The Top 10 of Anything and Everything caught my eye with this post about people who do not celebrate Christmas.

Ten Things You Shouldn’t Say to Someone Who Doesn’t Celebrate Christmas

If Sam and I were left to our own devices, we wouldn’t bother celebrating Christmas either.  However, our sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren will all be descending upon us over the holidays, and they expect to see that we’ve made some kind of an effort in the decoration department.  Irritatingly the one year we didn’t bother, it was I who got the blame from the family, not Sam.

I’m not the kind of person who starts baking in October.  In fact I don’t make cakes or puddings at all.  Why clog yourself up with shite?  Why is it a tradition to eat stodgy artery-clogging food just because it’s Christmas?  As far as I can tell, once you get past the age of about 50, your body will tell you all about it if you do. Therefore Sam and I prefer to eat healthily and keep it all moving.  We love a roast turkey dinner, but I use olive oil for the roast potatoes and not the fat from the turkey.  My veggies are not caramelised or buggered about in any way – just steamed.

The Christmas hype starts as soon as the kids go back to school in September.  What is all this hype in aid of? It’s so the retailers can claw as much money from us as they can.  I’m sure that people who are religious celebrate Christmas in their own quiet way, but for the majority it’s lighty-up Santas in the garden, flashing reindeer, tacky decorations and a contribution to the Greenhouse Effect by chopping down healthy living trees and depriving them of their roots in a gaudily-decorated room which is probably as hot as the aforesaid greenhouse.

The true meaning of Christmas has gone up the pipe.  In reality it’s queuing to the back of the shop with bags of sprouts that the majority do not eat for the rest of the year.  It’s queuing out the door at the GP surgery because it’s going to be shut for the next 2 days.  It’s fighting other parents for that last toy on the shelf that every kid in the country wants.  It’s a pile of discarded and naked fir trees at the council dump on 6th January waiting to be shredded.

Am I a party-pooper?  I enjoy a party as much as anybody (after all, I’m one of the old-fashioned East Enders and we’re famous for them), but all this hype and gluttony over one day seems to me  to be rather disgusting.  Half the world is starving; it just doesn’t seem right.  Am I the only one who thinks this way?  I do not suffer with depression either; it’s just that I cannot see the point of it all.  People say they go to Midnight Mass, but do not go to church at any other time of the year.  Isn’t that rather hypocritical?

For all of you who do celebrate it… Happy Christmas, and to quote the late and much-lamented Dave Allen – may your god go with you.  As for Sam and I, after we have smiled and nodded and done our bit to please the family, we can’t wait to get over to the Isle of Wight on the 27th and escape!