I Think I am Actually Becoming Immune to Christmas
You know, it’s getting on for the tail end of November and I have barely even sulked at the early arrival of Christmas shit everywhere and that Noddy Holder garbage on the stereo in every fucking shop in the city. Given that I detest all of these things, why am I not hating them so much as usual? Easy – they are simply being ignored; passively boycotted, if you like.
I fucking detest vast amounts of Christmas. The obligation and guilt-based shopping the shallow acquisitiveness, the competitive exhibitionism involved in showing just how well you ‘do’ Christmas and all that other shit. The relentless marketing in particular makes my anus bleed.
I do love Christmas though. Or, bits of it. And for some reason, partly because Mrs. Toad can’t stand it either and partly because I have slowly tried to train the family into neither giving nor expecting presents, those bits seem to be winning, recently. We just haven’t been anywhere near the shops to be annoyed by the whole thing.
Neither Kate nor I have much interest in special occasions. We don’t really observe one another’s birthdays, we have never bought one another much of anything for Christmas, and we might – might – go out for dinner on our anniversary, but that’s about it. Basically, we are just a couple of reactionary misanthropes who don’t like being told when to do anything – including doing something special for one another.
But Christmas is a little different, I suppose because of the nature of the Pagan festival from which it originates. In the depths of the dark and cold (and wet, more often than not, here in Scotland) there is something bloody brilliant about lighting the fire, closing the doors and refusing to interact with anyone other than your very nearest and dearest for a week or two. We had some roast chestnuts on Princes Street the other day.
It’s the personal side that I’ve always liked though. We’ve never had big parties, just spent a long, quiet time together as a family (usually four of us or less) and played lots of tunes, cooked together, read books and just recuperated from the year. It’s an incredibly nourishing thing to spend quiet time with the people who love you the best. This year we’ll probably order a goose to roast on the day, but I reckon most of the holiday will be spent troughing like porkers. Mostly we’ll stay in, not talk to people, and just spend some time together doing not very much at all. Add in the fact that the meals are special, the cold outside and warm inside makes the setting as comforting and cosy as possible, and the fact that I’ve been so busy this year we’ve hardly had a moment to ourselves and I find myself looking forward to Christmas enormously. It’s not even December yet and I am ‘ready’ – bloody hell! And I don’t even care about the carnival of capitalist masturbation that I am going to end up pretty much ignoring. Two weeks! Me and Mrs. Toad! And no-one else! Wheeee!
We might even do you all an anti-Christmas podcast if you’re really, really fucking nice.
King Creosote – My Favourite Girl
Willard Grant Conspiracy – Dance With Me
Make sure the Felice Brothers’ Murder by Mistletoe is on the anti-Xmas podcast!
After spending a few days at Christmas with the more extended family we’ll be taking the kids to NYC for the first time. I’m with you on all the marketing nonsense (nothing says how much I value my wife’s constant love and support like a $50 gift card from the Gap), but New York at Christmastime when you’re 8 and 5? Perhaps there’s something to be said for the whole spectacle of Christmas after all. We’ll see.
Yeah, I definitely agree with the spending-family-time together. Christmas morning I spend with just my parents and my brother, and then that night we go up to my grandmother’s house to get together with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I don’t see them almost at all for the rest of the year, so it’s a great time to sit around catching up (while eating delicious food and drinking lots of booze, of course). Most of the commercialized stuff drives me insane, but there are two things that I do enjoy and indulge in this time of year: peppermint bark (dark chocolate topped with peppermint-flavored white chocolate and bits of peppermint candy) and Vince Guaraldi’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (fantastic West Coast jazz that never fails to put me in a good mood).
In other news, Decemberists and Loch Lomond were staggeringly fantastic. I am still buzzing from it!
Well, there’ll probably be more Xmas crap over at 17 Seconds again, but I’ll be dropping by for the anti-Christmas podcast for sure…D’you not even like the Low Christmas album?
Or is that a stupid question…?!
The problem with Christmas music is that music happens when someone with talent has a feeling or an idea and uses their gift to express that (you, in a nutshell that seems to be how it works. Jump in musicians if I’ve got that wring). ‘I need to write a song about Christmas to make a bunch of lolly’ is not a great feeling with which to begin art.
