Hmmm.  I am not a big fan of Christmas, really.  Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy it, because I do, more that there are a million things about the season which fucking irritate the living shit out of me.  A simple example would be the appearance of Christmas decorations in shops in October; that annoys everyone, I know, I am not claiming to be unique here.  High Street Christmas is an ungodly shitfest of an invention, and the less I have to do with it the happier I am, generally.

Then, on the other hand, there’s actual Christmas.  There’s the dark and the cold, both of which I love, funnily enough.  Then there’s the quiet evenings with family and all the food and watching the Back to the Future Trilogy one after another and all that sort of stuff.  Hell, I even kinda like the decorations.  I really like that Christmas.

The thing is, the first, shitty kind of Christmas starts really early so it’s basically the only kind of Christmas there is available for the best part of two months.  Then, at some undefinable point, Proper Christmas quietly takes over and the whole thing becomes very pleasant indeed.  My Mum’s already been in touch to ask what kind of things we’d like her to cook when we get to France on Christmas Eve.  Christmas trees are available everywhere, and for some reason I really like Christmas trees.  So it’s starting: actual good, decent proper Christmas is starting to rear its head, but it’s not there yet.

For some reason I am still waiting to actually feel at all Christmassy.  I suppose the contradiction of despising the high street at this time of year is that if you boycott it entirely, which we have, and if you make no actual Christmas effort yourself, which we haven’t, then you end up just a little short of the cues to trigger that Christmas feeling, which their relentlessly avaricious Yulery tends to do whether you like it or not.

So I think that at some point, probably towards the end of next week when everyone in the office stops even pretending and I start to feel a genuine panic at not having bought my bloody mother anything, I will start to feel that warm, restful, bosom-of-the-family kind of Christmas feeling, but it hasn’t happened yet.  I can see Christmas starting to happen all around me, but for some reason I am still waiting to actually feel like it’s Christmas time.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Right Now I’m A-Roaming

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Lift to Experience – Waiting to Hit

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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