Stop the bells!

Call me a Grinch if you want, but don’t judge me yet…….

The bombardment on my eardrums has begun in earnest. I have just tried a half a dozen radio stations to find one that is not playing constant Christmas music. If I hear any more songs about Rudolph, Santa’s and snow I will go crazy! You know what everyone? I know it’s Christmas, as soon as Halloween was removed from my local Walmart store and replaced with Christmas, I knew that ‘the season’ had arrived. It may only have been the first of November, but the season of merriment and joy had come around once more.



me grinch! read on blogsters



 Now I see red bells, green boughs and banners. Santa’s can be seen driving sleds, cars and smiling from underneath snowdrifts. Reindeer are everywhere, pulling Santa, smiling at Santa and obviously they have been drinking and sled driving (red noses are a dead give away). Goblins and Elves with big ears and pointy noses are hiding in cupboards waiting to deliver toys to little boys and girls.

Am I a Grinch? A party pooper. A miserable person devoid of festive cheer? Why am I not stopping strangers in the high street with random greetings of cheer, wishing happiness to all and sundry? Because I am sick of it! There I said it, I am sick of the commercialism of Christmas. With Christmas week sales, boxing week sales, heck we even have black Friday sales in preparation for the Christmas shopping season in the US on the last weekend on November! Do you eat nuts, dark fruit cake and little Chinese oranges on a regular basis? I bet not, yet Christmas brings a nut feeding frenzy that would make a squirrel green with envy. Walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts abound together with dates, molasses and citrus delights. Not all this food is eaten and there is enough food wasted over Christmas to feed a small African nation for months.

The wife of one of my former work colleagues had to take three days of work last year with ‘Christmas stress’ She apparently ‘wasn’t ready’ for the festive days. Stressed to the max she withered under the pressure of unbaked mince pies, packaged cake mixes and frozen appetizers. Appearing at last on Christmas Eve, with a drug induced smile ready for forty eight hours of gastronomic engorgement.

Is this what Christmas is supposed to be? I am not a religious zealot, far from it. In fact my life these days seems to have a certain amount of cynicism regarding most things. But I thought Christmas was a religious festival for Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Instead it has become a festival for the worship of material things.



Donald burger!



The stress of Christmas is self induced, relax, you don’t have to get over it if you don’t get into it. I am mister cool at Christmas, with the confident swagger that comes with knowing that I am not being sucked into the morass of wondering what to buy for whom, with what, and how many. If you are upset that you have not received a gift from me, don’t worry, you are not alone, no-one has. Each year my wife and I decide on a charity, and give to it, we have enough ‘things’ most of us do, so why do we want more? Last year some poor African tribe received a goat from Oxfam named Donald, I hope they kept it for the intended milk it would produce, but somehow I think it may have been Donald burgers very quickly. We did an act of charity for someone. Maybe the global impact of our little goat was miniscule, but in our minds we did something constructive, and I am sure the goat was very tender! The year before our local food bank benefited from our good fortune.

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/oxfam-unwrapped

Please think about this blog, think about what this season is all about, please buy gifts for your loved ones, but don’t stress out over them. Spend time with family, rejoice in knowing that we are all very fortunate in our lives. The poor who have nothing appreciate everything we give to them, yet we who have everything sometimes appreciate nothing.

Merry Christmas everyone!