How the Geek stole Christmas

I collapsed this week, caved in and put Fairytale Of New York by The Pogues on my iPod. It’s like funding an insurgency campaign in my mp3 player; it’s not offensively Christmassy, but it’s beginning to make the other albums on there consider rising up in protest and installing a festive dictatorship.

I think it’s properly Christmas now, so I’m tentatively preparing myself for six solid weeks of red and green being the only colours in existence, an entire month of balls-out, wang-flailing cheeriness that won’t abate for a second until the crushing reality of January 1st descends on us.

I hunch myself in the corner of Starbucks at the moment, fighting some sort of cultural Battle of the Bulge. Up goes the laptop. I arrange the leftover (Christmas red) paper cups in a makeshift barricade. Hunker down for the Hun’s next push, an artillery barrage of eggnog-flavoured syrup or something. I’m safe in the Ardennes. Can’t get me in the Ardennes.

The line that gets trotted out every year, that we put the decorations up too early and it’s too commercial, is beginning to feel slightly older than the tradition itself. As is the fact-shitting about pagan festivals and Roman cultural domination. Don’t get me wrong when I construct an elaborate 70% post-consumer recycled foxhole in the nearest coffee shop, I’m not one of the people who drones on about Christmas like it’s a sexually transmitted disease. I am all up on Christmas. I love this shit. I listen to Frank Sinatra belt out the same three songs over and over again until my internal organs start to think seriously about impeaching my own brain.

I am all up on Christmas. I love this shit. I listen to Frank Sinatra belt out the same three songs over and over again until my internal organs start to think seriously about impeaching my own brain

It’s just I like to ease myself into it. Like a hot bath. I like to dip a toe in here or there, gasp a little, giggle to myself and then slowly inch myself in. That’s the analogy here. What’s actually happening is that one day in early November I wake up and someone chucks a full kettle of boiling water over my face. Not the same thing. Not the same thing at all.

As a result, I’m rationing Christmas cheer so that there’s enough to last me through the next two months, with maybe a little left at the end to prop me up when the inevitable crushing disappointment of 2011 begins to dawn on me. The rules are as follows: Saturday and Sunday, Christmas all day. Mondays, Christmas from midnight to lunchtime. Then, strictly no aural references to Christmas until Wednesday noon. Full-on Christmas then restarts on Friday at 4pm, at which point I blend together a mince pie, a candy cane, four carrots and some whisky and down the lot.

This is the way you do it. The staff in Argos look ready to slit their own throats by the start of December, because they don’t follow the strict A Geek Regime. What they need is a little Thunderbirds-like red button that, when pressed, flips over hidden panels in the wall to reveal flashing lights and tinsel-decorated trees with little reindeers perched on top, preferably live ones. Then it gives it a bit of purpose, a bit of pizzazz, to stop it from just becoming background noise. Then one day, just to mix things up, you replace the Christmas decorations with beach furniture. Boom. Minds blown. Stay on your toes, consumers, because who knows what month it’s going to be tomorrow. HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR. MERRY SUMMER SOLSTICE.

I await Imperial to implement a similar joy-rationing scheme. Until they do, I will be following in the footsteps of Belle and Sebastian, and staging a guerilla resistance against The Pogues and any other form of Christmas joy. So if you pass Sherfield and find yourself in the middle of a hastily-organised Easter celebration, don’t worry. I’m doing it for your own good. Merry Christmas. God bless us, every one.