Enjoy Christmas, And All The Stresses It Brings.

T'was the night before (the night before the night before) Christmas, and all across the land, we hear the sound of many people, desperately running up and down the shops looking for something for Great-uncle Geoff, ideally fishing related. Yes, we're finally (almost) here! Christmas is just around the corner, bringing with it a combination of calamities, coupled with cantankerous crones queueing to correctly order copious quantities of codswallop for their kids. After the great Pre-Christmas Salary Massacre, we have lots of lovely family lingering longingly while looking lovingly at your long-cooked Christmas Lunch, long carrots and less-popular lima beans, while lately you lack the longevity to let the lateness of the food lower your lust for life! If that didn't wake you up, then there's no hope for any of us. The Christmas parties have come and gone (where you totally didn't get really drunk, and then forget to wipe the icing off your mouth from all that cake that you totally didn't eat), and some sort of office "Secret Santa" ordeal has been dispensed with. Unless, you only work in an office with two people, that kind of takes some of the fun out of it. Now, onto the important part of the whole shebang!


Now in true Max tradition for this time of year, I spent all year promising myself that I would buy presents throughout the year to offload the financial pressure. I patted myself on the back for being so unbelievably clever and treated myself to a hob-nob, then proceeded to do the complete opposite, and not go shopping until I could almost hear Christmas brushing its feet on the doormat. By that, I meant yesterday. For those of you that are nodding your head right now because you did exactly the same, have you seen the queues of people out there? It feels like you're trying to meander your way though the zombie invasion. My debit card is currently sitting in bed right now, with an ice-pack on it's head, but the deed is done. Now, I hate shopping at the best of times, but when it comes to doing it when every other person in the world is doing it, while having to buy literally everything on sale for everyone, It becomes a bit much, so Christmas shopping and me have a bit of a love-hate thing going on. It can be summed up in the following:

"Oh, hi there Christmas shopping. You well? Good. No, sorry, I don't have any money. Sorr.... paycheque? What are you doing here? No! Oh God, run! RUN PAYCHEQUE RUN!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.... Oh God there's so much blood"

It's not just the beating of my bank balance that is the main focus of this time of year, but there's something else as well: the seemingly endless supply of "Christmas Tat" and utter rubbish that is currently up for grabs. If you're not sure what items qualify as "Christmas Tat", simply check the "discount bin" a couple of weeks after the big day. Quite simply, if you'd never buy it at any other time of the year, and would only buy it for someone because you said "meh, that'll do", then it's officially "Christmas Tat". These items tend to be drawn to the tawdry spectacle that is a "gadget shop". The kind of place that is filled with plastic things that require 2x AA batteries (sold separately) or have a hole in the packaging that says "try me", ensuring that at least one person will end up with the toy with flat batteries and grubby fingerprints all over it. You buy it, while briefly basking in the relief that it's a name ticked off your list, promptly forget what it is until they pull the wrapping off, sit through the most forced "thank you.. it's... lovely! No, just what I've always wanted; a plastic fish that sings Take Me To The River". Please, people, don't buy this sort of stuff! Instead, I've opted to make stuff for people, mostly edible and most probably hugely unhealthy, however it will be both thoughtful and meaningful; something that a "gadget shop" prezzie will never be.

Then, there's the day! If any of you happen to be six years old, you'll be getting up at 5am to go see what Santa left under your tree, and you'll marvel at his stealthy ways as you notice that he's clearly used the same wrapping paper that you have had sitting in your spare room all year. How did he make no noise? For those of us that are old enough to have National Insurance cards, getting up at 5am is that thing you do every weekday, so doing it on a Sunday isn't a pleasing prospect. Thing is, as an adult, here's the prospect that's probably been scaring you for a while: in three days (assuming you're reading this on Thursday), you'll eat so much food in one day that you'll explode, Mr Creosote-esque. I don't just mean the big ol' lunch, I mean the endless nibbles that will be prepared throughout the day, the chocolate that someone would have bought you (or made you, if they're from me) and the pile of leftovers that will mean you'll not go hungry for years and years. You'll also forget the carrots and the sprouts, which at any other time of the year will normally be ignored and will live in the fridge until they get so bad they start asking you to turn the light out when you open the fridge door. However it's Christmas, when you're supposed to eat all the food that you hate, just because. So, you put them on and make everyone wait until everything else is cold so they can also enjoy undercooked veggies that they didn't even want in the first place. And then they'll chew with their mouths open.

But you can ignore absolutely all of that. The tat sold in the Gadget Shop is only there for a couple of months and gives a few people a job. Gyms offer nice intro deals in January so you can burn off the weeks' worth of food that you managed to get through in a day, and the relatives have homes to go back to. Plus, it's a whole year until you have to repeat the whole debacle. You can forgive all of that because, for just a short space of time, you'll do something that you rarely do at any other time of the year: spend the day with family and friends, have a few drinks, laugh and thoroughly enjoy each others company, while putting aside any petty differences.

And that is what Christmas should be all about.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

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