Whether you like it or not folks Christmas is upon us once more and I seem to find two types of people at this time of year. Firstly there are the upbeat ‘Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la laaaa, la la la la’ type of folk and then there are the ‘If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.’
It’s the latter I wish to speak of today.
The people who go out their way to look particularly glum at this time of year. The folk who implode into their own sense of woe that life has treated them so badly by stringing up a few twinkling lights on the lamp posts outside their houses. How dare the children be running around with the excited anticipation of a visit from the jolly fat man in the green suit (As a traditionalist Santa will be referred to in his little green number from now on, and besides it’s a much nicer colour than red!) and whoever dreamt up the idea of turning much loved TV classics into hour long festive specials? 30 minutes of Del Boy selling tat from a van, brilliant, yet put him on for an hour where he travels to Spain to buy diamonds and sits at a sunny bar surrounded by tits and tinsel, pathetic! ‘May the Yuletide log slip from your fire and burn your house down’.
Yes, these people are among us. Scary isn’t it.
You see, I get so excited about Christmas. Always have done ever since I was young. My birthday is on the 4th December and as a kid all I ever wanted for my birthday was for my dad to go into the loft to get the decorations down. Of course, this never happened and usually resulted in floods of tears and a ‘fine, forget Christmas then’. (I didn’t have many tantrums!) I would feel this deep heart ache as to why we couldn’t have decorations up after all it was now December. Begrudgingly they would come out of the loft about a week before Christmas, then put up in an uncomfortable air of tension as if you’d asked for a Pyramid to be built in your name, and would be down and back up in the loft as soon as the sound of 12 drummer drumming could be heard on the horizon. Done. It came and very quickly went.
It was a very emotional time for me. The mixture of excitement, disappointment and E-numbers, that made me hyperactive, all coming together to make one very Christmassy mess of a boy! Maybe it was this anti-Christmas childhood I had that made me so determined to grasp Christmas with both hands each year as an adult. It’s very hard being Pro-Christmas these days, especially as a lot of folk seem to be lost in the commercial nonsense of it all. I don’t have a lot of money to buy folk expensive gifts but that doesn’t matter for me, as Christmas is an atmosphere that should be carried with each of us, uplifting us and each other from the stresses of life. A little like how the Olympics created a London buzz, I feel Christmas can offer the same if people are willing to trust in it.
So for all those anti-Christmas people out there, I have only one thing to say. I’m anti-anti-Christmas. So if you must spend the happiest time of year tutting, swearing and bad mouthing all things festive, then please do it from the comfort of your own homes and watch out for three visitations when the clock strikes 12!
May you all have a Merry Christmas and spend some time with someone who cares about you. x
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