Christmas

I should make one thing clear up front: I FUCKING HATE CHRISTMAS. In the UK, at least.

It’s bollocks. I mean, the whole “sharing of happiness” is alright, global togetherness, etc. But when you put that aside – as more and more people do – it’s just a big shopping orgy in the shadow of a table about to collapse under the weight of too much food. Everyone getting their pants in a twist over what to get for whom, all the credit cards maxed out, horrible stress about debt, and all the while all the big retail outlets telling us to spend more because if we don’t, we’re terrible people. And then we eat too much. Fuck that. Frankly I’d rather smear jam on my head and stick it in a wasps’ nest.

BUT…compared to what goes on in England, Christmas in Roca is awesome, at least for miserable bastards like me. Back home, Christmas starts at the end of October. I know, I know, that’s really stupid. It starts with some random advert on television with bells and sleighs and snow and shit, an advert that you know you are going to hate so much by December 24 that it actually makes you vomit up the last residue of last year’s Christmas meal the first time you see it. That’s how deeply, gut-shatteringly dreadful that moment is.

Then some chain of shops, normally the ones that sell mobile phones or games consoles, puts up its Christmas decorations. In November. Then the retarded wax works on TV and radio start reminding you how many shopping days there are left before Christmas, and the awful gnawing anxiety begins. I MUST SHOP. I MUST SHOP.

Then greetings cards start arriving from horribly efficient people you genuinely haven’t thought about since the last time they sent you a card. Little cards with snowmen and angels on them, or terribly humorous depictions of a fat Santa getting his belt snagged on a satellite dish while Rudolph defecates in the eggnog. And all of these cards come from charity shops, as if buying them there somehow eradicates the awful wastefulness of sending hundreds of cards out to people who never think of you.

Of course, you haven’t sent any cards. You NEVER send any cards, but the fact that everyone else does just makes you look like a bastard. A thoughtless, disorganised, tightfisted, misanthropic bastard.

So there you are, you “happy” little consumer, swamped by a deluge of adverts, decorations and cards, and the clock is ticking. You haven’t got any money, and you haven’t done what organised, intelligent people do which is to buy everything online in October.

My family also issues Christmas lists. I hate Christmas lists. I’ve been nagged and harried to issue a Christmas list at the end of November every year since the age of four. It’s traumatic. All year I have a brain full of great ideas for things that people can buy me. Then “List Season” arrives and I can’t think of anything. So I ask for guitar strings and film for my camera. Or some obscure CD that no one can ever find. Everyone else’s list is the product of profound thought, with something for every budget and subdivided into “Christmas” and “Birthday” for those who celebrate both occasions close together. Lists are particularly evil because a) you know what you’re getting in advance (not even Jesus knew what he was getting in advance, and he was the Messiah) and b) by the time you’ve opened the majority of your presents, you’re desperately trying to work out which of the remaining ones is the ONE thing you really wanted. Judging by the size and shape of them, it’s none of them, and each one you open brings with it a little gulp of disappointment followed by a wave of shame for having been so ungrateful.

I’m the world’s worst present buyer. I’m really crap. This is partly because I leave everything until December 24 (I’m living proof that those October Christmas adverts don’t work) so by the time I get to the shops I need to buy nine squillion presents on a budget of £6 and most of the good stuff has gone. So I enter the realm of “Fuck it, that’ll do” shopping, where “That” is a book on origami for the person who wanted the limited edition DVD of The Wizard of Oz. I’ve bought books I thought were funny but were in fact shit. I once bought my mum a ring in a cardboard Fabergé egg. And the less said about the enamel mate I bought for my wife for our first Christmas in Argentina, the better. Let’s just say that my whole present buying experience is conducted through a mist of panic-induced sweat. I’m a partially-sighted shopper. I’m probably eligible for incapacity benefits, now I think of it.

So Christmas in the UK is a frenzy. Two-and-a-half months of desperate, feverish consumerism in tones of gold, green and red, acted out to an interminable soundtrack of Christmas “hits”. Seriously, every shop, boutique, record store and shopping mall you go into has got the same CD playing on continuous loop: Cliff Richard, Slade, Jonah Louie, Nat King Cole, John Lennon et al, all “rocking around the Christmas tree” and kissing under the mistletoe and eating figgy pudding while the rest of us fight to the death over the last Zhu Zhu pet hamster in existence.

But that’s England. And possibly some other countries. So I thank my lucky stars I live in Roca, where it kind of starts thinking about happening in the middle of December. The supermarkets go a bit Christmas mad, but no one pays any attention. By the time my birthday comes, with a week to go, there are some very modest decorations going up and the queues are starting to build up in shops, but nothing dreadful. Pan dulce stocks increase at an alarming rate, and Turrón makes a reappearance on the shelves. Then suddenly, at about midday on the 24th, everyone goes Christmas mental, buys EVERYTHING in about 12 minutes (already wrapped up by the kind shopkeeper), goes home, eats lots, sets off some fireworks, opens presents – ALL of which are a surprise and half of which get changed without anyone taking offence – and the whole thing’s over by midday on the 25th.

Paradise.