Ante-Christmas

Holidays are coming!

Holidays are coming!

Ugh. It's like a "Tremors" earworm burrowing its way into my head, insistent on gobbling up what little grey matter I have left.

I hate Christmas.

All of it.

Every tinsel-tasselled, flashing, tacky, wacky, tetchy, trying-too-hard inch of it.

It's awful.

Awful.

And before the name-calling starts, it's not because I am miserly, or a misery, or lacking in cheer. No. Absolutely not. Honestly. Most of the time, my metaphorical cup of joy overfloweth with whatever season I happen to be skipping through. I am typically a freakishly smiley, jolly-hockey-sticks, "let's do this" kind of person. Annoyingly so. In truth, I can be such a blinding ray of sunshine that you'd think I'd combust when it came to Christmas.

It has been said. It is often assumed.

I mean, look at me...

I look the sort to live the duration of Christmas in a pair of rainbow-flashing Deeley Boppers. So very sorry to disappoint, but I am afraid Christmas for me, is about as far away from the most wonderful time of the year as the North Pole is from the South.

Frankly, when I see December rolling closer on my calendar with the twelve days of Advent mouldering in the middle like a stinky blue cheese, my stomach starts to churn. By the time the first day of Christmas officially lands, I am already a dithering wreck twitching to shoot the Godforsaken Partridge in a Pear Tree right between its beady judgmental eyes. When the Maids start their milking, and the Lords start a-leaping, well, you'll find me positively rocking (with or without a Christmas tree).

You see, Santa may be able to bend the fabric of the universe to knock off a To-Do list the size of The Grand Canyon, but I, not being a mythical creature manufactured to gaslight humanity for commercial gain, cannot.

The Advent of Christmas for this mortal working mother is nothing short of a sordid slog of ritualised "must dos" which, should I "not do", could result in my spiralling into a morbidly festering pit of social "do-do". I ask you, who wants to sing and be merry when facing that?

Not me.

Christmas is exhausting and overwhelming. People become overbearing and bawdy. It's like folk aren't allowed to be themselves all year round and as they get closer to the end of the year this almighty unmasking takes place where the world goes on a mass, highly-excited, rutting spree. It does not surprise me that the UK has an annual baby boom between September and November. The festive season is feral, unnecessary, and entirely outside of the typical patterns of Great British "miserable as a wet weekend" behaviour.

Come to think of it, right about now, 14.12.25, I'd take a wet weekend. You know where you are with a wet weekend. It generally involves a good book, a bowl of piping hot soup and windows streaked with nature's melancholy of tears.

That right there is the stuff my Advent dreams are made of.

Yes, I like a glass of something sparkly, and a canape or two, but come on, we don't have to get to the point where we have to have a reserve bank of livers in case we need a transplant. This isn't even too great an exaggeration. I hear that the very wealthy, those who oscillate at bandwidth "peak-party", now get blood infusions to help them recover more quickly. Dear God, the eccentric half of me wants to high-five the resourcefulness, while the rest of me wants to dig a bunker to get away from the nuclear fallout.

I am with the hedgehogs when it comes to Advent. I want to hibernate. I don't want flashing lights, baubles, and brass bands harrumphing out stale old tunes. I don't want to go out buying tatt from any artisanal market. (Bits of lavender and orange peel do not belong in soap, and Glühwein is just scented sugar with flotsam floating in it.) My ADHD son and I would be far happier never having been flung into a boozy melee of market stall shoppers. It's like asking two 1980s yuppies to ritually pen themselves into a snow globe of cocaine.

It's all levels of wrong.

Sorry, but I am the Christmas antithesis, the festive thunder's anti-climax, the holly to the jolly, the prick who doesn't give a shit. When Mariah Carey starts belting out "I don't want a lot for Christmas". I'm countering that offer and raising it with, "I don't want anything at all, thank you very much. Nothing. Nada. Nowt. Let me know when it's all over."

You don't have to send me so much as a card. Really. I mean, does anybody actually want one from me?

Merry Christmas, Aunty Pauline,

Yes, we are still alive.

It's okay, you don't need to correspond with us now until next year. Love us. xxx

In a way, knocking the "card to CJ" job off my Aunty Pauline's list is a gift in itself!

Come on, none of this stuff means anything really. Nobody gives a crap what compromising position I put my voodoo doll naughty elf in this morning, and the world is unlikely to end if I forget to feed my Christmas cake brandy.

Note to self: Why am I feeding cake again? Surely, it should feed me?

Just imagine the time I'd have if I didn't have to clean and vacuum-up pine needles every day, or stock up on nibbles to ensure I am ever-ready for my Schrödinger guests who may and may not drop in at any moment.

I cannot even contemplate the concept of catering a Christmas lunch. There is so much food to prepare; the variety required is overwhelming; and I feel obliged to have it all just in case Uncle Geoff, whom we never see, turns up wanting Stilton for his mince pie. What if I don't have it in, hey? I could inadvertently curse his Christmas! I do not want the responsibility of cursing Uncle Geoff's Christmas. So I shall go out, and I shall get it all in, and then I shall watch everyone load up their plates at a land-fill rate while looking like some worn-out steward in a glittery dress at a Las Vegas all-you-can-eat buffet.

Holidays are coming!

Holidays are coming!

Stop the Christmas train, I wanna get off!

But... I won't get off. Oh no. Quite the opposite. I shall hold on like Indiana Jones on the circus train in The Last Crusade: falling into pits of snakes (gossip in the hairdressers), dodging the horns of angry rhinos (shopping trolleys in the supermarket), and taming the occasional savage lion I run into (road rage in the car park).

Some days in the Advent run-up, I want to scream "Where's the big red OFF button", but I know that some smart Alec in a party hat and jazzy jumper will jump out of some smug angelic cloud, show me their Rudolph's flashing nose, and laugh their novelty sodding socks off.

So, with the composure of a eunuch at an orgy, I glide about the season biting my tongue, taking big, deep breaths, uttering a thousand hypocritical utterances about how pretty everything looks, and how much I am looking forward to coagulating my arteries with goose fat. All the while I'm counting down the days in a series of unsurprising chocolate windows, wondering how the hell I am meant to wrap a virtual present, getting ready for the main event, the big day, when it's all finally £$%^ing over.