It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. The tube is packed, the streets are clogged, shopping is a nightmare, and you keep embarrassing yourself, blurting out family secrets at dinners, to people you barely know.

Meanwhile, there are all these fake gifts everywhere: stupid, empty, gift-wrapped boxes designed to lure you in and get your hopes up when you know that all you really deserve is a big ol’ lump of coal.

Empty gift wrapped boxes – isn’t it great how a seemingly harmless Christmas decoration can act so well as an analogy for the human condition, sending you tumbling into the abysmal depths of an existential crisis? Beautiful and shiny on the outside, sturdy-looking, deceptively full of promise even, but dark, bare and empty on the inside. Ah the joys of the holidays.

Speaking of shattered illusions, as you might have picked up on if you read any of the national papers, Imperial released a report that is the equivalent of taking an axe and hacking into all your beautifully gift-wrapped Christmas gifts and spilling out all their contents for everyone to see during a formal dinner at your parents house. During the American Psycho inspired mental breakdown, you hack into some great gifts, like that virtual reality headset you’ve been waiting all year for. You also hack into some expected presents such as socks, underwear and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. But then you also hack into all those empty gift-wrapped boxes, shattering the illusion of opulence and excess and embarrassing your family, though everyone already knew that half the gifts under the tree were just for show.

This is our last issue of term, and it’s stupidly thick again to keep you company over the winter break, or at the very least to keep you warm if you live in Evelyn Gardens and your heating fails you again.

Inside this super-spesh edition, you will find the best and worst of 2016. You will laugh and you will cry but predominantly you’ll probably just stare blankly at the pages wondering what is wrong with the paper, your life, and the world in general.

So from everyone here at felix, happy holidays and don’t forget to take a break. You’ve earned it. Unless you’re a fresher, in which case you haven’t earned nothin’ yet.