The joy of exing Xmas

Spoiler Alert

If Christmas is your thing and I know some people who wait a whole year for the next one, you probably shouldn't read this. This vitriolic diatribe is about persuading you to abandon much of the 21st Century UK Christmas and make your own fun. If you feel the very idea is mean-spirited and tantamount to murdering David Attenborough, you should probably look away now. If however part of you thinks that there could be real joy to be had in walking the road less travelled, perhaps I can persuade you? You have been warned...

We cancelled Christmas last year. We simply, after forty something years stopped doing it. We celebrated the solstice on the night of the 21st. What with it being a real, observable thing requiring no faith based belief system and all. After the solstice it gets lighter daily, that surely is worth getting excited about? I know some people who are devout Christians and for whom Christmas is a massively important part of their year. If that's you, good on you, crack on. It's not though, my philosophical world view and I don't really want to play any more.

Our plan worked well. We lit a fire as it went dark (did I mention I like a fire) and had shed loads of candles on. Then ate food, had presents and went to bed. A shorter day that didn't start at 5AM or finish when you get bored of Mrs Brown's Boys had some tangible benefits: Our model had consequentially less chance of one eating or drinking oneself to death, the telly was no crapper than any other day and we actively avoided a row by being asleep.

We have fiddled around with the idea a little for this year but the core elements remain. For me the most significant factor is the feeling of release from the compelling need to do odd things because nearly everyone else does. This sense of liberation is something that will now be hard to give up easily. You will take my un-christmas from my cold dead hands.

Things we won't be doing during this years festive season or I hope ever again:

• Sending Christmas cards or I imagine getting very many. I figure if we are worth talking to it will happen on one of the other 364 days in the year. If we aren't or you aren't, at least we won't both be pretending simply because it is dark, we are off work and the Victorians didn't have social media. Sorry if you are going to miss getting one, but honestly the joy of not writing them far outweighs the joy of trying to decide what to do with the bloody things for a fortnight before throwing them away.
• Opening an advent calendar. Why, what is that about? I know Chris Rhea has already set off because I have heard it via The Daily Mash. Why doesn't' the arrival of the Messiah simply have a theme tune, it works well for Chris? We can all count to 24 and the date is on most people's phones nowadays. Do we need to mark the days with bad chocolate?  More to the point are there any religious celebrations we can't reduce to a chocolate-centric shopping opportunity? I was tempted to add to my keep list (see below), the Blue Peter Advent Crown just out of sense of nostalgia and because it had small fires on it (fire is good. I should have said that earlier). The fact it has tinsel on it, ultimately did for that idea. 
• Eating turkey. It's proper shit isn't it? The best type of turkey is a chicken and that is so good we eat it all year round. Why have one day a year when you eat something worse for a special occaision? What kind of crap tradtion is that? The American settlers had no choice, the forests where full of them and food was scarce. We do, don't be stupid.
• Anything to do with elf's: On a shelf, in a blender, negotiating with Michel Barnier about an amended Brexit settlement. In fact no elf based capers at all. Don't really have a problem with elfs, yet somehow the whole elf thing seems to have snuck up on us, for reasons I'm not really sure of. I'm against it.
• Putting good whisky out for a reindeer herder when you could just drink it straight away. Some of it will evaporate that's why the bottle has a cork in it. Plain daft, not in my name.
• Going out for a works Christmas dinner in some kind of fun park style, mass catering, 7th circle of hell event venue. You get a bad dinner, worse wine, but with glitter, tinsel, a party popper and Slade. You pay 35 quid for food and entertainment that under normal circumstances you wouldn't accept from a one hygenie starred kebab shop, on the way home after a skinful of IPA. Truly bizzare. Our running club holds it's Christmas do in January, genius idea. By then the staff are sober enough to heat the food up properly and as they do this stuff more than 10 days a year, don't drop things on you or fight with the Maitre D.
• Feeling festive, whatever that is? This transcendental state often seems to involve mince pies, permanent inebriation and emotional meltdown from many true believers. They keep it together for a couple of weeks on the run in through most of December. Then colllapse faster than the agent of any Spice Girl but Posh claiming  their client is "to busy" to go back on tour one more time. Our festive friends implode or go full on supernova fruit loop for 48hours under the strain of providing, funding and experiencing a "proper Christmas." 
• Mulled wine, that bollocks is just bad wine made worse. It tastes like stuffed up warm ribena  and that is not even ribena at it's best. Actually It tastes worse than the mouthwash at the dentist after a particularly painful scale and polish. I suppose it doesn't have the bits of plaque and blood in it when you spit it out, but that is all I have to say in it's defence. 

Things we are retaining because you can pick and choose what you do it turns out.

• A tree and a few trees outside with lights on. Although the one inside is admittedly plywood it is a "tree" and the ones outside look nice whilst it is darker than Theresa May's political prospects. Anyway we are keeping trees with lights on, but no angels, fairies or other mystical tosh. I don't see fir trees in much scripture although I must confess I have only skim read a good proportion of it. As it stands it is mostly too bloody hot for coniferous trees in the middle east and I doubt it snowed much even a couple of millennia ago. We nicked the tree idea off the Germans, who nicked it off the Romans, who nicked it off the Pagans. I'm nicking it back, I like a tree.
• Presents probably less of them but it' still nice to buy the kids a bit of stuff. I just won't be pretending though that a curiously coca cola inspired, weirdly attired, overweight, middle aged white bloke, has snook in whilst we were asleep. Strangely Santa  rather than trashing the place after roughing us all up a bit, prior to stealing the car keys and making off with the laptops, has decided inexplicably to leave loads of stuff for us to open, because he knows we have been GOOD. 
• Doing something stupid or being in/near fancy dress on Boxing Day. For the last few years we have chased a turkey and/or a Brownlea around Otley Chevin. In the past mountains have been climbed, or raft races entered or some form of getting outside has been indulged in. Vitamin D is hard enough to come by without getting a whole pigs liver and a pint of cod liver oil down you before lunch during the dark days of winter. Being outside might just help a little. I will take the risk.
• The  Royal Institute Christmas Lecturers. Top people talking about science but dumbing it down to a point I can understand it and so can my kids. That is definatley worth keeping and even getting a little enthusiastic about. It's Prof Alice Roberts this year, she is great, she knows about bones and dead people.

Have a happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year. Here's to longer days and shorter nights. Remember you don't have to do anything you don't want to.