BAH HUMBUG………?

No…... It is not the name for the new indoor outer-space recently invented for the Linton Pub and It is not a renamed Belvedere Room either.

Who started the insane competition for companies and individuals to attempt to out-do each other in garish décor?

First it was trying to consume more electricity in fairy lights than your neighbour. Down at Yallourn they have to employ someone just to keep turning the power up and down in a tempo consistent with the blinks of 183,496,202 (seasonally adjusted) Christmas lights.

Then the surrounds of bits and pieces of motor car which are alight even during daylight hours. Then I notice they have also invaded lifts as well. Are we that starved for entertainment that we can’t even go thirty seconds without something to arouse our senses. Do we really need to be bathed in the glow of five eerie colours rotating in random order while we endeavour to accuse someone else of breaking wind in an enclosed space?

The most annoying of all is my computer mouse (which I have to use in case the donor drops in unexpectedly) which, in the form of a little Volkswagen, constantly flashes its head and tail lights. Great for working in the dark but it makes my hand look as though it’s about to detonate.

I wait with bated breath for the twinkling Christmas ties to migrate down to our under garments and change the entire meaning of the word ‘Flashing’.

JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS

WHO WILL I UPSET TODAY

By now we should have just begun to get slightly pissed off with the ever constant Crissy music accompanying our every trip to the shops. Personally if I hear one more rendition of White Christmas even if it is by f….Bing f…… Crosby I swear I’ll tear the throat out of the first Cashier that asks me if I’m ‘having a nice day’.

Is Christmas the greatest joke ever perpetrated on we innocent mortals? I’m not sure about Jesus’ sense of humour but I’m quite convinced that either Harry Potter, Batman or God are laughing their heads off watching the dollars falling into cash registers in the name of ‘good will’ towards all men whilst at the same time the Americans and the Jihadists are both blowing the heads off children instead of their poor bloody Turkeys.

But, shit, I’m caught up in this mess too. Here I am banging on about the evils of the Western Christmas while making lists of who I’m going to upset by the purchase of an absolutely useless gift. I know I’ll hear ‘Oh! that’s just what I needed’ but what I won’’t hear is ‘what the f…. did he buy this for’.

Christmas is the only time I ever have to tax my brain to actually try and please someone. For eleven months I sit at home and scheme about why and in what form I’ll set out to deliberately piss someone off but when ‘Mo’’vember comes along my priorities turn to presents and it seems to continue to spread displeasure all around me.

Quite frankly I have run out of ideas. Everyone has everything so they tell me when I ask. I’d love to know where they keep it all. So this leaves me no alternative but be imaginative.

But hang on a minute, did the Wise Men ever give presents to anyone else after that fateful night or did they run out of ideas too?