Wow. Some of the worst spelling and typing yet in a post response.
Very true, Ben…but there are some great examples of good Christmas records, and no, i don;t mean Slade, Wizard, Mud, or that insufferable Paul McCartney one…
Your geese follow orders?!
“Goose! Get in the oven! That’s an order!”
I wish I could get immune. I still look forward to it with absolute dread.
I absolutely agree. Christmas time for me is magic, but in a difficult to define sort of way. It’s the sort of intangible aura that the season has I suppose, and I agree with Toad that it has much to do with the feeling of being tucked in the house whilst the weather does its worst. Especially when your parents have a cracking coal fire, exceedingly more comfortable chairs, a humongous number of vinyl records and far more booze in the basement than you could possibly dream of consuming. Certainly nothing to do with the horrific advertising and marketing and excessive gift giving.. though I do enjoy the odd Christmas song. What could be better than a cold evening capped with ‘Fairytale of New York’? Or is that so wrong…
“(nothing says how much I value my wife’s constant love and support like a $50 gift card from the Gap)”
This man is a genius. This is why I write this blog. The day C&B deserts us, I pack it in forever.
Awww. You had me at “ratty old growler.”
Then let’s hear it for thanksgiving. All the fun for Christmas without the bollocks. I have turkey lined with bacon waiting for tomorrow for a 12 person feast.
This is what Jehovah’s Witnesses are for.
By the way, if you don’t get excited over Christmas for all the gawdy Christmas crap, you ought to hear James Brown shout “hey America, it’s Christmastime!”
I hate Christmas but absolutely adore crappy Christmas music, so the blog world is perfect! I’ve got so many nasty, awful, obscene and downright ugly xmas songs to post on my blog I had to begin two weeks ago to even think of fitting in a reasonable portion of them before New Years. And now you’re telling me you won’t be featuring any over here on Song, by Toad? I’m crushed!
But I do look forward very much to your pod cast. I promise to be very very good.
All those family holidays are for the birds, for those of us without families it really sucks. And yes, Mrs. Tart and I cozy up together and thumb our noses at the rest of the (mostly) shopping world. Pffft!
Yeah but Ben, does your turkey follow orders like Matthew’s goose?
i kinda like Christmas you miserable fucking people
I’m with tom. I hate christmas?! what a lot of shit.
huh?
I like christmas tom. and actually, i think reading matthew’s post again, he does too.
I fucking love christmas!! I totally agree with Matthew, I gain no pleasure from being crushed in the disney store whilst trying to find some kind of high school musical tat for my neicies
diy xmas pressies….i’m giving a lot of people a USB flashdrive full of my fave songs of the year….coupled with an assortment of homemade chutneys…..rocking….still need to brave the shops for wor lass tho….
sorry, seemed to have gotten cut off there!
I do love drinking wine with my girlfriend whilst watching its a wonderfull life or being boozy with my pals singing fairytale of new york or cuddling my neices who i rarely see and especially love eating loads and loads of food. What could be better?
oh you were being ironically funny euan? sorry i missed it…..
What sort of chutneys Tom?
(Genuinely interested question.. bit of a chutney fan myself as it goes!)
Well i’m planning on making a spicy winter chutney, tomato chutney, onion chutney and a tomato ketchup for my middle brother cos he is a fud and won’t eat chutney unless it’s branston pickle
my ex used to do all this type of stuff…..but i’m going to give it a go this year…..going under the brand of Tom Tom’s
sorry i meant my little brother and not my middle brother….tho he is still a fud…..
“bit of a chutney fan myself as it goes”
Snigger.
I’ll buy you bras instead of pickled eggs, chocolate instead of chutney, good red wine instead of bad red wine, next time I remember your birthday….
got 10 of the top 50 Uncut albums of the year!!! feeling better now
another £4.50 down the drain?!
how much is a pack of disposable nappies? ha ha
“I’ll buy you bras instead of pickled eggs, chocolate instead of chutney, good red wine instead of bad red wine, next time I remember your birthday….”
