T'is the season...

It’s official, the Coca Cola advert in the commercial break for Crap Factor last night means Christmas is upon us! Let the festivities commence! Just three or four weeks till we erect a plastic fir tree in the living room and decorate it no doubt hideously. Just five weeks and five days until we will be opening our masses of presents and divulging in a large stuffed bird of some variety – hopefully more than once.

So anyway, I thought I would start the festivities by musing about a few things Christmas related.

And this year we must make the most of it, if rumours are to believed we will only have two more! Those Mayans could have at least waited until December the 26th to end the world!

For the next forty days we have loads to look forward to, pikey chav carol singers, the whole world flocking to the Christmas Market, spending what little money we have on rubbish presents for other people and spending time with people who we spend the entire year trying to avoid, whilst putting on our big happy grins that it is “lovely to see them”... On the positive side of things though, we do get to feast like kings and the Christmas Market sells spicy cheese!!

However, we also have to look forward to, endless TV adverts telling us about the once failed pop artists who are releasing a new Greatest Hits CD in an attempt to make a little bit more money, as well as the many predictions of a white Christmas we won’t get... The closest thing I have ever had to a white Christmas was a bad bout of dandruff when I was 7 which made it look like a continuous snow storm. It never ever happens, it is always grey and rainy on Christmas.

For some reason I always seem to remember the Christingle service at church... Christmas loses its fun when you are too old to go to church and get an orange with a candle in, along with dolly mixtures and raisins on the end of cocktail sticks. When you can no longer do that, Christmas as a child is over! I have no recollection of the services, I just remember the orange, happy days.

I always remember been terrified at Christmas two consecutive years... The first I couldn’t sleep on Christmas Eve but then suddenly my door opened... I had heard all the stories that if Santa knew you were awake you would not get any presents... I was terrified at the prospect that this would happen so I covered my head with the pillow and tried my hardest to pretend I was asleep. It worked though and I seem to recall getting a great haul of presents! The next year I was 19 and had realised that Santa might not be real, but then on Christmas Eve I heard the bathroom window opening... I must have just woken and heard this and gone back to sleep (I must have grown up in that year – sleeping on Christmas Eve, whatever next???) but ten minutes later I heard the window go again. This time I woke up again and my stocking was full of presents!! Santa had come in through the bathroom window. This was most confusing for a young 19 year old, why had he not used the chimney??

Another year and something I have never forgiven my parents/Santa for was when we were very young. I must have been about 4 or 5 and slept in the same room as my brother. Christmas morning he woke up and said “He has been”, but my stocking was still empty. Then my brother informed me that he had been given a new stocking, a sort of pillow case thing and his old stocking was hanging on the end of the bed. But I didn’t have a pillow case on my bed...We looked around for it, but still all we could find was my empty stocking on the end of the bed. In fact I think there was a Satsuma in the bottom of it – great. Needless to say I was deeply upset about this and when we got up in the morning I could do nothing but cry to my parents. Despite how young I was I seem to remember my dad saying “Oh, maybe you were a naughty boy this year?”... I was a bit of a git, but never that bad - apart from when I shaved my head and blamed the neighbour! After many tears and an almost ruined Christmas, a stocking did turn up, it was hidden behind the bedroom door. But still, how cruel can parents get – pretending that you have been so bad you have got no presents. I dread to think what the effects of this will be in the future. Watch out mum and dad...

Whatever anybody says, presents are the best part about Christmas. Now it’s not that I don’t like buying presents for people, I do enjoy it and I enjoy seeing the surprise. Some of you probably think a good Christmas is where you have fun, or where you do lots of different things but you are all wrong... A good Christmas is when the sum of the value of presents received exceeds the value of presents given! It’s a pretty basic principle and this year I plan to be positive :D !

So let me be the first and no doubt not the last to say, Merry Christmas! Stay tuned, I will try and post more often!