It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas Sucks!

I’ve never really had a definitive view on Christmas. Some years I walk around with a gormless, smiley expression, like I’ve been smoking rooibos tea again; and some years it just doesn’t seem like Santa’s going to come at all.

Almost everyone I know is broke already even though the first prezzies haven’t even been bought yet! I think for a lot of us it feels like January, but without the added depression of another Earth-shattering family dispute.

Unless every uncle and auntie pulls out all the stops to remind your mum or gran about how badly that childhood slight emotionally scarred them a hundred years ago, it just doesn’t feel like Jesus was born.

Even the Testament-wrestlers get upset! Banging on about how it’s all so commercial and we should remember that if it wasn’t for God there’s be no turkey sandwiches on Boxing Day – like we all don’t know already and just thought it was a funny coincidence that Jesus was born on the 25th.

I’d almost forgotten, but was reminded last night when I heard a guy in Woodstock singing a Christmas song. Something along the lines of, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth removed.”

You can sing miserable old hymns all year round, but December is reserved for the more up-tempo but equally depressing Cliff Richard or Elvis track… I lie, of course; I love the Elvis Christmas cd – it makes my bad dancing seem contrived and not merely genetic.

And it’s always interesting to browse music shops and see which artists are hard up for cash.

I think the last, dying breath of any musician is the Christmas album. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but there’s nothing that says ‘uncool’ like singing wholesome, happy, holiday tunes. This is the age of Emo – Santa’s got to be a dirty, old man or serial killer.

You can also tell it’s Christmas because shops have got spray-on snow in their windows. In a country that wouldn’t know snow if it fell from the sky, we’re so dying to be American that we fake it for December.

But I think fake happiness over the festive season is better than the alternative. If anything, it’s more of a cliché to be a Grinch.

The people who hate this time of year are probably the same people who hated the World Cup or anything that forces them to see other people happy. Not liking Christmas is kind of like not liking puppies and kittens.

Just think of it as a good excuse to get pissed, eat a lot, and bring up that time your brother played Wrestlemania with your favourite teddy and snapped its head off… I’ll never forgive him for that!