Not if you’re
John Lewis it isn’t. Their new festive advert aired this week. If people want
to fawn over that penguin-y nonsense, then a rant 48 days before the event is
surely also allowed.
Firstly, it’s
a religious festival. How many of you reading this are even religious? Not
many, I’ll guess. No matter, we’ll all just celebrate the birth of someone who
supposedly saved us on the wrong date anyway.
The high
street is full of places we can buy our gold, frankincense and myrrh. I saw one
shop yesterday with a banner in the window which read “I’m dreaming of a cosy
Christmas”. What the fuck is the point of that? I’m sure Jesus was a huge fan
of woolly jumpers with pictures of reindeer on them that look like they were
drawn by an infant.
Step into
BHS and look at all the lovely gift boxes you can buy though. Beers of the
World packs containing five bottles you can normally buy in any off licence for
under a tenner on sale for twenty pounds. That’s a pretty expensive cardboard
box. Green-fingered relatives? They’ve got a trowel and some seeds for only
£15! Bargain.
I hope my
bank is full of festive cheer when I ignore my overdraft limit to buy a ton of this
shit that nobody wants.
We’d better
all start practicing our surprised faces now for the big day. It’s important to
look thrilled when you tear off the cheap wrapping paper to find you’ve got
some ill-fitting socks with flashing Christmas trees on them. And who isn’t
over the moon when they receive a bottle of bubble bath that’s in an amusing ‘Allo
‘Allo-themed gift set?
There will
be that one family member there who no one likes, but daren’t not invite. Have
your fake smile at the ready and try to deflect their questions about why you don’t
have a child/partner/job yet. They’ll be gone soon and you get a 364 day break
before you see them again. Unless they die before next Christmas. Fingers
crossed!
You could
get in the mood by watching a Christmas film. Handily, ITV3 probably started
showing monotone-catchphrase enthusiast Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cinematic turd,
Jingle All The Way, on heavy rotation in July. National Lampoon’s Christmas
Vacation will also be on daily, just in case you’ve somehow forgotten any of
the words.
Don’t forget
all the Christmas TV specials either. You can always watch EastEnders if you’re
absolutely desperate to find somebody having a shitter Christmas than you. And Downton
Abbey. Yes they celebrated Christmas in the old days and it was rubbish then
too. In fact you might as well just bin your TV. It’s going to be horrible.
Radio gets
in on the act too, as thoughtful DJs remember it’s been nearly 300 days since
you last heard anything by Slade or Wizzard. There’ll be no escaping any of these
songs in the coming weeks. Just in case you don’t hear them enough on the
radio, in shops or in pubs, or you aren’t lucky enough to have them “sung” at
you by a group of tuneless charity beggars, you can also buy Now That’s What I
Call the Best Christmas Ever In The History of the World parts 1 and 2 on CD.
A Christmas
market seems like a good idea, but it’s not. Selling things in a market place out
of garden sheds that have been covered in icing sugar gives the sellers licence
to hawk overpriced tat to an unsuspecting public. People are more likely to part
with their money though, having already spent a fiver on a mug of lukewarm wine
when they first arrived.
Christmas
dinner is nice. It’s like a deluxe version of a Sunday dinner. But wasn’t it a
mistake to buy a 50kg turkey? No problem, you can just spend the next three
weeks making soup, burgers, curry, casserole, risotto, sandwiches and salads
from the leftovers. I imagine Bernard Matthews lived in a house made entirely
from gold.
Anyway, let’s
all bugger off to somewhere that’s never heard of Christmas for two months and
come back when it’s all done. I hear Iraq is nice at this time of year.
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