CHRISTMAS doesn’t have to be awful, but bastards are always working to make it worse. These trends cross a line:
£200 advent calendars
It used to be a cheap daily chocolate. Survivors of 1970s Christmases will remember when it was just a picture. But now advent calendars cost upwards of £200 and offer 24 different perfumes, cheeses or beauty products through the month as if you’re a jaded gout-ridden emperor. There are cheaper ways to begin the day with a dopamine rush, like cocaine.
Christmas Eve boxes
Opening presents on Christmas morning is at least as sacred an idea as all that nativity nonsense. Opening one present on Christmas Eve? Acceptable. Having a special box of the f**kers for the chronically impatient? No. Wait 12 hours.
Christmas light spectaculars
Not the traditional Christmas lights switch-on of your youth, but extravaganzas where you pay to enter an inescapable labyrinth of illuminated tackiness. You freeze your tits off trudging miles past unimpressive neon blurs, then shell out eight quid on an artisanally-toasted marshmallow.
Elf on the shelf
Ever wish you could spend a whole month of the year staging photoshoots at unsociable hours, like an exploited art student? Thanks to this high-maintenance American import that dream is f**king real. Your children know it’s fake and only play along to hurt you. The elf’s photoshoot is being dismembered in the garden on December 16th.
German Christmas markets
The food smells delicious, the wooden huts look delightful, you shuffle around and realise you’re trapped in a Yuletide Matrix where all the shitty craft stalls repeat every fourth one. There are only so many lebkuchen you can buy. There are no drinks other than mulled wine. You will never be free.
