There is a sense that Christmas as we celebrate it today, is a relatively modern creation. Its foundation is sometimes attributed to Charles Dickens. His Christmas Carol, challenging the attitudes and practices of his day, has Bob Cratchit working on Christmas Day. Today’s depiction of Father Christmas goes back only to the 1930s when it was used in advertising by Coca Cola. Despite their frequent mention in Christmas cards and songs, there were no snow or fir trees in Palestine a couple of millennia ago. (Some years ago I heard Christmas muzak in a store in Honolulu – nearer to the equator than New Zealand – beating out Walking in a Winter Wonderland). That Christmas regular, Handel’s Messiah, was first performed at Easter (when, in my view, the text makes more sense).

The adaptations continue. Its religious dimension has diminished for most people in favour of a family gathering and celebration, mixed up with the end of the year and summer holidays. Change is not unusual and is often progressive. However, I want to focus on an often overlooked political downside.

For it is the time when politics closes down and our politicians and others are released from the prison of parliament and the Wellington bureaucracy and scatter through the country to interact with family and friends. (That nowadays some skip overseas reinforces what I have to say below.) It brings them down from their high perch isolated from the madding crowds.

Once upon a time, the family and friends networks were so wide that they were connected with a wide range of ordinary New Zealanders at a personal level, especially at this time. I recall at the height of Rogernomics, a Rogernomic-inclined Labour MP, getting a bit of an ear bashing about his government at an informal gathering; I do not think it did him any good, as indicated by the outcome of the 1990 election. So once, politically, Christmas was a time for connection and reflection, with some MPs reporting back to the first caucus of the year how much grumbling was going on.

That does not happen to the same extent today. MPs are becoming more disconnected from their constituents. (That even applies for elections. One of the defects of MMP is that almost half of them have no constituency seat; I’d remedy this by allocating the list seats to the candidates from each party who get the most electorate votes, despite their not winning it.)

What seems to have been happening is that our networks are getting smaller and more homogeneous. So the MPs are no longer exposed to as wider group of New Zealanders and their opinions. (This applies even more to those who hide overseas.)

For instance, once every New Zealander had an ongoing connection to a farm. Had they today, they would be struck by the degree of rural unrest. Part of their problem is that with the changing population structure of New Zealand, the countryside is being marginalised, although it remains crucially important for the economy. (Even the National Party garners most of its votes from the cities today.)

That all of our smaller networks are now more homogeneous means that the country is becoming more socially disunited, as illustrated by the urban-rural divide but also on many other social dimensions. The short term for this is the rise of ‘social class’. It is not a new phenomenon. Bob Chapman, a professor of political studies, observed its beginnings sixty years ago. There were always social gradients but they have become increasingly sharper and more rigid.

The increasing heterogeneity and social rigidity explains one of the most puzzling features of Rogernomics. How did the Labour caucus get so out of touch with its roots? Despite my earlier example, which was about the arrogance of not listening, their connections were also getting more tenuous. Typically, the politician’s backgrounds meant that increasingly at Christmas time they were not meeting a widespread mix of New Zealanders – or at any other time either.

So perhaps it is not surprising then that the Rogernomes and their neoliberal friends deliberately adopted policies which increased income inequality, reinforcing the class rigidities.

Nothing has happened since to weaken these trends. Indeed, today we seem to be electing professional politicians with little out-of-politics experience; this especially applies as we elect younger and younger ones. When I look at my political heroes, I am struck how long it took most of them to get into parliament and what a diverse range of experiences they had before they did and had while they were there.

So do not expect your grumbles to be reported in the first caucuses of the year, and do not be surprised if you feel disconnected from the politicians in the election at the end of the year.

But to end up with a little more upbeat reflection, it is Christmas. The salient event of the year was surely not so much the mosque massacres themselves but the nation’s response to them. Despite class and inequality there is still a caring community committed to decency. The leadership from Jacinda Arden was simply miraculous; is there any other politician who could have done so well? Mind you, had you ask me that a year ago and I would not have guessed her either.

Overseas, we found that ‘Jacinda’, as they referred to her, was actively admired. Our response, was ‘especially when you look to other nation’s leaders’. There is a Christmas sense that the country is not doing too badly; but let us not be complacent about it, instead listening to those outside our narrow connections.