Top quoting!
What is all this talk of chutneys, branston pickles, fuds and nappies? I might as well be reading Beowulf in the original.
Chutney.
One of the finest words in the English language. Homely and naff, slightly silly, slightly naughty due to its relation to Chutney Ferrets, and all all-round tasty condiment.
naff
dav – you know, you could even tolerate having to fucking watch High School Musical under those circumstances.
I’m actually feeling Christmassy this year. It is a rare thing, so I’m indulging for once. It’s that right side of that transparent grey-coloured sky/bitterly cold in the mornings; the city has actually done a good job of decorating the main streets with very pretty light arrangements (we’ve finally moved away from the 1980’s ‘all the colours of the rainbow’ look that’s dominated the past 10years) & I’m kinda looking forward to the Winter Wonderland ice rink, ferris wheel & mulled wine stalls.
I am not sure what’s happening this year, chez DCHQ; we’re probably headed west to TWoTH’s mother’s place (there’s something quite calming about Lampeter in the dead of winter, despite the Wild West alcohol-drenched punch-ups in the many, many pubs littering the town square). If not, it will be a few blissfully quiet days in the company of TWoTH, maybe Fisk (God help us), Bwbs, our Christmas-despising friend (who always comes over for lunch on ‘the day’ & we end up quaffing vats of vino collapso), & possibly the mice.
We are definitely having a bash on New Year’s Eve, tho’ — it falls on a Wednesday this year & so we are going live for 3hrs, 10pm – 1am GMT, BUT will are planning on having a party in the house at the same time. The roughly sketched plan is: I spin the choons & chat, & as & when people from the party want to they can pop in to the studio & be the voice on the opposite mic as I gradually sink lower & lower into a state of pissed up fuckery. Hopefully we’ll have some musicians there too so we can have some sing-a-longs & sessions. If anyone’s in the area/wants to be in the area, & would like to come along, give us a shout.
Toad, whereas Chutney Ferret is, indeed, a gigglesome homophrase, I do prefer the more gleefully resonant Cheek Weasel.
aye, its not a bad life!
dav – Mrs. Toad is perhaps the ultimate high school movie afficionado, but even she turned up her nose at the High School Musical franchise.
DC – did you really just use the phrase “a few blissfully quiet days in the company of … Fisk”? That requires a certain level of cognitive dissonance, to even come out with that kind of a sentence, surely?
I only take great comfort in the fact that C&B is as lost as I am in this chutney chat.
Chutney. CHUTNEY! Look it the fuck up, Americans.
“Chutney (Hindi: चटनी; Urdu: چٹنی) (British spelling) or chatni is a term for a variety of sweet and spicy condiments, usually involving a fresh, chopped primary vegetable or fruit with added seasonings. Chutney, as a genre, is often similar to the Indian pickle and the salsa of Latin American cuisine, or European relish.”
Is this picture where the term chutney ferret came from, then?
going through USA immigration in New York, and they asked us if we had any food stuff and we replied nothing other than some jars of homemade chutney and a couple packets of Orkney fudge……fucking hell you should have seen the looks on their faces……it’s was like we had said ‘we have the makings of a bomb in our case’….so as you can imagine we had to empty one of the cases to show them what we were talking about…..
Charming it wasn’t….fucking numpties
Oh lordy! We know what chutney IS, we eat at Indian restaurants too ya know. But why make it when it comes in bottles in the grocery store? And the only good one is obviously mango which also happens to be MeatPocket’s euphemism for sex, as in, how was your mango chutney last night?
Why make it?? It’s WHAT WE FUCKING DO, ALRIGHT. Christ. The seventies hit this country hard, and the knit-your-own-muesli ethos has yet to be finally beaten into submission.
this is why the world is it is in the mess it is……..fucking rampant chutney consumerism
I mean, why play your own music, when there’s plenty of Keane CDs on the shelves in Tesco’s. Sheesh, I don’t know. Bloody chutney lappers.
Toad: I did, didn’t I? I must have been all snuggled up in the thought of peace to all men yadda yadda yadda — maybe I’ll give this holiday a miss, again.
