Seasonal not fair!

Christmas is just over ten weeks away and already I'm being chastised on Twitter for not welcoming it with open arms. But why would I? Christmas is like all the bad ideas you ever had made whole, amplified and embraced unthinkingly into a parody of religion, but just for a season; the adoration of the baby cheeses, a bit of good vicarious Samaritaning and fabling via the telly and an apocalypse, all done and dusted in a few short weeks and topped off with the rueful hangover of never-again apostasy as the credit card bills arrive, mid-January.

The approach of Christmas heralds the deepening gloom of months when you never see daylight (not that I generally see much anyway, working as I do in windowless, air-conditioned spaces), when doing anything outside is a matter of chance and you grit your teeth as you wait for the sun to return. And the event itself is a prolonged disappointment, like watching shares you bought ill-advisedly slip ever further away from returning a profit. Or seeing your pension pot disappear over the side of Robert Maxwell’s yacht.

Christmas it has been said is a time of year when you are forced into the company of people who you really don’t know as well as you ought... and if you are honest, people you don’t really like all that much. Like your investment, everybody loses except the recipient of all the money - the Christmas God. How is it, you have to wonder, that with the exception of the kids everybody puts far more into Christmas than they get out? Even the time honoured method of saving up a bit at a time to even out the strain has become sullied since the Park Group Christmas club went bust in 2008.

In the run-up to the season of bad will to all men, sincerity is disposed of in a shallow grave as promises turn to dust and everybody starts blaming everybody else for the fiasco. Families use Christmas as a time to inflict on those too young to flee for the holidays the horrible truths and distorted allegiances behind why they spend their weekends at daddy’s and although they shouldn’t really say this, daddy’s girlfriend is a bit of a slut, isn’t she, darlings?

This Christmas, once again, the NHS is in need of a bit of cheering up and although they really want to help and they understand how it got this way, it really is the fault of the Tories. Oh, they don’t mean to be nasty; they just can’t help it, you see. But like Saint Nick himself this is a story which comes around as regularly as the frosts. There has always been but a few days or hours to save the NHS and this tale of old has been gleefully told around Labour conference camp fires since the NHS began. 

Ah, the old traditions die hard...

So this year, let’s ALL save the NHS. Cancel commercial Christmas and help the homeless instead. Drink less, eat less and lessen the load on A&E and stop falling for the bullshit, else your blood pressure may bring on a stroke. We claim to be sophisticated and intelligent celebrants, so let’s all wake up and realise that Christmas is sod-all to do with prophets and Christ and everything to do with profits and vice. Cheers!