Janet Christie: Christmas in the greatest recession in living memory

Obviously there are nice things about Christmas (nativity plays, the tree, a child’s delight) but I’ve event-managed so many now that no amount of advertising will persuade me it’s anything other than a huge marketing campaign to shift stuff.

Celebration of Christ’s birth? On you go, the music’s lovely. Pagan festival? I’m all for that – give me a bucket of woad and I’ll dance around a campfire naked till dawn. But we shop, cook, clean, spend money we don’t have, endure a day with people we’d gladly spend the rest of our lives never clapping eyes on ever again (not our little darlings, obviously. We don’t mind shelling out for them, but they’d probably be happy with a pizza and an envelope full of cash). We open the door to guests who treat us with contempt the other 364 days of the year, play games of charades with numpties who insist Phantom of the Opera is an opera (“Of course it is. Why else do you think it has the word opera in the title?”).

Let’s be honest. We’d rather not. We’re in the biggest recession in living memory. Can’t we all just get together and say, “Get thee behind us Santa”?

No we can’t. The season of goodwill must be endured, like childbirth, smear tests and death. Merry Christmas everyone.