just default for the last decade to, yeah, long decades sometimes. And the stress that comes with it as well. often their parents who are like, well, it’s got to be like this because that’s how it’s always been. And kind of working themselves into a tiz. then people sort of, our generation just being like, enough.

What do we actually want to do? What’s fun? What’s good? What is everyone going to have a nice time doing? Let’s do that. And that might be going away and actually kind of breaking the habit by putting yourself in a new location for that period of time or doing it on different days. Like actually just sometimes removing it from like the 25th of December is enough to kind of change the…

Simon Waller (29:55)
you

Steph Clarke (30:10)
the defaults of what you’re gonna do and how it will happen and who does what and everything. yeah, it like that’s the bit that people keep trying to come back to. But then like the other stuff keeps like encroaching.

Simon Waller (30:21)
Yeah, and luckily, because we are literally marketed to about trying to make it something more than that. I think two things I’ve definitely picked up. think the cost of living challenges a lot of people are facing. People are something going like, hang on, why are we spending all this money on gifts that I think the stat is that on average, like people value the gift that you were given at around 60 % of what it costs to buy it. Like it’s a purely financial thing, right?

Steph Clarke (30:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (30:49)
It’s like, oh, that’s not really great as a return on that giving type thing. And I think a lot of people are starting to go like, oh, hang on, why is this the bit that we feel that we’re compelled to do? And as you said, is there, what’s the deeper thing here, the connection piece and the company piece. And I even think about my own personal experience. My family’s also very distributed. I know yours is too.

Steph Clarke (30:53)
Yeah. ⁓

Simon Waller (31:14)
My parents were in Perth. ⁓ My brother’s in South Australia. My brother-in-law’s in Queensland. So we’ve done a lot of time. Was that, sorry? Yeah, exactly. It’s pretty awkward. ⁓ But like, so for many years we have, you we travel often for Christmas, even this year we’re traveling up to Queensland. But one of the things that we found really hard as a result of that was that we didn’t get that time together as a nuclear family.

Steph Clarke (31:20)
Where they don’t celebrate Christmas obviously, so yeah. Where they don’t celebrate Christmas.

Mm.

Simon Waller (31:41)
Like

there was a bit where it was like, where’s that bit that we wake up together and we get to have that little magical moment, especially when our kids were young. ⁓ and so one of things we did for a number of years is we would travel on Christmas day. So we’ll often either traveling to WA or Queensland, ⁓ obviously to get out of Melbourne and go somewhere it’s actually warm in summer. And, but what we found because of the time difference in those places, we could actually wake up, we could have breakfast together. We can have our own little nuclear family thing and that connection piece that we needed to have.

Steph Clarke (31:52)
Mm.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (32:10)
jump on a flight and still arrive somewhere in time for, you know, a beer in the afternoon, a barbecue, whatever. Yeah. Oh my God, going to the airport on Christmas day is the best. It’s like, yeah.

Steph Clarke (32:14)
And where would you put to fly on Christmas Day as well?

I know, I’ve done it before, it’s so good.

Yeah. Yeah, this is good. And I think as well, like it…

It’s interesting because when you first set the kind of, you know, the task of the future of Christmas, you know, first of all, my brain was like, okay, well, what are we actually doing the future of? Is it the future of religion? Is it the future of ritual? Is that future of celebration? Is that the future of family and kind of family units and that kind of thing? Like the, you know, the domains, you know, to use the kind of, I somewhat technical term of Christmas is beyond just the 25th of December. It’s like, there’s so many other things that we can actually be having an interesting conversation on the future of dot dot dot that are around that. And I think that, you

Simon Waller (32:52)
Mm.

Steph Clarke (32:58)
both of us have kind of touched on some of those things as well around like the social bit, the cultural elements, the, you know, to an extent the religious part as well. Like we both kind of had that, you know, mentioned in ours as well. And then, you know, also is it a future of retail kind of conversation because that’s kind of the position we find ourselves in.

Simon Waller (33:15)
Yeah, I thought that’s yes, you’re right. you know, often when people choose a topic within that topic, there’s so many different tangents that could be explored. It was quite possible ⁓ for us for our two scenarios to almost have zero connection with each other. ⁓ But it’s weird that ⁓ there’s obviously so many interconnections.

Steph Clarke (33:24)
Mm.

Simon Waller (33:36)
And I think probably there’s a question that sits at the heart of both of them that something is around questioning that the consumerist aspect of Christmas. And so when I went about mine, was like, if I was to think about what the future of Christmas, my first question, I suppose, was then, what was the past of Christmas? And obviously, you know, being aware of some of those previous versions that has existed and

Steph Clarke (33:53)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (34:02)
And potentially therefore, well, why would we assume that the future is the same is one thing. I think there’s also, you point out interesting one, the same signals that I drew on. So you mentioned around, you know, um, making his birthday a public holiday. was not technically his birthday. It’s actually the celebration of the armed forces. It just happens to happen on his birthday. Right. So again, that’s an example of how.

Steph Clarke (34:13)
Mm.

Yeah, right.

Yes, yeah.

Yes, yes, I did see that.

Simon Waller (34:32)
something that’s a national identity or a national holiday being co-opted for political purposes. So I saw the same type of thing as being, well, why wouldn’t we also co-opt Christmas for a political reason? ⁓ you know, like we want to look at it in a historical context of this, this also happened in Nazi Germany. And again, I think in autocratic states, there is a tendency to try and use those existing forms of

Steph Clarke (34:37)
Mm.

Simon Waller (35:01)
shared identity and co-opted them and making them political in nature. So it’s interesting that even though, again, there’s some similarities and there’s some differences, it’s also interesting that we drew on some similar signals and then kind of use them in some different ways.