Didn’t you berate me last year for not showing enough Christmas spirit? I could have sworn that was you – you said you loved Christmas, if I recall.
Oh, probably me. I do enjoy the genuinely warm aspects of the whole period. I like the reminiscent quality, the regression, when presents are gently torn from their wrapping with a faux-middle class-cum spendthrift respect for recycling for ‘next year’ & all that guff – hell, last year I even gave a home to two cats from rescue centres (although they may not make it to their first anniversary at Drunk Country House if the little fuckers continue to tear wallpaper off the wall in the hallway).
This year I’m kinda getting the liking for chilly mornings & dark nights fairly early. I’ve even checked the stalls in the shopping precinct in Cardiff for chestnuts to roast on the open fire in the dining room. I’m a bona fide traditinalist, in some respects, I guess. If only it would snow *sigh*
But, of course, you can stick the commercial/hoards of ramant shoppers/BBC ident aspect up its arse sideways & with force.
Spicy winter chutney, eh? Sounds nice.
Christmas should involve the following :
– Getting pished on boxing day in front of telly
- watching one of chitty chitty bang bang/mary poppins/my fair lady/wizard of oz becuase you are too full/pished to change the channel
-heinous amounts of food including bowls of mixed nuts that need cracked (no ready cracked nuts people please) and tangerines (which now seem to be called clementines. Its a fucking tangerine ya diddy!)
-a slightly failed attempt at handmaking one of ; roast chestnuts/christmas cake/mince pies
-a drunken argument with a relative concerning the order in which Bond films were made and whether the remake of Thunderball does/doesn’t count as a full Bond film.
- a misguided but well meaning present that leaves you speechless as to how to concoct thanks and just a little paranoid that everyone you know thinks that you really would suit/like barbie pink tweed slippers trimmed in lace
-a drunken phone call to/from someone you haven’t seen in 16 years (see also New Year – this is oblig)
- Tipping the postie, the milkman if you still have one and the paperboy.
Christmas should not involve :
- Vouchers of any sort
-Educational toys devoid of noise or flashing lights
-any attempt to bring up the little baby jesus
-Advocaat. It sneaks into the shops at this time of year but must be repressed, liquid snot is not a cocktail. Ditto cadburys liquer/aero liquer and any other attempt to determine whether someone can die of a sugar overdose before alcohol poisoning
-Carol singers that take it seriously. Tuneless shambles in it for charity – yes. X_factor wannabes trilling Silent Night like someone has appropriated their funsacks for a purse – no.
-Old people dying alone of cold in front of one bar electric fires with a burst fuse. If you have old aged neighbours, go round and check on them.
a fucking men
No. Tangerines are nice and plump and juicy and sweet. Clementines are minging and dry and made of skin and have no juice. And they taste of mould.
Never Say Never Again does not count as a proper Bond movie because it wasn’t produced by a member of the Broccoli family. (Or any of the brassicas for that matter.)
Advocaat is brilliant. Snowballs made with advocaat, ginger beer and sherry, and served with a glacé cherry on a cocktail stick rule and if you don’t know that you don’t know anything!
Dylan. I think you have just described what must be the most revolting cocktail I have ever heard of. Ever. Ever.
Fizzy gingery yellow snot with sherry and a glace cherry? I wouldn’t know whether to puke (fizzy snot snot), piss myself (old lady sherry) or give head to a bouncer at the back of the Cavendish (the entirely graceless glace cherry).
If this is what the young people of Britain are knocking back of a weekend, it explains A LOT about our society and they should all be birched and made to drink proper gin martinis until they have remedied their ways.
I thought a snowball was when someone blew you and then fed you your own jizz from their mouths. Not really suitable for Christmas Day, surely.
Oh so it’s honorable to make your own chutney but you can’t swap jizz on Christmas? I will NEVER understand you people! :-p
Bloody hell folks…it’s becoming more like a hardcore porn site over here everyday! : ))
Tart, they do sound suspiciously like the same thing, don’t they.
Ed – where were you yesterday when your new signing was playing Limbo. I was hoping you might make it.