“We’re getting them 39 African goats,” Ray Smith, the manager, told me.
“Wonderful,” I said, “you’ll be able to make your own feta or hew one of those super-pashminas from the hairs on its chin. Nothing like a goat to brighten up an urban garden.”
I got the sort of withering look that Marie Antoinette must have had to reconcile herself to in later years. “We’re sending them to an Angolan village, actually. One goat can help to feed a tribe for ages. They make milk, cheese, all sorts. You give the person a picture of the goat on a card. Well, not of it exactly but one that’s suggestive of the breed,” he says, a little unsure. “Anyway, it’s ethical.”
Estate agents and ethics? Something must be up. A perusal of the figures reveals that somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 goats were sold in Britain last year, making them the non-materialist equivalent of Robosapien or those brushable Barbie unicorns that parents are fighting over at the moment. “We’re hardly anti-capitalism here,” corrects Smith, pointing to photographs of £1m houses lining the agency’s window.
Granted, the goats are cute. They are also cheap, starting at just £13 a pop — although Unicef will charge you extra for postage. You can order them from charities such as Oxfam or Christian Aid and even Lastminute.com which dispatches them to various regions in Africa.
If you buy two or more for a village they become a sustainable source of milk which can either feed people directly or be sold and the profits used to buy other things such as medicine. Although there is an argument for sending cows and donkeys instead (unaware of its role as a charitable envoy, the goat can get a bit testy and lay waste to precious crops), it would take a concrete heart to argue with the scheme. Question is, what have goats got to do with Christmas?
People have muttered — many have shouted — that December 25 is a profane exercise in human greed since time immemorial. Nowadays, bitching about the festival’s errant purpose is up there with the shocking price of wrapping paper and cold brussel sprouts for yuletide banes. Some families take to imposing a £5 limit on presents or confining the range of gifts bought to chocolates and salt scrubs — things that won’t clutter the house come January. Surely there’s only limited call for goats, though. Unless something more fundamental is going on.
The first sign has been economic. According to the CBI, the high street has just reported the worst November takings for more than two decades. Given that we have a collective £13 billion credit card bill, people suddenly seem less inclined to add any more superfluous plastic to the 3m tons of rubbish left on doorsteps on Boxing Day.
“Figures last month showed that Britons have now accrued more than £1 trillion in debt,” concurs Anthony Elliott, professor of sociology at Kent University. “Personal debt increases at £1m every four minutes. There are 246 plastic transactions taking place every second.”
Have we over-indulged? “It could be that we’ve finally reached a sense of over-abundance,” he says, “of drowning in things that we’re unable to pay for.”
Hard up — and fed up with shopping — could society finally come good on what it has been threatening to do for years: scale down Christmas?
“About three or four years ago I just thought: enough with this senseless spending,” says Judy Fox, a 62-year-old mother of three grown-up children from Oxfordshire. “I’ve sent a number of goats overseas now and this year I’ve branched out and sent a pig to some Bosnians. I’ve named it after my daughters,” she adds proudly. Wouldn’t they rather have a set of ceramic hair-straighteners? “I get them a little something on top,” she concedes, “but I won’t let Christmas turn into Giftmas again.”
Bad news for luxury crackers, great news for goats. Oxfam has already sold more cloven-hooved creatures than last year and “we haven’t even had our Christmas rush yet”. Although they are leading the charge, goats are by no means the only anti-consumerist prezzie that you can choose.
Companies such as the Good Gifts Catalogue offer bikes for midwives (£35), an acre of rainforest (£25), a hive of bees (£20) or a Kalashnikov for a farmer in Sierra Leone (£25) who, I am assured, retools them for non-violent means. That the goats sell best implies that we still like to put a pretty face on Third World misery, but it’s undeniably a movement.
If charity begins closer to home, you can even — it was announced last week — put stem cells from your newborn baby’s umbilical cord on ice for 25 years. It costs £1,250 but you cure any future life-threatening illnesses. Quite a gift, but does it leave anyone else panicking for the Furby or hankering after that look of childhood wonderment which only gross-out consumerism can inspire?
Because, inevitably, the real question is whether the trend is about ethics and cutting up your credit card or about providing the giver with a bigger thrill than the recipient. Nobody wants to do Africa out of a goat, but we could always donate them anonymously in January rather than risk turning them into a symbolic weapon to tell friends, family or colleagues, “Happy Christmas, and by the way look at what a fabulous, John Paul Getty-style philanthropist I am.”
“It’s even more complex than that,” says Richard Wiseman, a psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire. “Giving is all about impression management. We do it to foster a good idea of ourselves in others. Charity gifts always suggest that you’re a good person but — far more importunely — they say, ‘I believe that you, dear friend, are a truly wonderful person, the kind of guy who would prefer helping others to some little trinket ’. It’s a shrewd kind of compliment.”
Not to say that there aren’t people — other than Africans, of course — who desire goats. Randolph Wilber is young (24), he’s hip (he likes the Killers) and all he wants for Christmas is a ram. “I have so much stuff that when my godmother asked me for present ideas I couldn’t think of anything I particularly needed,” he says.
“It’ll be interesting to see if she’s willing to give money to a cause that I believe in and she doesn’t, as opposed to buying me another Dick Francis.” Perhaps this is the path to truly magnanimous gift-giving. If you want a goat, just ask for one — preferably from a miser.
Many charities now offer goats for Africa. They include www.christian-aid.org.uk, www.oxfam.com and www.unicef.org.uk
