Monday, December 24, 2012

The Cult of Christmas


I know exactly how many hours it is until Christmas.

I know this not because I am particularly good at figuring things out. Its not because I have any Rain Man tendencies towards time or dates of significance.
I don’t sit there and go ‘3….2….1. Its Christmas! Hurrah’ (resets clock in head) ‘Right everybody its (pause, eyes flickering)….. its 144 hours till New Year! Come on everybody lets count!’

Contrary to what my job title states I’m also not really that good with numbers and time is a concept I sometimes have issues with.

No, the reason I know exactly how many hours it is until Christmas because I see it every day on Facebook, Google or any other number of electronic places I drop into during the day. When I log on its there, normally accompanied by a large man in a red suit grinning manically.

It‘s as if suddenly someone has woken up this year, created an app and the whole world has gone countdown mad.

Last week before the non-event which was the supposed end of the world there were more Christmas countdowns than ‘we’re all going to die a fiery death’ ones. Even knowing we were not going to vapourise on Friday I would have thought someone would have leveraged this new, state of the art, technology to count it down for us.
But no. Not one. Now prioritisation isn’t my strong point but……

The whole woo-ha around Christmas does baffle me. I have pointed out my religious viewpoint a number of times in this blog so you wont be surprised that the impending anniversary of the birth of a major player in Christendom doesn’t really float my boat much. I therefore find it somewhat odd to see grown adults excitedly clapping their hands like Priscilla Queen of the Desert as the big day approaches on their Facebook countdown app thingy.

Given its such an alien concept to me and in keeping with my other blogs I have tried to understand why this is. What is it which drives people to act like yuletide lunatics with no concept of self esteem or fiscal responsibility during the month of December.

Without wanting to bore you and as this is a short blog I will dispense with my usual heavy technical analysis to prove to you my study wasn’t soiled with any form of bias. Suffice it to say it was lengthy, I used large complex mathematical models, a big computer and a laser.

Now complete I can say that my findings astonished even me. I have proven, statistically & mathematically proven that is, that I am not wrong. Even on the ‘Harold Camping’ scale, the measure of mental-ness regarded by most of the worlds leading scientists as the only true measure, the results are off the chart.

A short extract of my findings which I have summarised into ‘Facts’ for easy simple digestion:

Fact 1. A significant segment of the population turn into cheesy grinning, boozy red faced idiots in the week(s) before Christmas.

Fact 2. The same segment also seem to forget the rules governing what is considered acceptable social behaviour as offices close for the period.  
Fact 3. The vast majority of us shop like a piggy squealing, Iowa bomb shelter dwelling, patriot just before the government start closing in.

Fact 4. ‘It’s a wonderful life’ was actually a sober study into the effects of mixing different hallucinogenic drugs.

The conclusions of this study are as frightening as they are undeniable and I can only conclude that we are brainwashed by this creepy cult called Christmas. Why else would we act in such a way in the middle of Winter. This blog is therefore a call to arms. Please see it as a shining beacon of sanity amongst all the dribbling lunacy.

Reject Christmas. 
Reject the bondage of Christmas cake, brussel sprouts, eating, drinking and spending far too much. Reject Ant & Dec’s Christmas special, reject Bambi, James Bond, the Great Escape and reruns of Morecambe and Wise.  And yes, sorry but you have to reject Jimmy Stewart too.

Then and only then will we all be truly free and sane. Probably.

Either that or I’m just a boring c*&t with too much time on my hands.

P.s. Merry Christmas in 8hrs, 9mins!