Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas
It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas, which means animals are once again drafted into service for human nostalgia, appetite, and spectacle.
The turkey is the most obvious casualty. Around ten million turkeys are killed in the UK each year purely for Christmas. Not to meet a nutritional need. Not because alternatives are unavailable. For one meal, on one day, because tradition demands a body on the table.
The industry dresses this up as heritage. Premium birds. Traditional methods. Luxury retailers selling reassurance alongside flesh. This is marketed as the thoughtful option, the version that allows people to feel conscientious while participating fully. Then the footage surfaces.
Workers throwing birds. Ignoring biosecurity. Mishandling living individuals as though they are disposable objects. A man urinating into a pen of turkeys. All of it taking place within an approved, audited, certified system. Red Tractor logos intact. Supply chains feeding some of the most expensive retailers in the country. The response is always the same. Shock. Investigations. Suspensions. Statements insisting this does not represent usual standards. Reassurance that most staff care deeply. The suggestion that the problem is a few bad actors, not the system itself. This is a lie people tell themselves so they can keep eating.
You cannot industrially breed, confine, mutilate, transport, and kill millions of social, intelligent individuals for a seasonal tradition and pretend the issue is compliance. Violence is not a glitch in this system. It is the organising principle. The only thing unusual about the footage is that it briefly disrupted the story people prefer to believe.
Christmas does not make this better. It makes it quieter. It wraps domination in nostalgia and calls it celebration.
While turkeys are anonymised into commodities, other animals are elevated into characters. Reindeer are the most striking example. When a reindeer escapes a festive attraction, the response is extraordinary. Armed police. Coastguard teams. Royal Marines. Drones. Thermal imaging. Headlines celebrate that Christmas has been saved.
The reindeer is named. Humanised. Framed as overexcited, full of beans, just stretching his legs. His exhaustion is treated as endearing. His sedation as necessary. His return to captivity as a happy ending. Nobody asks why an animal needs to be confined and displayed so that a seasonal attraction can feel authentic.
The rescue is not for him.
It is for the event.
This is selective compassion at work. Reindeer are loved at Christmas. Turkeys are eaten. Camels are marched through churches. Donkeys pose for nativity scenes. The distinction is not moral. It is cultural branding. All are being used. Only some are allowed sympathy.
The same entitlement plays out in Christmas performances and religious spectacles that insist on live animals for authenticity. When a camel kicks a woman during a nativity show and she is hospitalised, the response is regret and surprise. An unexpected incident. Adjustments made. Emergency services praised. The production continues. This is not carelessness. It is inevitability.
Animals are not props. They are not actors. They do not consent to noise, crowds, transport, confinement, or handling. When harm occurs, it is treated as an unfortunate deviation rather than the predictable outcome of using someone as a means to an end.
Every year, someone comments, “People forget these are animals.”
No. People remember. They simply believe it does not matter.
Christmas culture teaches a very specific lesson. It tells children that loving animals and using them are compatible ideas. That kindness is something you feel, not something you practice. That some animals exist for affection, some for consumption, some for display, and that this hierarchy is natural, festive, and beyond question. This is not accidental. It is conditioning.
The season relies on a deep contradiction. It markets itself as generosity while demanding domination. It celebrates peace while requiring killing. It speaks the language of care while normalising exploitation on an industrial scale.
And anyone who challenges this is cast as spoiling the mood.
Tradition is the most effective silencer. It reframes injustice as heritage. It makes refusal look rude. It turns ethical objection into a personality flaw. “It’s Christmas” becomes a conversation-ending device, as though the calendar itself grants moral immunity.
There is no ethical version of seasonal animal use. No premium option. No traditional exemption. No amount of auditing can transform exploitation into respect. Whether an animal is killed for a meal, confined for display, transported for entertainment, or forced into performance, the principle is the same. They exist as resources. As property. As means to human ends. The problem is not that standards occasionally fail. The problem is that standards exist to manage exploitation, not challenge it.
If Christmas were genuinely about kindness, animals would be excluded from its machinery entirely. Not better handled. Not more carefully marketed. Not hidden behind certification schemes and festive language.
Left alone.
But that would require honesty. It would require admitting that much of what people cherish about Christmas depends on the routine violation of others. It would require recognising animals as individuals rather than symbols. And it would require letting go of traditions that exist only because someone else pays the cost.
It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Which means the decorations are up, the stories are polished, and the animals are once again being used to make it feel warm. The question is not whether this is normal.
The question is why we keep pretending it is kind.