Christmas

Might still be a bit early for this, but I wanted to get it in now because I think that a lot of people are probably feeling the same way. It’s still November (just) and Christmas is everywhere. This is pretty typical for this time of year (in America it might be worse). In the UK, the shops start putting stuff out for Christmas on 1st September and they’re still trying to move the last of it in late January. It becomes depressing more than anything else because it just takes all the joy and spontaneity out of the day. I mean, it’s true isn’t it? The run up to Christmas, and the anticipation of it, is what most people look back on and remember every year when it’s all over. The day itself is just the day when you rip the wrapping paper off and clear the debris out of the way – it’s the three month build up that always makes the impression, because, hey, it lasts longer and it’s got far more time to imprint on your brain.

But, despite all of this, the shiny lights and the tinsel and the nice food all over the place, I still hate Christmas. There are a lot of reasons for this – all of which, I am aware, will make me sound like a scrooge. (Although I really resent being called that!) Basically I think I’ll just list them because it’s probably going to be easier. So here goes. All the reasons I hate Christmas:


1. It’s expensive and wasteful. Think about it. You spend all that money on stuff for other people, ridiculous amounts of money usually that just panders to the commercial roundabout on which we continually pivot and allows companies all over the world to think that it’s ok to try to screw money out of us with extortionate prices one minute and last minute deals the next. Most of the food and plastic, battery-operated junk that you’ll buy in the shops will either be broken, eaten, or thrown away by the end year when, as tradition dictates, people will then be spending whatever money they don’t have to use to pay back their credit card companies on worthless gym memberships and home exercise equipment (to lose all the pounds you’ve put on whilst you were busy eating mince pies and turkey). Why not just save the money and pass that round the dinner table on Christmas Day instead? . . . Ok, moving on.

2. There’s too much food. (I think I’ve covered that one with Point 1 but I thought it needed saying again.)

3. There is SO much shit all over the TV that it’s not even funny any more. Most of it is on repeat and we’ve seen it so many times that we can practically recite the scripts of all those old sitcoms and family films in our sleep. (This one is problematic to me, I’ll admit, because I still fall for it too. Even though I really kind of hate “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Snowman” I still find myself hankering after watching them around this time of year just because I’m tired and it’s winter and I’ve been chasing around so much and . . . yeah, ok forget Point 3 if you like!)

4. Christmas songs . . . Don’t. Even. Get. Me. Started. I don’t mean carols, I mean cheesy Christmas No.1 singles and jingly covers of old pop songs to go along with the cheesy cartoonified, tinsel-happy ads that come on sometime in October and don’t end until the last remnants of Auld Lang Syne have finally rung themselves out of our ears. I HATE Christmas songs and (even though I kind of like Lily Allen and don’t want to slate her for anything) I really kind of loathe any pop star or musician who would actively seek out the place at Christmas No.1. Because, let’s face it, whatever song gets that slot is just going to annoy the shit out of people for weeks on end through early January and then be forgotten again until the next Christmas when someone, somewhere goes “Hey, hang on a minute, what was last year’s crappy single again?”


. . . I could go on with these, but I think, mostly, it’s quite obvious what I hate about Christmas. It’s all the same stuff that everyone else hates about it. But it’s a little bit different for me just because I was never really brought up to like it.

My dad tried to give me proper Christmases – the few times when we would go to his house for it. That was when I was a kid and I didn’t have to do much for it except show up and eat the food – and when most of the presents were for me. Back then I didn’t see much of the pre-Christmas madness either, because I was at school during the week and not usually involved in the shopping nightmares that my mum or dad had to deal with. Christmas was kind of fun then. But my mum wasn’t into Christmas at all. She was a Jehovah’s Witness for a really long time – before I was born and for a while afterwards – and, of course, they don’t really do Christmas, because they don’t believe in all the commercial, overhyped stuff that goes around celebrating “Jesus’ birthday”, it’s just not a thing for them. So when I was a kid, she let me have it all, but she was always kind of sour about it. And she made damn sure that when I spent Christmas with her she didn’t have to do all the decorating and cooking and organizing that my dad would do for the occasion.

Christmas dinner with my mum, if such a thing materialized at all, was chicken and chips (with ketchup). I remember actually eating that for Christmas dinner one year – in my room, aged 15, on my own. It was always just a bit sad with my mum and I was encouraged to kind of ignore it. Now I just think that’s ok.
I don’t begrudge other people Christmas now, before anyone accuses me of that, but I don’t like it . . . or, rather, I don’t see why I should bother. And I kind of wish that I didn’t have to have it shoved in my face all the time by people who think they’re doing me a favour by bringing the Christmas spirit into my life. (Ok, now I do sound like Scrooge.)

But I think that’s just what happens when you get older and you’re suddenly not the one that all of this is for any more. It’s just really all for the kids isn’t it? Christmas? It’s a shiny, bright, happy time in the middle of deep, dark, awful winter, when everything is all about laughter and presents and chocolates and time off school – it’s a time for kids. And when you’re older it’s you that has to think about the logistics and clear up the mess afterwards. That was what I could never understand about my mum when I was younger. I didn’t get why she hated it so much and why she couldn’t just let me enjoy it. But she was just trying to teach me that the joy and brightness was only a fleeting thing – a flicker. And that soon enough I wouldn’t be the centre of attention any more and I’d be the one standing over my kid (possibly) holding the bin liner and waiting for the wrapping paper while, simultaneously, worrying about how to cook a turkey the size of a bread bin in time to eat lunch before everyone died of starvation in the middle of the day.

