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Merry Christmas

High-five Jesus – the Gallaries shopping centre in Bristol now has a shop completely dedicated to your birthday. You can buy all sorts in there, as long as what you want to buy is sparkly and aggresively soul-destroying. You might want to accelerate your second coming Christ - get in there and change all that shiny shit into something more worthy. Something that'll make us reflect on the virgin birth and 'love' and why the sea looks so angry these days.

But I'm going to take the next exit off this lazy cynicism motorway. For one of my favourite hobbies (listed on my CV) is to listen to people become exasperated by the premature appearance of Christmas related high-jinx. A great place for this is just outside this new Christmas shop.

“Re-dic-you-lous,” says the woman with eyes lost behind Dierdre Barlow's spare pair of 'sexy time' glasses; she throws her the palm of her hand downwards in reflex disgust.

“It's just so unnecessary,” her friend replies, more measured, more calm; a sadness and sense loss of the times when the signs of Christmas were limited to the Queen's fifteen minute speech and September was a month dedicated to deciciding whether it was cold enough to turn the heating on.

The only thing that can rile the middle-classes more is Easter Eggs in February. You would have to microwave Fern Britton's gastric or band to illicit more disgust than selling Easter Eggs in February.

And so it will continue until December, when the cries of 'not yet, it's too early' will subside and solemn serious looking elderly men with confused hair and bibles, will pick up the baton with their bemoaning of the loss of the 'true meaning of Christmas'. Unforgivable when we've had since September to think about it.
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