Steph Clarke (35:15)
Yeah, did you come up with any, like even if you didn’t fully flesh them out, but when you were coming up with this one, did you come up with any backup, you know, kind of like, oh, and this would be the, you know, when you’re doing a scenario, typically you’re doing it on the most uncertain and the highest impact kind of areas. And then, you know, which way might those go? Did you come up with any other versions of things that might play out that you just didn’t expand on and do a scenario on?

Simon Waller (35:36)
Yeah. So finally you talked about the Blue Santa concept. So obviously, you know, that, that idea. And I said, mine is obviously, I found it easy to set mine with a kind of a US context. And part of it was because a lot of that, those kinds of trends that we’re seeing are kind of, especially around kind of autocracy, political division, are more pronounced there in the US than they are here. So if we were to play this out in an Australian context, we might want to add another 20 years to the time horizon.

Steph Clarke (35:39)
Yeah, yeah,

Simon Waller (36:05)
to see that level of conflict emerge. ⁓ It’s been very interesting, even over last 12 months or so, we’ve kind of gone through a period of very high levels of Trumpism in Australia. we, so November last year, we had our council elections. lot of councilors, a lot of councilors elected a disproportionate number of more right-leaning candidates because Trump was hugely popular in November. And yet we got

six months later to our federal election. And the interest in that wanes dramatically because the reality of what that meant in terms of impact on people, on our social values and stuff had changed. And we have a different political system here as well in terms of mandatory voting, a bunch of things, but we can kind of go, so we are somewhat insulated from some of that stuff. But if we do extrapolate and go, we’re not fully insulated, it just may take a bit longer for it to get here.

Steph Clarke (37:00)
No. Yay.

Simon Waller (37:02)
So definitely the kind of concept of the Blue Santa was something that I also kind of considered. actually thought realistically, if we get to that level of authoritarianism is any other, any other celebration of Christmas outside the mandated version would be largely shut down. But I do think what we would see is just like now there are still people who celebrate, celebrate this kind of festive season through the lens of

solstice and like you would have these, just goes underground. So there’s potentially other things to be explored in what that underground version of like, you know, what does underground consumerism look like would be a really interesting kind of area to explore.

Steph Clarke (37:44)
Yeah, right. like a bartering kind of consumerism type thing. don’t think things even can go together, but there probably is a version. And I think as well, especially as people, it feels like at the moment, and again, this is like a short ⁓ kind of a current trend, like how this plays out, maybe it just dies out in 25 years, it will sort of be irrelevant or be back to the fringes. Is people kind of picking and choosing from these more mystical, spiritual kind of, ⁓ some real kind of old ways.

of thinking and some kind of maybe more pseudo kind of you know types of belief systems and things. So then yeah do you end up with more people yeah there being actually like a bigger proportion of people who go a bit harder onto the kind of the solstice and those types of ⁓ celebrations and things and you end up with that becoming a slightly more mainstream maybe still on the slightly on the edges but still but more mainstream than it currently is. ⁓

Simon Waller (38:38)
Hmm.

Steph Clarke (38:39)
kind of going

down that pathway as well. there’s, end up with people, yeah, being leaning a bit harder against the consumerism and actually kind of, as with most of these things, going really far that way, you know, against that, yeah.

Simon Waller (38:51)
Yeah, I think there’s also something to be talked about almost in that space, like you mentioned a little bit, and this kind of starts to fall into the intersection of our two scenarios. And we’ll kind of expand on this a bit more after we’ve had the second fake sponsor slot. But there’s also something around almost like festive tourism. And you touched on that of people going across the border. But you might find, for instance, that people who are deeply

Steph Clarke (39:11)
Mmm.

Simon Waller (39:20)
aligned with these other versions of Christmas, whether it be the Christian version, like a religious version, or even the consumer’s version, is that there’s a level of festive tourism. like, I can’t celebrate like that here. So therefore at Christmas, I’m going to go to Europe or to Australia. Obviously we’re not in Australia because we do it in July now, but you know, we, but there’s a version of this where we kind of go somewhere where it’s more amenable to the values and stuff that we hold. ⁓

Steph Clarke (39:22)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah.

Simon Waller (39:47)
Now, you know, again, I wonder what the counterpoint to that might be, whether it’s like, no, there is no tourism. Like part of the walls is it’s not one way. We think the moment the walls were about at the moment are about keeping people out. ⁓ what was the stats I saw recently, which blew my mind is that something like 40 % of Americans would actually immigrate to another country if they could afford to do so. It’s something astounding.

Steph Clarke (40:00)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, right. I bet it is.

Simon Waller (40:17)
And amongst women, it’s much higher. It’s like,

yeah. So there’s a lot of people who is like, if I could leave, I would. You do wonder at one point is if you’ve built the walls, do those walls, are those walls about less about keeping people out? And at some point those walls become about keeping people in.

Steph Clarke (40:24)
Mm.

Yeah, well, I mean, that’s part of the conversation, isn’t it? If like you want to stay, you’ve to have, you’ve got to stop having babies. And then that’s another, that’s a whole other dark kind of, you know, subplots to this, you know, current timeline that we find ourselves in. Yeah, because there is a, there are unintended and intended consequences of, of keeping people out as many places are trying to do.

Simon Waller (40:49)
Mmm.

Yes, yes there is. But it’s okay because we’ll still take them all. As long as they’re European.

Steph Clarke (41:00)
Yeah, Yeah,

It’s exactly not a northern hemisphere, but particularly European. Yeah. Where they just decided that it just makes more sense to have Christmas in July. So yeah, yeah.

