...and what have you done? Well not very much to be honest, because as seems to be custom I've let other things get in the way. "Let" other things get in the way? I hear you ask - well I hear myself ask (split personality works well in monologues) - You shouldn't let a silly festival get in the way of the important things in your life, like work, hobbies and basic essentials. And you'd (I'd) be right there are things I 'need' to do and they should be the focus of my life at the moment. Anyway, Christmas tends to lose most of it's excitement when you want for more in your life than a new lego model. The streets are jammed with worried parents and relatives frantically working their way through lists trying to figure out just exactly what a their 15 year old god son they haven't seen in 3 years would want for Christmas, heaven forbid forgetting them, it's a middle class nightmare. For everyone trying to continue with their everyday life, well, they get caught up in all this muddle, parking spaces become scarce, short-cuts through shopping centres become just as long winded as the route you gave up doing 2 years ago and going for a lunchtime coffee becomes a futile task what with the hundreds of new stressed out customers littering the place with bags and small children. Then there's anybody who works in the retail industry, and that really is quite a lot of people. It becomes quite tricky trying to serve twice as many customers whilst there's an oversized Santa hat slowly working it's way down your forehead and itchy tinsel adorning every edge of clothing, not to mention the extra hours and having to navigate around that Christmas tree that there wasn't really any room for. It's enough to get anyone down really, no-one enjoys Christmas, we just go through the motions, or at least that's what I'm being told.
Every year the first Christmas advert hits the telly more prematurely than the last in a desperate bid to break the news first, as if the first place we see advertising Christmas deals is where we will go to buy everything we need. Anyone who has been or known a teenage boy will know it's usually closer to the reverse, if it's still got things left on Christmas Eve then it's getting business. The adverts are always filled with cheery shelf-stackers itching to fulfil their destiny of selling as many Bosch Power Drills as they can before the low low prices run out. Or the perfect housewife, who's left the creepy vanish lady at home babysitting the kids and laughing at stains in order to stock up on the joy that she can only find in spending vast amounts of money on the perfect offspring she's created, and the man with the face 10x smoother than that of every other. And it really doesn't matter how many celebrities want to be our best mate all of a sudden or how much time and effort has gone into creating an advert filled with merriment, it generally only elicits one response from people. "Oh no B&Q are wishing us glad tidings, it's that time again, there's no way we're re-tiling the bathroom this year then". It really is a stark reminder that the end of the year is coming and there's a million things (well a short list of things anyway) that you planned for that year that haven't been done, deadlines you haven't met and goals that weren't achieved.
So with the ever receding adverts comes the ever receding antidote, cynacism, the art of laughing about something whilst admitting defeat. Don't get me wrong I love it as much as the next person, better to laugh at these things than let them get you down, it's just, well they're getting earlier too. The first cynical article I read this year came out less than a week after I'd seen the first Christmas advert, it took the article to make me register that all this was going on. So I was sat at my desk reading this (and admittedly enjoying it) on the 18th of November, and the problem is, I wasn't even thinking about Christmas at that point. It was like a present that came too early, and so when Christmas does come round and I could do with a healthy dose of cynicism it will all have already gone. I should have saved it, I should refuse to look at anything relating to Christmas until it's within at least a few weeks of the actual event.
I didn't always think like this of course, I stopped enjoying Christmas as much in my late teens, because there was so much more that I had to do before I could be allowed to feel 'Christmassy'. There were the aptly named 'Christmas exams' to revise for, higher education's gift at this time of year, those and the coursework deadlines I got in a stocking. Thinking about Christmas then would be a distraction from what was important, it was a distraction from getting on with what I needed to do. By the time I was finished with all my work I had to schedule in a few late carol services, tune into every music channel available and generally flood myself with all things Christmas for the last few days in the lead up to the big day. However, I did get there, my blitzkrieg approach to Christmas worked, I've had consistently fun Christmas days as far back as I can remember. So I thought I had the solution, this was my approach to Christmas, a new and functional approach for the new and functional me, a way to fit in an enjoyable Christmas and deal with my responsibilities as well.
But this year something started to bother me about this, it was November and I was going through something I've come to call in recent years 'The November Blues'. You see, November has become the worst month of the year for me, I'm a student and it's around this point that everything starts getting very tense, my work load increases and my spare time and available money decreases. This year it was going to be worse than ever, the coursework deadlines I had were more important than those of previous years, money was tighter and the prospect of finding a job over the holiday's was getting slimmer and slimmer. I retreated to my room to start the inevitable and unavoidable climb towards the summit of the work mountain. Now, I could continue my mountain analogy by talking about how I was climbing solo, how I had no support line and the incoming blizzard meant I couldn't see past the ground in front of me. But this wouldn't be right, it would make it sound like I was left no choice in the matter, like I'd been abandoned and left to tackle all of this on my own. Truth is I was the one who'd cut the support ropes and I was too busy looking at the ground in front of me to check if anyone else was around. I thought this was what I needed to do, whereas in fact it just made work a slow and arduous task and it took one good day to stop me from giving up entirely, to stop me from saying "Christmas be damned, you're nothing but nonsense, a Capitalist ceremony to help companies reach their sales targets". It was on this day that I had a mini-eureka moment and decided on a new approach to the Christmas period.
The thing is, I'm afraid my first sentence was a little bit of a half lie, it's true that I haven't done much in terms of shopping etc... and I have been getting on with other things but it hasn't "got in the way" of Christmas at all, quite the reverse. You see, the decision I made late in November was that I could be as cynical about Christmas and all that entails until December, that would be my guilty pleasure, something to help me through the month and stop me from going bitter. But when December came round, I was going to leave the adverts alone, stop laughing at the silliness of it all and just enjoy it. I know it sounds crazy to just decide to enjoy something, but it's been a lot easier than I thought it would be. I've drunk mulled wine to warm me up, I've stopped to watch the street performers, I've smiled at the display of lights around the town centre. I've allowed all of these things to help "get me in the Christmas spirit" and it's worked, I feel more positive about the season now than I have done in years.
I still have a lot to do, I have a deadline coming up next week which I still have to do work for, then there's my ongoing research project, I have a last food shop to do and I haven't made a start to Christmas shopping yet. It's not going to break my back admittedly but it's still there nagging away at the back of my mind. But for the first time in years this doesn't bother me, I'm always going to have work to do and I'm always going to have various chores and upkeep to deal with, but now I'm in a Christmassy mood. I know that in a few weeks I'm going to be able to put my feet up in a warm house and spend time with friends and family, I'm going to have a real holiday, one where for just a bit I really forget about my responsibilities and enjoy myself. The thought of that is what's keeping me going, it's what now helps me work through my essays with a smile on my face.
I found what had been missing from Christmas these last few years and it was nothing external, it was me, I had been absent. I hadn't realised that "Tis the season to be jolly" was an instruction not an observation, it was a reminder for something I was actually meant to be doing. So I smile at the lady in the coffee shop wearing the flashing Santa hat and stop to applaud the magician in the shopping centre because being jolly makes things easier, and we need that at what's otherwise a very difficult time of year. So boo to the Humbuggery of the whole thing and screw the cynics because Christmas is what you make it and mine is going to be great.
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