The Same Old Christmas.

Is Christmas anything other than an extended exercise in pounding, grinding, painful repetition? That’s not really a question, because you know I’m right. Sure, every year something new gets thrown into the pot but in the end that pot still smells of the same old, same old, same old rotting Christmassy turkey carcass. Jesus would be embarrassed. He’d probably wish he hadn’t been born. Frankly, today, I wish he hadn’t been born. To prove my point I noticed this morning on some deep dive channel or other that there was a version of A Christmas Carol starring Michael Hordern as Scrooge. It also features Brian Blessed and that nice bloke from Dad’s Army and I would bet it adds not a shred of fresh originality to a story which is as old as commercial Christmas itself. I’ve very likely seen it but have no firm recollection of this anti-landmark occasion, which is saying something for a film with Brian Blessed in. It’s also probably not all that bad, except it is bad because it goes nowhere and offers less than nothing to add to all the other versions, of which there are a great many. It’s literally a case of same shit, different Christmas.

You could easily argue that films are the greatest repetitive Christmas crime, but in truth it doesn’t stop there. It can’t stop there because it doesn’t seem to stop at all. Our Christmas culture is so warped and weak, needy and pathetic that you can still be watching Christmas adverts on the 2nd of January, and of course there are plenty of people that don’t take their trees down until the 5th, because the Bible told them not to. It’s as if some people just can’t let Christmas go, as if their habits and hungers fuel the need for the same stuff every single year, forgetting rather handily just how soulless and grim they felt for most of December the year before. And the year before that. And the year before that. They forget because they want to, or because they need to: we think of Christmas as a tonic to soothe the aches of the previous eleven months but it is just as likely that it serves as the single most mentally debilitating event on the calendar.

So, how many times can you make a film of A Christmas Carol before everyone realises they’re all the fucking same and it really isn’t worth the bother? How many times can you try to kid yourself that Mariah Carey or Wham or Paul McCartney really did the world a favour when then recorded their very own festive earworm when in fact all of Christmas music is absolutely bloody awful and the very rare examples that contradict this rule are definitely not the sort of songs you’ll hear on Magic FM? How many times will some bright spark at the BBC commission another crap Doctor Who special for another Christmas Day when a better respite for the brain and body would just be a blank screen and the sound of a child screaming in agony as their bare back is used for an ashtray by their new ‘stepdaddy’? That’s right, you can cover it all in glitter and twinkle but Christmas is, deep down, the darkest time of the year and a greater tragedy is that it always has been. That’s why it’s in the bleakest part of midwinter.

And don’t even get me started on the food and the recipes and the flavours and the chefs. At this time of year we are inundated with every single slightest variation of every Christmas dish you can imagine, and many dishes you would rather hope to never imagine at all. In case you ever wondered it is at this time of year that you can find out, without ever needing to ask, how many different ways Marcus Wareing likes to cook his potatoes. Or how Delia likes to an element of surprise to stuffing her goose by using a different hole every time. Or the many and varied positions that Gregg Wallace likes to hump his Yorkshire puddings before he eats them. I’ve just seen Nigella in Amsterdam talking about how she likes to serve liquorice to her party guests. Give me strength. And of course a special Christmas carving knife through the heart for Jamie Oliver at this time of year, for all his bullshit recipes and bullshit ‘easy’ ingredients and all the bullshit exciting new things he’s discovered he can do with sprouts; none of which, regrettably, include dousing them in Tabasco Sauce and shoving them up his fat arse for the entirety of the rest of time. All the above will have a hefty hardback book out this Christmas, ready just in time to gather dust and grease on a kitchen shelf somewhere – rarely to be glanced at from a distance, let alone be fingered with anything approaching relish.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I can’t see a certain charm in the silly season but it’s only Christmas Eve and I’ve already had my fill. I’ve spent far too many Christmases seeing people I didn’t want to see only to be told you just have to do what is right, even though you know it’s actually fairly wrong and not in the least bit what you’d be doing if you had the choice for a change. Our collective national Christmas of late is a grotesque mutation of what it once was, an even fouler blanket of excrement and brandy butter that smothers to suffocate rather than warms to comfort. As I write this, White Christmas is glazing the television screen from the inside out with jets of gaudy festive goo – I don’t even need to look up, I can hear just how crap it is – and to me it sums up perfectly the nonsensically repetitive drone of Christmas, a film that is shit (not that you’re allowed to say that), which comes on without fail every year and is about as much fun in real terms as being attacked by a bear in a shiny red slingshot at the very moment you get told you have a twisted colon and tinnitus. I’d bet it is being played at deafening volume in every clammy lounge of every care home on both sides of the Atlantic and no-one will question for a second whether there isn’t something slightly better to be doing. Christmas, you see, fulfils that neat little adage: the good stuff isn’t original and the original stuff isn’t good. I’d also add, just for Christmas, that the good stuff isn’t good either, which for such a celebratory time of year is flat out tragic. But who cares what I think? I’ve probably said all this before; when in doubt just repeat, repeat, repeat. Better to ignore me and have yourself a merry little Christmas instead. The same goes for next year. And the one after that.

G B Burton. 24.12.2023