Simon Waller (41:09)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. All

right. So I think what we’re to do is we’re going to listen to our second fake sponsor slot now, and then when it come back and then we’re going to just riff and chat a little bit more about some of these other kinds of ⁓ interpretations or extrapolations we can have around both the scenarios, but also generally what we’re seeing in the world and how that might impact on our future festive spirit. Does that sound good, Steph? Okay. Now, so you have not seen this ad as well.

Steph Clarke (41:38)
Yep.

Simon Waller (41:44)
So ⁓ let’s listen to our second fake future sponsor ad about making Christmas great again.

Steph Clarke (43:07)
it’s so bleak.

Simon Waller (43:07)
What’s

up?

Steph Clarke (43:13)
It’s beginning to look a lot like autocracy. ⁓

Simon Waller (43:19)
Yeah. I don’t

know. I do. This is actually another ⁓ interesting thing. Like I do have a tendency when I write scenarios to write them in a way that is slightly dystopian. And, and I kind of believe it’s a conscious choice. Like it’s not just an accident. don’t have a dark like frame. It’s more like the power of dystopianism in terms of eliciting conversation and eliciting, ⁓ you know, like

Steph Clarke (43:26)
Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, very much.

Mm.

Simon Waller (43:49)
Like, people are more inclined, if everything’s too optimistic, it’s like, there’s nothing to be discussed here. It sounds great. Let’s just do that, right? And it’s like, we then shy away from the choices that we make and the challenges that we may have to deal with or how we might have to preempt and prepare for things. Is that like, tell me this is like in terms of your own approach. Is that something that you think about a lot when you’re writing scenarios as well?

Steph Clarke (43:56)
Yeah, yeah, it’s like great. Let’s do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Mm.

Yeah, I definitely, I don’t think I… I probably do err a bit towards the slightly more dystopian, probably not as much as you do. I think you go there and then probably have to wind back sometimes, whereas I have to like, kind of start there and sometimes have to push it a little bit more. ⁓ I think it’s, for me, it’s always remembering to have that, the light and the shade, because like you say…

Otherwise it’s either too dystopian and everyone’s like well don’t want to think about that or it’s too great and utopian in some ways and people are like great let’s just do that and please I’ll order one of those. I’ll order one of those features thank you. So I think for me it’s finding that balance but also just having that question in the back of my mind all the time of who are the winners and losers because it might actually not be obvious as well and especially when you start thinking about the unintended consequences what might look like someone who’s gonna win or lose in that kind of a media actually if you extrapolate

Simon Waller (44:51)
Mm.

Steph Clarke (45:10)
that out a little bit further, another five years or you know even more maybe less depending on the situation you then go actually that could really turn for those people who put this in place or you know have got more power here but maybe they don’t they can’t keep that or whatever the different context is and especially when you start and I think for me that stress test is always yeah what what what would happen next and I might not write that in but for me it’s that kind of thought thought experiment of what would happen next and does that

Simon Waller (45:19)
.

Yeah

Steph Clarke (45:40)
makes sense for this scenario to be the scenario. So I think that’s yeah that’s often for me the kind of the bigger question.

Simon Waller (45:47)
So a couple things I pick up on that. So first of all, I do also think that humor, like even though I write slightly dystopian, I use the humor as a way of not, like almost like in letting the audience know that, yeah, yeah, there’s a wink. There’s a, there’s a, this is not real. Like there’s a way I’ve been able to articulate that, you know, there’s a certain satirical aspect of this that doesn’t ⁓ take away from the need for us to face some of these questions.

Steph Clarke (45:54)
Yeah.

There’s like a wink. Yeah.

Mm-mm.

No, no.

Simon Waller (46:17)
But

it’s also a way of saying, I don’t see this as being true necessarily. So that’s one thing. I think there’s other ways of playing around with that that don’t have to be utopian, dystopian. There’s ways of shaping the conversation differently. So I think that’s one thing that came up. ⁓

Steph Clarke (46:32)
And just on that one, just very quickly

is yeah, I like it. I, that is definitely my tendency as well to like insert some humor and some satire in there as well. And sometimes it’s just the way you name something like the competition company or the, the acronym on something. Like you’ve just had in your fake, your fake sponsor, like really nicely as well. But the, so that stuff, and that’s the stuff that sticks to people. Cause then that’s the stuff that when you’re facilitating a conversation around it with a board or with an exec team or whoever you’re working with, that’s the stuff they keep coming back to. They’re like, I wouldn’t want the department.

of you know cultural whatever it is to find me out or yeah whatever it is but that’s the stuff that sticks and that’s the stuff that keeps in the conversations you’re like cool this is getting into the brains and provoking those conversations

Simon Waller (47:09)
Yeah

So interesting. did some, you know, I’ve done some work. We’ve both done a little bit of work with libraries. did some work there. What have we now? Four years ago, some of the work I started doing and we wrote some scenarios that we’re looking at the future of libraries. And we had this fictitious thing called the McLibrary Corporation. And that language is still used collectively in those organisations today. It is like a shorthand for almost a version of libraries that we don’t want.

Steph Clarke (47:22)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Mmm.

Simon Waller (47:48)
where

it becomes like just the standardised offering that has the minimum level of books with the minimum level of service with the minimum level of like everything. So yeah, it’s very interesting about how those can sometimes be created to add some humor or a little bit of jest or, you know, like as you can send that signal to the audience that we’re not taking this too seriously. Like we’re not taking this as being super dystopian, but as I said, those, those pieces of information really stick with the audience.