Of course I don’t do any of these things now because I don’t have kids, or a large family for which to provide Christmas dinner. (So, ha ha ha! I have beaten the rap there!) But still I don’t like all the bleakness of it now. I notice things far more about the plans and preparations that people, and commercial outlets, go through in the last few months of the year (I just saw the other day that my local Tesco have added a little fluorescent green Christmas hat to their logo and set up a giant Christmas tree in the front of their store – complete with fake Christmas presents underneath it that are probably made from old delivery boxes and discontinued brands of wrapping paper). And I just feel like it leeches so much away from what (I am sure) used to be a far more special day. It was, wasn’t it? Because it came up so suddenly and without so much fussing and talking beforehand. I mean, if it was more of a surprise, it would be far better wouldn’t it? If we all forgot about it until about December 20th and then started getting things together for a nice meal and a few gifts, that would be quite nice. Cut out all the crap and the three month stress-a-thon, and just live normal life until it was time to take a week or so off? Why don’t we do that any more? Where the hell has all this rubbish come from?

Anyway that’s almost everything that truly annoys me about it, but it’s not all. Mostly what I find truly offensive about Christmas – I mean the thing that really rankles with me – is the sheer hypocrisy of people who sign up for it. My mum, for instance. Like I said, she hates Christmas, always has done – and she hates most of our family too (always has) – but still, every year now, she writes out Christmas cards to the family, sends out the same routine presents to people (next year’s calendars and grey woollen socks usually) and gets out the sad little plastic Christmas tree from its cardboard box to stand it up in the living room among the cardboard boxes full of junk that, she insists, cannot be thrown away in case she needs something from them. All of this is her idea of observing Christmas – not participating exactly, but going through the motions for the benefit of the non-existent people that won’t be coming over for dinner or to see what she’s done with place. Nobody would notice, or care, if my mother didn’t do anything for Christmas (least of all me since I now really do have nothing to do with Christmas at all). So I just find her behaviour at this time completely ridiculous.

She writes cards to people she doesn’t like and buys food that she doesn’t really want to eat and knows will only make her fat (and then complains when it DOES make her fat). She watches all the crap on TV and laughs at it as if she’s never seen it before; she hums Christmas carols around the house! And she does all of this with absolutely no foundation and no real interest in having a happy Christmas but just because she thinks that she should join in with everybody else and not look like a miserable cow.

*Ahem* *Stands up and takes a proud bow for being a miserable cow*

I know a lot of people do things like that. I mean the hypocritical thing of pretending that you like people you really don’t like just for the holidays. I know that people send cards expressing best wishes to people they hate and invite people round for dinner when they really don’t want to just because they don’t want to face someone calling them mean-spirited and scrooge-like for not putting their differences aside. But why should we? What does it solve? You make friends for a day with someone you hate and then go back to hating them in the New Year? What does that do for anyone? (It’s like the Christmas in No Man’s Land thing all over again – they still had to go back to killing each other after the football match, so what was the point of that?)

I’m mainly writing this because I found out the other day that my mother is, yet again, sending a Christmas card to my dad. This is a man whom she has always hated, ever since I can remember, and whom she has always said she wanted to get as far out of our lives as possible. Even I don’t send him a card any more because she totally trashed my relationship with him (a detail which she seems to have conveniently deleted these days) and her attempts at making friends with him are, to me, not only hypocritical but possibly even vindictive.

I don’t want to moan on about my parents in every blog post I write – but somehow it always seems relevant. So, pocket history, my mum hated my dad because, as far as she was concerned, he and I forced her out of the equation – she didn’t have a problem with him so much (well, she did, but not THAT much), what she mostly had a problem with was that I loved him more than her and we would rather have been left alone together without her. In the end she took him away from me in the cruellest way possible, by turning me against him, and then tried to place herself in the role of mediator to try to bring us back together again. That’s what the Christmas card is for really – that’s all it’s for. It’s just her way of showing how she thinks she’s still got a connection to him, or that she thinks she has some right to know about him over and above me. It’s been like that for a while now. She asks me about him as if she thinks I know anything and then tries to make out that my relationship with him is somehow her personal business.

But, I’m getting off the point . . . Sorry.

All I was saying was that, if you hate people, then putting aside your differences for one day so that you can eat and be merry is not going to make you hate them less later on. All the problems will still be there and you still won’t want to deal with them. So Christmas is a fantasy really, and all the commercialism that goes around it is just our way of trying to perpetuate the fantasy so that we won’t have to focus on the crap of real life.

I can see why people want that. That’s what books and TV and all the other recreational things we do in life are for. But I don’t care about Christmas any more. It’s just another excuse to stuff our faces and get pissed. Let the kids have it, sure. But otherwise what’s the point?