The Grinch who tried to give back Christmas

Tomorrow we open the first window in our advent calendars. (Not me, though. I decided some years ago that if I want chocolate before breakfast, I will sodding have chocolate before breakfast. I don't need any excuses.) If we're not already, we start panicking about how little time we have left to buy our Christmas presents, send our Christmas cards, put up our decorations and start feeling festive. If we're lucky enough to have fond memories of Christmas from our childhoods, we try desperately (but always fail) to recapture the magic we once felt, and resign ourselves instead to getting slightly merry and falling asleep in front of the Christmas edition of The Royle Family/ Gavin and Stacey/ Only Fools and Horses/ EastEnders/ Coronation Street (delete as appropriate).

I know this year will be different.

I had a dream a few weeks ago that I was bearing witness to a battle between France and Germany. It was pre-1900, and my British perspective was not stained with "Oh but they're Nazis! Evil ones, die!!!" The French were throwing grenades at the unprotected and unprepared Germans. German soldiers were being burned alive, and their skeletons were dying slowly, painfully. It was painful to witness.

Flash-forward to the year 2012, and I was back at Church (I haven't attended regular old Mass since I was about 11, and my religious beliefs are far from bible-bound, but for some reason I still think of myself as Catholic). I was standing in front of a woman, a regular parishioner, serving rice to homeless people. She looked at me and I instantly recognised her as Jesus. She said to me, "Now you know, you know what you have to do."

I'm not sure that I do know what I have to do, but I know that something has to be done.

This Christmas, thousands of Britons will go without a roof over their heads. Thousands will go without a turkey (and I'm excluding non-Christians and vegetarians like myself from this total); millions are unemployed this Christmas, unable to afford the cheerful and lavish displays you see depicted on TV. We teach our children to believe in a selfless, giving superhero called Father Christmas (or Santa Claus, St. Nick, whatever you wanna call him; and yeah, he is a superhero - flies through the sky and can travel all the way around the world in one night? Not even Fly Emirates can do that), but his distribution of Christmas cheer is far from equal. Tom gets a bike and a Wii and a trampoline and a puppy from Father Christmas; Stacey gets a second-hand doll.

I want to ask you all a question - especially those of you who consider yourself Christian: What is Christmas, really? What does it celebrate? We put a tree up inside our living room, throw tinsel over it and we think we know what it means. We indebt ourselves to massive corporate organisations which exploit underpaid workers so that they can make a fat profit, so that our great-aunt can have a bar of soap which apparently smells like lavendar. We eat so much that we are in pain by the end of the day. We pull crackers, wear stupid hats and tell stupid jokes which make us laugh, not because they're funny, but because they don't even make any sense. Maybe some of us go to church, praise God and then shuffle back home again, back to our brand spanking new laptop or iPod. Do we listen to a single word said at church?  Do we understand, not only what Christmas means, but what Jesus means?

Like I said before, it's been a long time since I last attended Mass - more than a decade, in fact - so I don't want to sit about preaching about something I don't even do myself. I don't ask you to take down the tree before it's even been put up, to not give out presents or cards, to deprive your children of the magic you perhaps once experienced. But what I do ask is this: Consider your beliefs; consider your conscience; consider those who have no one else to consider them.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, all!

I didn't really intend to blog over the holidays, but after about 48 hours of no internet exposure I begin to experience withdrawal symptoms. I'm not really sure how I ever survived without an internet connection when I was a child; my home first got the internet when I was 11, though for several years I had to endure a painful dial-up connection, and the only thing I had the patience to use it for was homework and browsing Amazon's book catologue with lust. (Yes, lust. I loved my books when I was a kiddly-wink.) Now we have Broadband and stupid addictive sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter... and, for me, some random game in which you're a cute little bear and you have to knock bricks over with a sword.

All this is beside the point, though. I only came on here to wish you all a merry Crimbo and to tell you all the mundane exciting things I got up to yesterday. Mostly, those things consisted of drink, and knitting. (If anything, at least I'm not predictable.)

I'm not a big drinker (I'll have a glass of champagne for special occasions and maybe the odd vodka and coke when I'm out and feel obligated to drink because everyone else is), and yet I struggle to get drunk when I do drink. The most drunk I've ever been has been room-wobbling-drunk, but it wore off after about half an hour and I didn't even get a hangover. I'm a lucky sod, aren't I? But yesterday all my drink-mixing must've done something to me, because this morning I woke up, looked over at my knitting, and thought to myself, "My scarf looked like it's been mauled by a lion."

Thankfully, my mother is like one of the Shreddie-knitting grannies, and she managed to undo all my drunk-knitting and leave me with a tidy (if slightly thin) scarf. Apparently my tension is tight. You're freaking well telling me.

I think I'll lay off the drink today. People tell you to have a merry Christmas, but no one ever suggests you have a merry Boxing Day.

Santa's coming... to steal your biscuits

Yesterday everyone was reminding everyone else that there was exactly a month until Christmas. And even though you’d been told five times already in the last two hours, when your partner/ friend/ parent/ sibling/ co-worker/ neighbour/ annoying-person-who-thinks-they’re-you’re-friend-but-whom-you-really-can’t-stand said to you, “DID YOU KNOW... There’s exactly a month until Christmas!” I bet you went, “Ohhhhh yeah. God how time flies. And I haven’t bought ANYTHING yet.”

So you’re fed up of being reminded. I get it. And every time someone does remind you, you panic that there’s not enough time and that you can’t afford all the presents and food and needlessly sparkly outfit for the office party. But y’know what? I’m gonna be comforting here, and remind you of something else today: in exactly one month, Christmas will be over.

Yay.

I’m not a total scrooge, but let’s face it: a fat man slides down your chimney while you’re all sleeping just to come and pinch your biscuits, and we’re supposed to get excited? Because that will be the case this year, young boys and girls. The Con-Dem government has indirectly condemned Christmas by sucking money out of the economy in an attempt to, er... put money into the economy (yeah, I don’t get it either), and as a result Father Christmas can’t afford your ridiculously-priced Buzz Lightyear (which came out about 12 years ago anyway), your Barbie doll that looks exactly like the Barbie doll you got last year, and the bicycle it’s too cold to ride, and which you’ll be too big for by the time the weather improves. Father Christmas is not leaving presents this year; he is coming to steal your biscuits and maybe a couple of quid out of your parents’ swear jars, and before he leaves he’ll probably stick your hand in a glass of water so that you wet the bed and your Christmas is completely effed.

But in a month it’ll all be over. All that money, all that exhausting shopping, all those long journeys taking your children to go and see 19-year-old, uno-browed, bored Santa; all that present-wrapping, all that cooking, all those photocopies of your naked bum from the annual office party... All for one day. And in a month, it’ll all be over.

Wait. This was supposed to be a comforting blog post. Whoops.