Why We Should Call Off Christmas

I live in a little bubble. The only regular exposure I got to newspapers was when I was working and I used to flick through the ones someone else had brought in and left in the canteen on my lunch break. And the Metro, but I'm never on a bus long enough to have a proper look through, and they’re rarely in a readable condition when I get to them anyway. As a consequence of this I'm not sure if this rant applies this year as much as it had for the last few years. I assume it does. Grizzly little attention seeking whine buckets don’t, unfortunately, just disappear. And even if they have gone it irked me so much in Christmases past that I'm still going to have a good bitch about it.

Yep, it’s Christmas. I have officially resigned myself to this fact. We’re over half way through advent, there’s not a town centre in the land that can’t be seen from Jupiter and the Famous Grouse is waddling merrily across my TV screen. Happy December to us all.

However, amongst all this shiny eyed cheer there lurks a group of people determined to shout over the merry hum. They’re always there of course, it’s not just the festive season they choose to interrupt, but I feel bad for the kids when they start up about Christmas. It’s those old favourites the I-Exist-Purely-To-Be-Offended-And-Then-Write-Into-The-Daily-Mail-About-It Brigade.

According to these doom mongers our multicultural society is destroying Christmas. Judging by the smiling Santas beaming down at me from every rooftop and the endless runs of Christmas specials on TV I don’t actually think this is the case. Christmas still permeates everything from September onwards yet these cretins insist that local council do-gooders are removing Christmas in case it offends some invisible and silent minority.

They even make up their own evidence. Anyone remember the ‘Winterval’ scandal? Apparently a town centre (I think it was Birmingham, but it might have been Nottingham. Either way I'm thinking Midlands) began to advertise Winterval as a politically correct alternative to Christmas. Except they didn’t. Winterval wasn’t anything to do with replacing Christmas. It was to attract people to the city centre throughout the winter months, including December and therefore Christmas.

These people hide behind a pretence of ‘acting in the public good’ and ‘preserving the British culture’ but actually they just enjoy feeling offended. They like the thrill they get from complaining and will latch onto anything that they feel can justify their meaningless existence, even if it’s complaining that something which is clearly still there is disappearing and being replaced by something that has been removed so far from context it’s become a joke.

But supposing just for a minute they are right. Suppose Christmas really is being gradually eroded in place of something more multicultural. Suppose these idiotic grief mongers actually have something to whine about. Well, I think it would actually be a good thing.

Christmas has become a joke. It starts in August (seriously. I used to work in retail and the Christmas stock started coming in on the same wagons as the sun cream). It stresses people out and encourages them to get into debt which they can’t afford and which in the current economic climate will hang around their necks for decades. It exists purely to persuade children to guilt trip their parents into buying them expensive toys that prop up some faceless multinational corporation. Break ups, suicides, self harm, domestic violence, alcohol poisoning and people turning themselves in at the doctors with cases of stress related illness all increase over the Christmas period. People are so hung up about having ‘the perfect Christmas’ (which is an idea mostly sold to them by Coca Cola, along with Santa’s red and white suit, anyway) they can’t cope when the fantasy is revealed for what it is.

Maybe if Christmas is taken down a few thousand volts it’ll be better for everyone. Practicing Christian or not Christmas is more than the money you spend on it. If it stopped being the commercial bloodbath it’s turned into and started being more about spending a few days chilling out with your family then I really don’t see the harm in councils everywhere toning down celebrations and shops cutting back on the space they devote to presents and decorations.

This may be unbearably twee for some of you but, frankly, I don’t really care. I hate 99% of what Christmas has become and I wouldn’t really miss it if it all disappeared tomorrow. All I want is my Mum and Dad and a turkey dinner. The rest is unnecessary and I will happily sacrifice it on any altar, even that dreaded modern demon multiculturalism.

Peace on Earth and Mercy Mild x