The True Spirit of Christmas

 

Yes, I know, an article about Christmas in October? Trust me, Halloween content is coming. I've been ill!

I don't normally share articles from the Independent here because their site is such a ballache to deal with, but I'm sharing this one because it points out that 46% of young people ARE WORRIED THEY WON'T BE ABLE TO AFFORD FOOD this winter and the comments are full of smug, self-satisfied Tories who consider themselves not to be materialists while surrounded by a level of luxury which would make most people from the global South weep in sheer disbelief pontificating that 'uwu Christmas isn't about having loads of expensive pressies, it's about enjoying a good Christmas dinner with your famblybee uwu'. THE ARTICLE SAYS NEARLY HALF OF THEM ARE WORRIED THEY WON'T EVEN BE ABLE TO DO THAT, YOU THICK, SELFISH TWATS. 

But that doesn't really matter to you does it? Because what's really important about Christmas is you get to sing all the songs about the Baby Jesus, born in a stable and surrounded by the filth of animals, destined to also die surrounded by filth on a hill where people were slaughtered like animals, a sanitized recreation of which has pride of place in your window this season to let the neighbours know what a Good Christian with Decent Christian Values you are, and you get to watch A Christmas Carol - probably one of the really shit versions of it too, not even Scrooged because you've always found that too left-wing - and feel satisfied that you're a much nicer person than that cold-hearted miser with the suspiciously foreign-sounding name, and then getting your slap-up roast with all the trimmings and looking at your well-fed family sat around the table, safe in your security-gated house and feeling Full of the Spirit of Christmas. That's what's important! Not loads of expensive pressies (though obviously you bought your kids loads of those too, buying your little scrote of a child who bullies the queer kids at their school a Super Blaster Mega Zord is a Love Language).

Boo-boo Ramirez understands Christianity more deeply than Justin Welby. Art by JH Williams III, dialogue by The Original Author

If you really believed in the Spirit of Christmas then in December 2019 you would have voted for the party which had a homelessness strategy that would go into action on DAY ONE. A homelessness strategy which would have got people off the streets over Christmas, which would have ensured they got to spend that oh-so-special day in a warm home, with nice food - nothing as impressive as your set-up obviously, but four walls and a roof and plumbing so they could get clean and maybe a heated-up turkey dinner. But you didn't vote for that did you? Because if you had you worried that you might have had to surrender a slightly higher infinitesimal fraction of your income as tax. And then you might have had to change your TV package to one where you'd be forced to watch Scrooged. You might have had to buy your Christmas din-dins from Sainsbury's instead of Waitrose, or choose between stuffing and cranberry sauce instead of buying both. Or put one less Double Thunder Giga Zord under the tree for your piggy-eyed brat. 

So don't come into the comments on articles like this with worn-out 'seasonal' platitudes about how Christmas is about more than just expensive pressies and conspicuous consumption. Because that's clearly all it's ever been to you.