What's Wrong with Christmas?

What's Wrong with Christmas?
by Ian Wigley

I generally like the months October through January; winter, despite being cold, does hold a certain allure. I think autumn is a wonderful season. When I first started teaching, I taught really young children. I always looked forward to the return to school in September, because I knew we would be doing a topic on Autumn. Unfortunately, after autumn comes winter, and ultimately Christmas.

The minute you mention to anyone that you dislike Christmas, you’re ultimately greeted with a chorus of “Humbug!” or “Scrooge!”, as if you’re obviously reluctant to put your hand in your pocket for anyone, least of all at Christmas. This isn’t the case as far as I’m concerned. If anyone’s short of a pint or a few pounds, they can have my money. The fact I dislike Christmas has nothing to do with an aversion to dole out cash.

The reasons I hate Christmas are a hundredfold, and an article describing them all would be overlong and tedious, so instead I’ll cut my piece ten ways, and illustrate why I hate Christmas so much.

1. Things start too early

Because England doesn’t celebrate Halloween very much, or Thanksgiving for that matter, our biggest holiday after the summer holidays is Christmas. So, as a teacher going back to work after the long summer break, I start my preparation in early September for the next academic year. Whilst I’m doing this I’m bombarded with advertisements in newspapers, offers on television and junk mail through my letterbox telling me all about Christmas. I don’t need it, I’ve just had six weeks break, I’m looking forward to the cool nights in autumn. All the liberal media wants to do is force Christmas down my throat. Maybe Christmas would be a heck of a lot better if we just enjoyed it when it got here.

2. People do stupid things to their houses

Why is it that from mid-November onwards you can walk down just about any street in your neighbourhood and find heaven-knows how many houses with about a thousand pounds worth of decorative lights on both the inside and the outside of the house, all over the garden, all over the car, strewn over drainpipes, and hidden behind dustbins? Then you have people putting those huge inflatable snowmen outside their houses, sat next door to a ten-foot high Santa. Why do people do it? Is it a competition? Is it to show people you’re into Christmas? I just don’t get it.

3. Those songs come back to haunt us all

Here’s two examples: “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day”. Do you get me? You know, those horrid festive hits that get airplay nine times daily from November onwards. Each time you turn on the radio or drive by a shop, they’ve got a mix CD on which has every single one of those horrible songs on. The people who wrote these awful numbers must relish January’s post, because that’s when their royalty cheques appear, for yet another year. For me, there’s only one good Christmas song, and it’s that one by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl ("Fairytale of New York").

4. The whole palaver

Let’s face it, for those who celebrate it, Christmas is one big pain in the rear. There’s the whole present-buying thing, the card-writing stuff, the putting-up decorations, the preparing the food, finding windows in schedules to visit relatives and friends, and basically just running around like an idiot all for just one day, a day in the Christian calendar most non-Christians ‘choose’ to celebrate.

For those who don’t particularly celebrate Christmas (read: people like me), Christmas is still hectic, because Christmas creates work for those people that aren’t really that bothered about it. As you already know, I’m a teacher; therefore from October onwards I have to hold Christmas concert practice twice a week, bottom line. I have to help make 25 Christmas cards for the children to give to their parents, make 25 Christmas tree-decorations, decorate my classroom, and act all enthusiastic for the five year olds who sit in front of me in my classroom. Do you catch my drift? It’s not just this profession that dictates Christmas makes more work for us all; see also postmen and taxi drivers.

5. Life’s inequalities are exposed at Christmas

I’m trying hard not to be too serious on this point, because this website’s fun, and it doesn’t need its readers to be depressed, so here goes… As I stated a couple of times above, I’m a teacher, and I get to hear plenty of children’s talk. Before Christmas, all the children in my class talk about what they want for Christmas, they all want something like a Playstation or a £350 bike. After Christmas, the kids still talk Christmas, and compare notes about their Christmas. The rich kid comes back, shouting about how he got both the bike and the Playstation. The poor kid from the bad council estate gets asked what he got for Christmas, and he says “nothing,” because his Mum and Dad have spent their benefits on cigarettes and booze and drugs. Although this part of Christmas hurts for the kid, it hurts almost as bad for me, because I knew this was coming a long time before he got to know. This is just one way Christmas exposes life’s inequalities; see also Christmas dinner in England vs. Christmas dinner in most of Africa.

6. Buying the weekly food

I live on my own, therefore I shop only for myself. Granted, people come to my place quite often, but rarely for food. Therefore, I shop quickly each week, just for food. Any normal week, my food shopping expedition usually takes about 20 minutes (I always know what I want). I go to the supermarket at an unsocial hour to avoid the rush. At Christmas, though, I could go at 3:30 in the morning and still get the rush. Why? Because it’s a well known fact that at Christmas you’ll need 14 times more food than you do any other week of the year, won’t you? So get out and shop for it at all hours, like your life depends on it.

7. Christmas TV

In England, we get 5 network TV channels, and then Sky (cable) with about 300 other channels on. It’s a God-given fact that network TV from December 1st onwards will be saturated with garbage that’s been on about a hundred times before; for example: The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Ben-Hur, Chariots of Fire, Only Fools and Horses and Rocky II. Often it’s a joy to watch such films, but twenty Christmases on the hop is a little too much.

8. I always get dumped right before Christmas

I don’t know why. My very first girlfriend dumped me on Christmas Eve 1993, and last year I got my heart broken on December 23rd after being almost sure I wanted to be with this girl for the rest of my life. What’s the skinny? Maybe it’s just bad timing, or maybe it’s because at Christmas we all drink a touch more, and given that red wine turns me into a nasty little thing, maybe I’m more susceptible to having arguments, I don’t know. What I do know for sure is that this year I won’t allow myself to be dumped before Christmas. I’ll do everything humanly possible to either a) not get dumped, or b) at least prolong the relationship until January.

9. Carol singers

I think children should earn money, definitely, it teaches them the value of money for later life. Having said this, there are much more fruitful ways of earning money when you’re 10 than rattling off a couple of verses of “Silent Night” or “Good King Wenceslas” and then hammering some old man’s door down in the interests of “earning” a pound. I don’t have any children, so my parenting skills aren’t that great, but why not get your youngest to clean the car for a pound, and your oldest to iron their school shirts for £2 a pop? It’ll save you time, save them from getting abducted by the madman down the road, and it’ll serve them better in later life—y’know, they’ll be able to iron and, er, clean a car.

10. It only lasts one day

Granted, I’ve just highlighted how much I hate Christmas in points 1-9 above, so for me to say I hate Christmas because it only lasts one day seems something of a contradiction. Well, perhaps so, but if something that takes so much preparation only lasts one day, then it’s a bigger pain in the backend than preparing for something that lasts a month. If you’re going to be cheesed off about something, you might as well be cheesed off about something that lasts a long time as opposed to some little 24-hour celebration. Do you see the irony? No? Oh, never mind, I know what I mean…

Ian can be reached at ian@babblog.com.