Steph Clarke (48:13)
you

And I think as well, doing this, like this as a practice, and this is just the way your brain starts to work after a while as you’re thinking about the scenarios, even if you’re not fully writing them out and fleshing them out and doing it, blah, blah, blah. It helps you ask just better questions as well. So when I was working with a group a couple of months ago, was kind of within healthcare, know, kind of broadly though, yeah, sort of share too much, but yeah, was within the kind of umbrella of things. And we were talking about something and, you know, sort of in the back of my mind, like, what’s the different scenarios? Like, what’s the weird ones? What’s the kind of thing?

said to the group, the exec and the board and I was like, what the supermarkets do if this they had this problem? And they were like, oh, they just really changed the conversation. Because you then start to go, oh, yeah, well, they would think of it like this. And you know, part of that’s the kind of, you know, those elements of that sort of design thinking kind of thinking with that as well. But you then start to flesh it out as a scenario in a, you know, micro kind of in a room, you had a messy way, and just creates this like a way better way more interesting conversation. But I think you’ve got this kind of framing

Simon Waller (49:11)
Hmm

Steph Clarke (49:14)
in your mind of, you know, the scenario thinking, you, yeah, it just helps you kind of go different places.

Simon Waller (49:22)
You talked before about the winners and losers and that’s obviously a common framing of like, okay, so if it was to unfold, what happens if it gets accelerated is one way of being able to ask to examine what the impacts might be in unexpected ways. But even that question when we say, what happens if it’s accelerated? What is the scope of acceleration? What’s the future high and low variability in this? But then within that, what are the winners and losers? Talk through with your scenario for a second.

Steph Clarke (49:26)
Mm.

Simon Waller (49:52)
It’s shaped around this, this framing of the power sits within big retail. What, when you kind of start to think about the impacts of big retail and its influence over Christmas and even the things that we’re experiencing now in terms of this very consumerist driven approach to Christmas, where do you see the winners and losers in that? I’m trying to try and think back with your scenario. Where do I pick that up? Like what would you, when you look at that world, where do you see the winners and losers in that world?

Steph Clarke (50:24)
think, yes the supermarkets, I think in Australia that feels like a bigger…

we think about unchecked power, we talk about it from an autocracy from the US, what’s happening with their kind of political kind of landscape there around unchecked power. then, know, looking at other countries that can be similar as well, and there’s a long way in the spectrum. In Australia, it feels like it’s, you know, that kind of unchecked power is largely in supermarkets, and then probably equally, but in a different probably in bit of different ways around mining coal, you know, that kind of, those kind of extractive industries as well.

Simon Waller (50:59)
Be.

Steph Clarke (50:59)
to an extent airlines but maybe slightly less so.

And yeah, whereas in our political system that like you say, there’s sort of balances that at the moment seem to sort of still be holding. So yeah, so it’s more around like, who actually holds the power? Who could actually change this? And actually, for me, the first one that came to my mind and was like, actually, it feels like it would be the supermarkets, it would be the, you know, the duopoly that we have around them being like, you know what, this isn’t working for us in December, let’s change it. But there also being those kind of cultural things that made it easier to change. I think they tried to change it to, you know, March or something that wouldn’t have

worked if it was even August or September might not have worked as well like Christmas in July is already kind of a thing so how do we leverage that so again it’s that kind of the trends mapping that know FMCG and retail and fashion all the rest are you know very you know it’s a very established thing for them to be doing

Simon Waller (51:39)
Yeah, yeah.

I think also if you went

further back in that supply chain as well, like if you work in manufacturing, the hardest thing of all is a lumpiness in demand. And there’s such a lumpiness, a global lumpiness in demand when you talk about Christmas. So I think you’d also kind of see Amazon would be very on board. And again, if we look a couple of decades into the future, you would imagine that the online retailers

Steph Clarke (51:57)
Mm.

Hmm.

Simon Waller (52:22)
especially the large online retailers, obviously already have significant power in the marketplace. But then again, what they represent is they’re saying to think about this through a logistics exercise. And they go like, well, it’d be so much easier for us if we didn’t have everybody’s Christmas in the world line up. again, could almost be, we start to think about what’s the global shifts happening around this is what we would want to do is if we were in, you know, like a

Steph Clarke (52:39)
Exactly.

Mmm.

Simon Waller (52:51)
If we were in kind of global manufacturing, global retail, what we would like to do is ideally a Christmas type event, consumerist event, every month of the year in different parts of the world.

Steph Clarke (53:02)
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s

one of the things I’ve kind of thought of is there’s another much in some ways much more dystopian version where it’s Christmas every day. And in some way, like somewhere has decided, you know what, this is great. Let’s just do this every day. And they do that. And

Well, the other thing I was going to say as well is actually in Europe, you if it hadn’t have been decimated in this, you know, my unfortunate scenario, then maybe they would be like, you know what? It’s kind of a pain in the ass having all these deliveries and all this logistics stuff and all the rest, like in the middle of winter, like snow is up to our eyeballs and yeah, maybe in Canada and, you know, north of the US as well might have that, that challenge too. So let’s, let’s move it. So maybe like the whole, the hemisphere is kind of almost flipped and just to like, maybe there’s this in October or something like that. It kind of ends up being.

you know just in those extra those sort of shoulder months where it’s a bit quieter or whatever yeah so anyway I think there’s a bunch of stuff but yeah they kind of everyday Christmas and there’s a book I’m reading at the moment which is great it’s called the future by Naomi Alderton of Alderman sorry have you read that one yeah yes

So good. I’m loving it. in one point, one of the main characters, Zen gets caught in this situation in a shopping center in Singapore. But in this shopping center in Singapore is like an ex is a it’s like a Westfield or whatever, but like even more so in the future with this like hyper hyper consumerism and and in this super in this story in this big mall, the you can go to the different zones where it is Christmas every like 82 hours or something like that. They’re like the annual cycle and then you go and then New Year, there’s another one that’s like

Simon Waller (54:34)
Yeah.

