Humbugs

I’m trying to embrace Christmas this year, really I am. My chambre is adorned with fairylights, I’ve made my own Christmas cards, I’m playing Christmas music and cooing over cute images of Santa and snowmen, but the cynic in me can’t help but feel like I’m being taken for a ride, along with all the rest of ye!

Christmas, a single day, becomes the dominant focus of almost a quarter of the year. I for one am succumbing to Christmas fatigue! From the hype surrounding the Christmas parties, to the Kris Kindle gifts, to the carols, to the tins of chocolates, the novelty factor is beginning to wear off.

Personally I find Christmas pretty boring, everything sort of winds up for a few days on Christmas eve, the newspapers and radio stations are padded out with top tens from the year that’s gone, the T.V. is dominated by films we’ve already seen or Christmas specials of our favourite shows, which quite frankly don’t have the wow factor we’ve come to expect. Lucky ones will be surrounded by familial bliss, the majority of us will be subjected to spending large amounts of time playing happy families, while others will acutely feel the sadness and loneliness of not being with those they love. 

Days are spent, conversing over a never ending supply of rich and indulgent food which we are actively encouraged to buy in the interests of treating ourselves. This concept of indulgence and treating ourselves and others is hammered home by sentimental Christmas advertisements and special offers creating an expectation of extravagance at this time of year .Extravagance we crave and go to extraordinary lengths to embrace even when money is tight. Come the first of January shelves which were , the week before, filled with chocolates, boxes of crisps, champagne and  creamy desserts are now filled with fat free yogurt, sugar free drinks, and low cal ready meals. The media abounds with plans to loose weight and “transform” yourself. We are made acutely aware of the damage our periods of over indulgence have done to our health and well-being and respond with feelings of guilt and shame and fleeting determination to change.

To an extent we seem to be caught in an annual cycle of anticipation, expectation, indulgence, disappointment, guilt, and remorse. There’s a sense that commercial powers are happy to encourage us to through caution to the wind and to spend and indulge in the period prior to New Year and then they flip a switch and start to admonish us for our indulgence, leaving us to sort out the large credit card bill and in some cases waist line we’ve acquired over the festive period!

I for one would rather not be a pawn in this game this year! Or at least if I do engage in it I want to glean some sort of positive, a lasting positive from it. I don’t intend to feel guilty for treating myself or want to emerge in January with added risk factors for my mental or physical health, just because I’ve been duped by some cheesy vision of Christmas indulgence and domestic bliss.

Can someone pass the Humbugs please!