Why I’m opting out of Christmas

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/21/opting-out-christmas-capitalism

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Being under house arrest with a group of disharmonious, sherry-heavy relatives, slow-roasting in front of a flickering television, with nothing to look forward to but a 10-minute montage of royalist propaganda, isn’t great, whatever Wizzard say.

I once spent Christmas morning hiding in a coal shed with a bottle of Morrisons cava and a packet of my grandmother’s cigarettes, planning how to make my escape to freedom. Aged 14 I was left to cook dinner while my mother locked herself in the bathroom and a giant dog defecated on the lawn.

But it’s not these few glimmers of horror that make me ill at ease in December. My problem with round robin letters, tinsel, sleigh bells, mince pies, Wham!, fairy lights, Home Alone, turkey, wrapping paper, flammable puddings and snow-dusted pine trees is precisely that I am supposed to love them.

Christmas is the stick with which millions of us beat ourselves into brandy-soaked agony for being poor, single, childless, lonely, or simply bad at being jolly. It’s one thing to be single, skint and surrounded by dysfunctional relatives, but it’s quite another when the entire capitalist world is telling you that this is the most magical time of the year. We seem to have lost the script to a pantomime we never even believed in. We have ruined Christmas, without even trying.

Last year the TUC published a study that showed the average British adult borrowed £685 over the festive period, grinding them into a debt that would take until June to pay off. If that adult earned the minimum wage, it would take them an entire year to drag themselves out of Christmas debt – just to do it all over again. And yet adverts, pop songs, window displays and shop shelves scream out that we should be buying ourselves into an orgy of goodwill and glamour – that Christmas has no value unless you’ve paid for it.

It is because of this wild fury of expected expense that you will find yourself, panic-stricken, standing under a soul-sucking white light, gently sweating to Slade, holding four ugly brass candlesticks, a spotty teapot and some bath salts in the hope that someone, somewhere, will want them as a present. It is, frankly, a long way from Jesus.

If, like 7% of those recently polled by the BBC, you will be spending Christmas alone, then the burden can feel even heavier. Everything from washing powder to chicken nuggets is sold on the promise of yuletide love, affection and romance from about 27 September onwards. Yet it takes a stout heart and strong backbone to stare down Christmas single-handedly. And if, like mine, your family are a long way from the Bisto advert, then getting in the Christmas spirit can feel like a lost cause.

Of course, there is a solution. Stop giving presents, stop watching television, stop comparing yourself to adverts, and actually spend it with people you like. Some of the happiest Christmases I have ever known have been surrounded by a group of generous, thoughtful, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, half-Jewish, Scrabble-playing, dog-walking, potato-roasting friends. People who willingly set up three separate screens on the dining room table just so my 96-year-old grandmother could watch the Queen’s speech, on repeat, from every available angle.

This year, however, I am opting out altogether. I shan’t be driving home for Christmas. I have no tree, have wrapped no presents, will eat no turkey and mull no wine. Instead, I shall go for a run, listen to the headlines, eat a baked potato and watch a western with my mother. On Christmas Eve I plan to volunteer at the Hackney care leavers’ Christmas dinner, but the day itself is as blank as a fresh fall of snow. I can’t wait.

Clearly, Christmas isn’t going anywhere. It will outlive me, it will outlive you and it will certainly outlive the 10 million turkeys heading for the great sage-and-onion fiesta in the sky. But perhaps, if we really do want to spread comfort and joy this year, we should accept it for what it is; a day. Just a day. Whatever Roy Wood says.