Steph Clarke (54:38)
New Year’s every 82 hours or like on this like they have like the different sort of timelines and things and all these different things happen and yeah you can just go and just be in that world and she talks about kind of walking around and seeing all these people who like clearly just that they’re kind of all the time because they they want to harness they just want to hold on to that thing. thought was bleak and tragic.

Simon Waller (54:56)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Steph Clarke (55:01)
And obviously like again, if you think about some of the other stuff going on, it’s almost like in the absence of anything else that’s kind of good or working, this kind of escapism that something like Christmas or whatever can create. So that’s why maybe some places are like, it’s just gonna be Christmas and it’ll be really nice and it’ll be fine. Everything’s fine because it’s Christmas every day kind of thing. Yeah.

Simon Waller (55:20)
Yeah. Do you wonder

like, so in this, kind of, you know, through my scenario, I talk about this in co-opting that’s happened over time. And, and, and I imagine like the people, so the people who celebrate Christmas still through a pagan lens of like the solstice feel frustrated by the religious co-option, right? And they’re, and they’re religious, the Christians feel frustrated by the consumer, right?

Steph Clarke (55:39)
Mm. Mm.

Mm-mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Waller (55:50)
and so on.

But I also wonder that if, say for instance, the consumer culture was to go, no, we’re just going to take Christmas and make it in July. You can have your 25th of December and be as religious as you like. I actually wonder whether or not, by taking all the power away, or all the kind of focus away from that day, whether a lot

Steph Clarke (56:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (56:16)
whether it be maybe I think a Christian there where they like, oh, hang on, but it was ours. Like you took it away from us. Even though what you’re taking away is only the consumer aspect of it, which they would otherwise be fighting backward against. Like it’s almost like you’re taking the energy of Christmas away from us, as opposed to just taking the consumer’s aspects of Christmas away from us. Yeah.

Steph Clarke (56:21)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, like what you’d offer is that, yeah, you’d almost, think especially at this point, like, because it’s been going on so long, that kind of consumerism shift, like you say, has been, yeah, this is decades in the making. It’s almost like, what would it be without that for people? Like for, you know, for kind of group of more religious, you know, Christians, we’re gonna be like, okay, well, we’ve got it back.

Now what? Like, what does it look like when you haven’t got those trappings around it that everyone’s been, more or less everyone’s been exposed to throughout most probably their whole lives at this point? Yeah.

Simon Waller (57:12)
Mmm.

Steph Clarke (57:14)
It made me think as well when I was doing mine, and especially because I’m reading that book at the moment as well around like what’s the kind of like post-apocalyptic Christmas. if you’re in your bunker in New Zealand or something, you when you have to kind of rebuild it from scratch, like do you even, especially if you don’t have that religious connection to it, like what do you end up recreating when you kind of start from nothing again?

Simon Waller (57:39)
Yeah. I wonder like there’s a maybe, maybe there’s something about a stripped back version of all of it. One thing, my daughter, I saw every year I make, ⁓ like spices called my awesome mix.

Steph Clarke (57:47)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

I’m very excited about this year’s one.

Simon Waller (57:58)
Yeah,

we’re seeing each other in real life tomorrow and you’ll be expecting a jar I imagine.

Steph Clarke (58:02)
This is, yes, I’ve been trying to use the

last years to make room for this year’s on the spice rack.

Simon Waller (58:07)
Yeah.

You’re expecting that you’re to make the cut though, which is that’s interesting as well. Yeah. But like, so I make that my daughter actually is amazing that she will always make gifts for people. And does talk a nice scenario is that there are people who go, like, we can’t afford the consumer’s version. And because there aren’t the sales and stuff on that, cause it’s no longer, ⁓ it’s actually being co-opted as a, as a political movement.

Steph Clarke (58:12)
Well this is my prize for winning surely!

Mm. Mm-mm.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (58:36)
But people who still make things,

Steph Clarke (58:37)
Mmm.

Simon Waller (58:38)
you know, like I’m still going to make things. I’m still going to give the gift as a way of just acknowledging or do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, it’s like, I don’t, I don’t fully understand the deep pagan beliefs around Christmas, but the idea of there is a bonfire and there’s an element of eating together. Right. I get that bit of it. And I just wonder whether or not you end up potentially in both scenarios.

Steph Clarke (58:42)
or do something. think there’s a service element as well. Yeah, yeah.

Mm-mm.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (59:05)
a slightly simplified version of both. whereas kind of like, and again, I suppose where I came to with mine was that’s probably the common element is we spend time with our families. We’re grateful for that, what we have.

Steph Clarke (59:08)
Mmm.

friends

or chosen family and things as well, which I think is, yeah.

Simon Waller (59:22)
And we may find small ways of saying thank you in acts of service or gift giving, but it’s not in the version of it that it’s become. So yeah, think that’s interesting in terms of maybe there is some genuine positivity in a future version of Christmas that we don’t have today.

Steph Clarke (59:25)
Mm.

Mm.

Mm.

Yeah, yeah, you asked me earlier and I don’t think I really answered about the kind of winners and losers in mind. I think one of the other things that would be interesting is around like school colour calendar as well, which is it’s funny. said I just gave someone the other day or over the weekend like very quick rundown of my scenario and they’re like, but when would the school holidays be if it wasn’t? I was like.

