The True Meaning Of Christmas: A Long Hard Look At The Festive Season

Written by Nick Hobbs

Saturday, 11 December 2010




image for The True Meaning Of Christmas: A Long Hard Look At The Festive Season
HO, HO, HOCA-COLA...said the marketing departments greatest creation.

As Christmas fast approaches I wanted to get to the true meaning of Christmas. What is it that makes this such a special day?

We are often told, shamed even, in to sparing a thought for the person behind all this festive fun.

I'm talking about Jesus.

Jesus H. Christ.

For Christ the redeemer, who enjoys long walks on the lake, turning water in to moonshine, and riding a bicyle, has long been forgotten by people the world over.

Lovingly nailed to a cross for being a bit mad and professing himself to be the son of God, the original David Icke invented Christmas to be a time of joy and happiness. A moment for families to come together and praise God, thanking him for being omnipresent and omnipotent.

But things have changed over the years, the goalposts have been moved. God and Jesus are no longer top of the Christmas wish list. And of course, true to form, humans have become selfish and lazy.

This is what I truly feel Christmas means for so many of us.

The true 'spirit of Christmas', if you will. Read on.

Christmas is about wasting three nights of your life, handwriting cards for people you don't see very often. And why don't you see them? Because you don't really like them. So why send them a piece of thick paper with a stupid drawing of a Robin and some holly on, to somehow convey the feeling that you're thinking of them. Just phone them if you care that much!

It's about going to works Christmas parties in the vain hope you may pull Cindy from accounts, after all, why wouldn't she? She's had everyone else from your department. It must be your turn this year.

It's about dancing like a complete moron, surrounded by people you have to spend every working day with. People you despise, and certainly wouldn't spend your spare time with in 'normal' circumstances.

It's about eating lukewarm processed food, cooked lovingly on a mass scale for you and the other 187 people in attendance, left on a hotplate for three hours, before being served up by a fourteen year old, spotty, arrogant gum-chewer.

It's about the obligatory shopping trip for food. The one that costs £870 for food to last you two days. The one where your local supermarket is filled with the entire population of your home county, all vigorously buying up every single item in the shop, as if Judgement Day had arrived, and the shops would never re-open. Milk, bread, cheese, meat. Enough to feed the third world six times over in one metal trolley. And all because the shops are shut for 8 hours on Christmas day.

It's all about gifts and stuffing your face with food and drink. Slumping in front of the idiot box and watching The Sound Of Music for the twenty-twelfth time, because you're too fat and lazy to make your fat fingers press a button on the remote and turn over to the Queen's speech. And even after all this time, you're still not fully sure what the film is all about!

It's about sitting around a tree that was far happier when it was alive and growing in a forest, and not dying in your front room watching another festive character die on EastEnders, for a fifth year running. It's about the eight month clean up operation, where you pick out pine needles from your feet, every time you walk past 'that spot'.

It's about how much you spent on presents. The guilt when you receive a Rolex watch from your brother, and you note the look of contempt on his brow as he studies the 'Britain's Crappest Towns' book you picked up from Oxfam yesterday, realising you'd forgotten to buy him a gift.

It's mock love and well wishing, as your finances spiral out of control and you sink further in to debt, just so that little Bobby has that new bicycle for £7000, and might just love you back, for a while longer at least, until he decides he doesn't like blue anymore, and now wants a pony!

It's about pulling crackers and telling shite jokes that are as funny as having a stroke. It's about mock excitement from finding a small plastic clip on moustache in the cracker, and passing it around, as everyone tries it on spreading snot from face to face, and onlookers laugh as they pretend it makes you look funny. It doesn't. You look like a twat with a paper hat and a plastic moustache.

It's about looking stupid in your paper hats, as you sit around a table of people you have to like, because they're family. It's about eating turkey. The one meat you wouldn't eat for a whole year, but suddenly the nation goes crazy for, for one day only.

It's about buying a bird so large, that you need to buy a cooker to go with it, just to fit the poxy thing in, even though there's only four of you this year, and this thing'll feed 92, easy! It's about endless turkey tinged recipes for the next three weeks. Turkey sandwiches, turkey stew, turkey soup, turkey with cornflakes and milk, turkey porridge, turkey and lemonade with a splash of lime and ice!

Turkey. A truly festive bird I'm sure you'll agree. The turkey featured heavily in The Bible after all. Jesus' favourite, so I'm told.

It's about brussels sprouts, those small cabbage looking creations of Satan. Force fed to millions of children and adults once a year, making them truly fear a tiny vegetable.

It's about granny farting the national anthem in the corner, as she falls asleep and dribbles down her front. It's about gramps, who snores all the way through the one programme you actually wanted to watch this year, as he oozes the scent of piss and cabbage.

It's about the Uncle that no one likes, getting hammered and telling rude jokes that embarrass everyone present, and seriously scar the minds of the children for life.

It's about your usually pristine home being invaded by a horde of other human beings, who eat and drink all of your food and leave patterned wrapping paper, shredded and crumpled, all over your house. Empty gift boxes lay scattered across the house, as you wade knee deep through empty lager cans and black bin liners filled with, what is effectively wasted money!

It's about filling your dustbin with masses of rubbish. Just for one day. Was it really all worth it?

It's about not having enough space for more general household waste for the next four weeks, because the bin men collect less regularly now, and the bank holidays knocked them out of kilter.

It's about having time away from work. Time to reflect on how much you wished they'd got you a new job for Christmas, rather than the shaving foam and that robe and slipper set you'll never wear.

I could go on....

But you get the idea. This, for me at least, is the true meaning of Christmas. It's not about religion any more. It's not about peace and understanding. It's about greed and that Coca-Cola advert with the trucks.

It's about marketing and debt.

It's a crock of shit.

B'ah Humbug.

I hope you all have a wonderful festive season. I really do. Take care of yourselves, and each other.



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