On Boxing Day morning I was overcome by a fit of pique regarding the whole commercialisation of Christmas, and the general media push that puts pressure on everyone to have a ‘perfect’ day by wearing matching jumpers and choosing an innovative theme for their dinner table - ‘Scandinavian gonks, anyone? Oh no, that is soooooo last year.’ This resulted in me denuding the house of all its Christmas regalia and turning it back to normal. It felt like the lifting of an enormous, dark, heavy cloud. It has also made dusting much easier.
The truth is, I suppose, that although I loved Christmas as a child, because I was governed by the whole ‘it’s the birthday of Baby Jesus!’ mythology (being a Sunday School go-er and an innocent who believed everything she was told), as an adult I do not like what Christmas has since become. Are people excited on Christmas morning because of the anticipation of rushing off to church to celebrate an important date in the Christian calendar? Are they heck. They are excited for the gifts, the promise of some decent TV, and the excuse for a massive booze up and over-eating (mostly rubbish) food. Okay, I expect some people celebrate Christmas in the old spirit of Christianity, but I am pretty certain they are in the decreasing minority. Christmas? Commercialmas, more like.
And I know I’m not the only person who feels like this. But we can’t say it, can we? (Only I just did - Scrooge, bah humbug.) We have to keep pretending we love 25th December, the ‘Big Day’ (sheesh…) and keep rolling out the same old ‘traditions’ year in, year out, because heaven forfend we decide to treat 25th December like any other day of the years, or do something different. I remember one year deciding to make Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, with a cold buffet for Christmas Day itself. Uproar!
I’m all for having a celebratory time in mid-Winter for the sake of cheering us up a bit during the dark, cold, wet days. But let’s call it what it is (and what it always was before Christianity hijacked it for its own means) - and that is Yule. I’d rather celebrate Yule than Christmas. (In fact, I did, in my own small witchy way.) Decorate the house with Winter greenery, have a bit of nice home-cooked food, sit around with friends and family having a chat, playing games, telling stories, reading, snoozing by the fire. No presents. No TV Christmas specials which never live up to the hype anyway. (I’ve enjoyed precisely three TV shows over the past 4 days: The Highway Rat, Call the Midwife and The Coronation Year.) And no so-called celebrities telling us what to wear/eat/buy.
Yes, that’d do me. Three days of that - simplicity, relaxation, genuine heart-felt joy and fun - then crack on with the business of life.
I’m not complaining, really I’m not. Having a mini-rant, yes. Only because it makes me feel better! But I think it’s time to stop pretending. And not just about Christmas, either, although that’s a start. Of course, I am writing this on the back of high dudgeon (not a horse) about how I currently feel about Christmas. And next December I might have changed my mind because I can be fickle like that. Who knows? Watch this space!
Yet for all the talk that goes on these days about being ‘honest’, ‘authentic’, and telling one’s ‘truth’ I can’t help but feel that human society has become less genuine than it has ever been. There seems more artifice, more hiding behind a veneer of, yup, pretence. I don’t know - maybe humans have always been like that. Maybe it’s a survival thing? Got to blend in with the crowd, with the prescribed way of living because if you stop pretending and start living life YOUR way, people might point and laugh.
Hark at me! Enough already! I’m off to watch a silly film designed for small children. Because (I shan’t pretend) I want to!
And here’s me ‘n’ Nell, just to prove I can still smile and she can look mightily bored with life.
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KJ