I mean, I think that’s a quite easy problem to solve. You might still have a summer holiday, it’s just not a Christmas like most of the rest of the world. yeah, that’s, they’re like, yeah, that’s not just here, it? No, that’s just, they just happen to collide here. They just happen to collide here, like the summer holidays and the Christmas holidays, yeah.

Simon Waller (1:00:15)
Yeah.

Right, crisis averted. Woo!

Yeah.

But as you said, everywhere else in the world, they managed to make do with the summer holiday that doesn’t, yeah. It doesn’t go with Christmas.

Steph Clarke (1:00:29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes,

yes, there is that. But yeah, there’s like, yeah, there’s almost the, the, you know, the kind of infrastructure, and it’s quite the right word, but kind of the everything else that like the year kind of works around that kind of thing happening at the end of the year. And then, yeah, but there’s like a bunch of other stuff as well that would have a little knock on effect around, when do we do that? Or what does what happens with this thing? And yeah, anyway, so yeah.

Simon Waller (1:00:54)
So one of the things I find when we do these types of things and we write a scenario, we invest energy and mental effort in envisioning and exploring a future. And almost through that effort, it shapes us or changes us a little bit. Is there anything that having done the work you…

Steph Clarke (1:00:58)
Mm.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (1:01:20)
think you might do differently or has changed your perspective on anything like about Christmas?

Steph Clarke (1:01:29)
It’s been interesting doing it this year because I feel like I’ve been having a bit more of a kind of like, ⁓ what do I even do at Christmas? Because I guess I haven’t really, it’s funny what we kind of associate like real Christmas with and Christmas. And I feel like I’ve not had a real Christmas for 10 years since, which is the last Christmas I went back to the UK for was Christmas 2015. And since then I’ve just, you know, it’s what was really cool about moving to literally, you know, the other side of the world was being here with my partner at the time. We’re not together.

anymore but being like ⁓ well would we do it Christmas because there’s no other there’s no obligation like there’s so much obligation around Christmas when it was just us we’re ⁓

I guess we make it up and we have, you know, we do something fun and we do what we want to do. And it became like its own thing for the rest of the time we were together, which was another kind of like eight or nine years or whatever at that point or 10 years at that point. it was, yeah, it was kind of cool to kind of have that. then since that really wasn’t in that relationship the last couple of years, and then me and a friend, we last couple of Christmases and over kind of Christmas and New Year, we’ve gone hiking and camping and stuff and kind of had like more of an adventure Christmas. ⁓ And then that kind of happened for

Simon Waller (1:02:28)
Okay.

Steph Clarke (1:02:40)
various injuries and things this year so I’m kind of back to this kind of like

what’s Christmas again? And my kind of European contingent of friends are all back in the UK and Europe this year for Christmas with their families and immediate families and things. So again, just

being like, ⁓ this has felt like a very like real kind of thing around what would I even because I’m not religious and so therefore there’s not that kind of peace. But for someone who, know, Christmas doesn’t mean anything in that way, it still has that kind of like hold on

Simon Waller (1:03:02)
Mm.

you

Steph Clarke (1:03:15)
me and probably others as well. were like, oh well even though it doesn’t really mean anything, it kind of does and what do do with that and kind of feeling a bit orphaned this year and don’t really know what to do with that either and yeah so but it did really then all of it did come back to that thing of what do I want to do at that time of year whatever it is and whatever I to call it or whatever. Spend time with the people I want to spend time with.

And so, but not end up in this kind of weird default position, which I think is really easy to kind of fall into.

Simon Waller (1:03:38)
Yeah.

Yeah, I know. So we’re both quite big on concepts around kind of rituals and doing things that create, like they have a momentum around them or creating things that have a momentum around them. And what I hear…

Steph Clarke (1:03:49)
Mm-mm. ⁓

Yeah. Yeah. And there’s expectation.

I think there’s a piece of that as well around, you know, that kind of that collective kind of thing of being like, cool, what are we going to do this year? Like we’ve got to, yeah, there is an element, there is somewhat level of ritual framework. And then it’s like, it’s a really collective, co-de-created kind of thing. That’s fun to co-create and not, oh shit, what’s Simon doing this year? Like, oh God, I’m going to talk to Simon about Christmas kind of thing. Like, this should be fun.

Simon Waller (1:04:15)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And I think as on one hand, when you first came, it sounds like you kind of were quite happy to escape from like the rituals that were existed and perhaps, yeah.

Steph Clarke (1:04:26)
Good.

Yeah, to an extent. definitely was something

I missed. But also when you move to the other hemisphere, it doesn’t feel like Christmas. So that was the other thing as well. Like there wasn’t that kind of homesickness or whatever that other people kind of described or have described when they moved to maybe another country in the same hemisphere and had that kind of first Christmas without their family or whoever it is they spend Christmas with. And it felt hard. Whereas this was like, it’s just, it’s weird. it’s, everyone’s like saying Merry Christmas and wearing silly hats, but it’s 25 degrees.

Simon Waller (1:04:45)
Yeah.

Steph Clarke (1:04:59)
I like it.

Simon Waller (1:04:59)
But also I think I wonder like when you moved here, and again, I’m just presupposing a couple of things and you can correct me if I’m wrong, like you were in your mid twenties or so somewhere around that. Yeah. Like I think at that age, we don’t necessarily appreciate the value of ritual in the same way as we might when we get older in the value of family and the value of these things. Like we’re out there trying to, you know, exert our independence.

Steph Clarke (1:05:05)
I

I was 26 when I moved here.

