The One Good Thing About the Worst Christmas Song Ever
For all its problems, Band Aid’s 1984 hit “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” reminds me of a spirited internationalism that I find missing amid the global covid-19 pandemic.
Having spent the past five years working part-time retail jobs during the holiday shopping season, I have encountered a number of Christmas songs that I wouldn’t bother listening to if they weren’t in constant rotation over the store’s speaker system during my daylong shifts (I’m not a Christmas music hater or anything, but I rarely stray from the old school R&B renditions of Christmas songs I grew up hearing in my parent’s house). Earlier this week, one of those songs I heard for the very first time was the 1984 hit “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” released by the UK group Band Aid to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. The dreamy, choir-like chant of “Feed the world” at the song’s conclusion instantly reminded of a song I had heard plenty of times before this week—the famous “We Are The World” single released by a group of American artists in 1985 under the name USA For Africa.
But the parts of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” that weren’t muffled by the steady foot traffic of holiday shoppers during my work shifts struck me as aloof and condescending toward the people the song intended to help. After doing a bit of research on the song, I learned that its commercial success (it sold over 2 million copies around the world and raised tens of millions of dollars for famine relief in Ethiopia) was not without controversy, and I’ll direct readers to Lisa Utzig’s excellent break down of how Band Aid may have exacerbated Ethiopia’s food crisis with the money it raised from the single. Here’s a snippet from Utzig’s piece:
Unfortunately, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and its lousy lyrics ended up having much more sinister repercussions than the average soft rock Christmas song would have… Although droughts and other natural disasters can cause food shortages in east Africa, the true cause of the famine in 1984 was the corrupt government. Ethiopia’s genocidal dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam was systematically napalming his own country’s crops to prevent the distribution of food, and murdering innocent civilians in the process. With the money raised from “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and Live Aid, he only grew more powerful.
Today, it’s not hard to guess why a song whose whole premise seems to be that people in Africa can’t fully appreciate Christmas without all the Western trappings and traditions would never make it past the recording stage (notably, the 30th anniversary version of the song abandons some of the cringiest lyrics and replaces them with an extended “Feed the world” outtro). Both the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and broader war on terror have instilled distrust among the public when it comes to work or fundraising done under the moniker of U.S. humanitarian relief. And much like our domestic politics, the language of long-term structural change has started to crowd out talk of relief or reform when it comes to U.S. foreign aid. There is also greater emphasis on changing the power dynamics around foreign aid — for instance, letting communities on the ground direct the flow of resources rather than have outside agencies do the bulk of the work.
But I can’t stop thinking about what Band Aid got right that seems at odds with the current political climate — the idea that we should care about another country’s problems and they should care about ours. Nine months into the covid-19 pandemic, it seems that most media coverage of the virus is framed solely in terms of its national impact, even though nearly every corner of the globe has been hit by this virus. Whenever other Western nations come up in conversations about the pandemic, it is mostly to compare and contrast the financial relief offered to citizens here versus citizens of those countries. Meanwhile, covid-19’s roots in China do not elicit sympathy for Chinese families who have lost loved ones to the virus; on the contrary, by referring to it as the “China virus,” President Trump aims to side step responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of American lives lost to the pandemic this year.
Trump’s racist attempt to recast covid-19 as a “Chinese problem” tracks with his policy of retreat when it comes to U.S. leadership on global affairs. Certainly in any other administration, the fight against covid-19 would be understood as a global health crisis in which the U.S. would lean on its international relationships to help control the spread of the virus. In other words, even as physical borders were closing earlier in the pandemic, there was still plenty to learn from what other countries were doing right or doing wrong to contain the virus.
With multiple covid-19 vaccines becoming available to the public next spring, the daily trauma of knowing thousands of people are dying from this virus will, hopefully, come to a close. But equally important is that in the new year, the U.S. will finally have leadership that understands that when it comes to public health, there is no such thing as retreating from other people’s problems. They quickly and very easily become our own.
Still, I would like to believe that the spirited internationalism that drew music fans to “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” back in 1984 is now self-reflecting enough to move beyond imperialist narratives of the Global South. So, I’m not asking for “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” to get cancelled. Instead I choose to see recognition of its flaws and the real harms it caused as the starting point for a different kind of internationalism — one foremost committed to solidarity with the suffering and trust in their capacity to decide what justice looks like for them.