Simon Waller (1:05:27)
and individualists. Right. But like, think like even now, like, you know, I kind of think about it with my own parents who are getting older, and I’m very conscious of the fact like, Oh, wow, I got to have Christmas just as we get together. And so the rituals and stuff around it become almost like become more important. So I do wonder whether or not at the time when you left, it was like, Okay, cool. It’s almost like there’s a novelty and there’s an excitement about what this might be. And in that space, there isn’t a need to create new rituals.

Steph Clarke (1:05:27)
I’ve been doing that since I was two apparently, so that’s fine.

Yeah. ⁓

Simon Waller (1:05:56)
But I do think that potentially like that’s maybe what is missing is like, wonder what, given someone who so, who deeply loves those concepts and the importance of things that are a part of the, like the cycles that we share and especially with friends and family and stuff. I wonder what your ritual would be or could be if you got to create one at this moment. And knowing that that ritual, like most of them, they really build a life over time.

Steph Clarke (1:06:19)
Mm.

Simon Waller (1:06:26)
But they don’t, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it’s almost like I got friends, for instance, back in Perth, their family ritual was they didn’t really care what happened on Christmas morning or during the day, but there was always a Christmas party at their place, starting at five o’clock. So it doesn’t matter who, everyone was welcome. Like all their kids, friends were all welcome.

Steph Clarke (1:06:26)
Yeah, you can just switch it on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:06:53)
There was always going to be a Christmas party at their place, stayed at five o’clock and everyone like you, got invited once, but then you knew about it and they kind of built over time. And I remember going, well, there must’ve been, I don’t know, 50 or 60 people there on a Christmas evening. Like, it was just, that was their thing, right? That they had created. again,

Steph Clarke (1:07:06)
Yeah, that’s awesome.

Yep.

It sounds

like from what I know from people who grew up in WA, that is also a very WA type of thing is like the backyard party is like a much more of a ingrained kind of thing. Whereas like maybe on the East Coast, that’s slightly less so maybe in certain pockets that is the case, maybe in some of the surf towns and stuff, maybe a little bit more. But in WA, like you almost it was, you know, people have told me it’s kind of almost hard to sort of break in living there when you just move there and aren’t from there because you can’t really find anyone because everyone’s around someone’s house kind of thing. Like they’re all, it’s kind of tucked away a bit more, but

Simon Waller (1:07:39)
Yeah

Steph Clarke (1:07:41)
really social and communal but just less ⁓ visible.

Simon Waller (1:07:46)
When Nomes, when she first moved over to Perth when we were dating and she kind of came over to live with me, she was just blown away about how efficient ⁓ West Australians are at organising barbecues. Like the idea that we just go like wake up on a Saturday or Sunday and we should have a barbecue. You make four or five phone calls and literally within a couple of hours, people turn up with meals, stuff for the barbecue and salads and drinks. it’s like, it’s almost like you just magic this out of thin air.

Steph Clarke (1:07:58)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:08:13)
She was like, you couldn’t do that in Melbourne because just the geography of the place is like someone would go, well, that’s a two hours across town and then I’m gonna do this and that. Yeah. But Perth, that’s very much, just, we’re very, very good at barbecues.

Steph Clarke (1:08:22)
And also in…

yeah well and also Melbourne it’s like well it’ll probably be raining by then so… whereas in WA it’s like yep it’s gonna be like this for the next three weeks so…

Simon Waller (1:08:29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what would your ritual

be, Steph? Like if you could create one, like your ideal ritual, what would it look like?

Steph Clarke (1:08:40)
It would be like, and again, without being too mushy about this, it would be with my favorite people. And that’s very, I realize that’s very kind of selfish, because then they can’t be with their favorite people, they’d have to be with me. But it would be like a smallish, small to medium group. And it would be like that kind of, right, at four o’clock or five, whatever time, everyone will be here. And for…

Simon Waller (1:09:05)
Yeah. But it could even be like,

I wonder if it’s almost like, yeah, in the evening it’s like, or even this boxing day, you know, it’s like where you, where you just kind of say to people, it’s like, almost like there’s something symbolic about it being on boxing day, which is like, it’s the end. It’s like you’ve got family and, and, and is the next day. And, you know, we do that and we have our own version of this, which is our end where you come around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. And you can basically.

Steph Clarke (1:09:08)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. Or Christmas Eve, actually, I think that’s a nice idea.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

and I always preferred the food when like my kind of Christmas is growing up. I always preferred the Boxing Day celebration because it always just felt less heightened in terms of like the expectation, the stress. ⁓

Simon Waller (1:09:43)
Mmm.

Steph Clarke (1:09:44)
And not necessarily because was, you know, was with a different side of the family. So, you know, not necessarily that I preferred one side of the family to the other at all. was not that, but it was much more like the food was more chill. And actually I way preferred the food on Boxing Day as well. Like that was, you know, fun. And it just was less, you know, just less like, oh it’s Christmas Day, it’s got to be, you know, kind of thing.

Simon Waller (1:10:01)
I

speaking to someone the other day that they do their thing with their family on Christmas Eve, but not in the evening. Like they will go somewhere kind of mid afternoon. They’ll go to a nice restaurant in the city and there’ll be eight or 10 of them that catch up and they have a leisurely kind of lunch that kind of goes into the evening. And then somewhere around nine o’clock they all head home and it’s actually already taken all the pressure off Christmas. It’s like…

Steph Clarke (1:10:07)
Yep. ⁓

Dennis, yeah.

Mm.

Yeah. Yeah. Let’s go.

Simon Waller (1:10:30)
Whatever happens the next day now, it can be just super relaxing because we did. Yeah. ⁓

Steph Clarke (1:10:32)
one last time.

Yeah, yeah. That’s really nice.

I like that. yeah, I Christmas, I mean, in continental Europe, most, you know, many countries on the continent, they celebrate like Christmas Eve is the day kind of thing. which is always nice when I’ve got some German friends, we used to do orphan Christmases with them. So it’s quite good because they would have done their big thing on Christmas Eve. We then do something on Christmas Day and then everyone would go off and do their own things on Boxing Day or whatever. So that was always quite nice for that reason, because everyone kind of got the thing. But you know, I think for me, it would be like a kind of, you know,

Simon Waller (1:10:53)
Mmm

Steph Clarke (1:11:03)
maybe like a slightly rotating kind of group but kind of a core-ish group of you know some of favorite people and just be like this is what we’re doing and actually for it to be like a really joint fun communal thing that every year everyone’s like what’s that yeah and there’s an element of like structure or an element of ritual like oh that thing will happen at five o’clock because that’s kind of what we do yeah whatever but there’d be like an element of right who’s bringing this or who’s doing that and you know yeah something along those lines which is what I’ve quite enjoyed about the camping and hiking things that me and Emily have

Simon Waller (1:11:20)
Hmm

you

Steph Clarke (1:11:33)
done

over the last couple of years because it’s been like okay cool what’s this Christmas’s trip is gonna be and last year we did you know we had Christmas Day on Pambula Beach in New South Wales down the Sapphire Coast which was stunning and then did some hiking and mountain biking around there and then went up to Kosciuszko and did that as our kind of New Year’s kind of New Year’s hike was the Koszi you know we finished at the finished on the top of the world certainly in Australia so yeah and kind of had like that was our New Year’s hike kind of thing so which actually was quite fun because we were gonna

Simon Waller (1:11:56)
Mm.

Steph Clarke (1:12:03)
do it from New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day to kind of really kind

of amp that up. But the weather wasn’t going to be great on those two days. So we did it from the 29th into the 30th. So we had fake New Year’s. And what was really fun, so we had like a fake New Year’s at the top on the sort of morning of the 30th. We’re like, having a year at sort of 6am, whatever time we kind of summited. And it’s funny, we saw two other women up there as well, probably around our age. And they were doing exactly the same thing. They were like, oh, yeah, we saw the weather wasn’t going to be good the next two days. So we’re also having a fake New Year’s. So we were like,

Simon Waller (1:12:09)
Yes.

Steph Clarke (1:12:33)
having a year to each other. that was really fun as well. Because like some of those things you can’t plan, you just gotta happen.

Simon Waller (1:12:38)
Yeah. Yeah. I reckon

the thing that I’ve taken away is I think I would love to incorporate into our

traditions, like what we do within our family, something that involves like ⁓ a fire. So, and I’m not sure maybe if… I know that’s a problematic, that’s the only problematic part of it, but the idea of like, what is the thing? But what’s the reminder of the pagan origins, right? Like we already do a pretty good job. Like I love cooking, as you know, so I’ve already kind of planned to cure my own salmon so that we can have that on Christmas.

Steph Clarke (1:12:54)
Hmm. Hamlets are usually fire ban season in most places. Not in July though.

Mm.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:13:16)
So the stuff around the feasting or the kind of the food aspect of it has always kind of been very important to me anyway. But I almost like want to have something that feels a little bit out of kilter. Like that is the reminder of the origins of this thing. So that almost like you’re like something like, like kids go like, dad, why are you lighting a fire? And it’s like, yeah, but like, this is what it was actually originally about. And let’s just not forget that everything that we have done since then is a co-opted version of this.

Steph Clarke (1:13:26)
Mmm.

Mm.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:13:45)
And almost like there is a deeper, there is a deeper truth that’s worth connecting with. And I don’t know. Like I said, I understand the problematically about fire and fire bans and stuff, but also there’s a level of like almost like the fact that it’s not what you would normally do in the middle of summer in Australia also makes it the point about why it is stands out. So I’m open to other recommendations by the way, but that’s kind of where I’m leaning at the moment is. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Steph Clarke (1:13:52)
Sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Gas bar, unfortunately, that’s the only option.

Simon Waller (1:14:16)
Now Steph,

we are almost out of time and so the future of Christmas is almost over.

Steph Clarke (1:14:19)
We are.

Hmm.

is. Yep.

Simon Waller (1:14:27)
This is the point, like I suppose from the analogy point of view, we have eaten our fill. We are now going to slumber on the couch for the rest of the day. ⁓ Yeah. But I know that you and I do get to back this up again tomorrow with our little… Yeah. A little bit too much sherry in the Christmas pudding. Yeah. But we get to catch up and do this again tomorrow in real life. And I’m looking forward to seeing you then.

Steph Clarke (1:14:32)
Everyone.

Dad’s asleep already on the sofa. Yeah. ⁓

Grandma’s drunk again.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:14:55)
Thank you so much for coming, enjoying and celebrating the future of Christmas with me.

Steph Clarke (1:14:57)
Thank you. This is fun. is fun.

I’m glad you initiated this about a week ago. This was a fairly short turnaround on a scenario. hopefully no clients get any ideas from that. it was, yeah, this is great. Thank you.

Simon Waller (1:15:12)
Yes, writing

scenarios takes a lot longer, way more expensive.

Steph Clarke (1:15:16)
Yeah, invoice is in the post for this one, Simon. Thanks, Merry Christmas, have a great summer.

Simon Waller (1:15:20)
All right, Merry Christmas, Steph

That one.