Yuletide Ambivalence.

In honour of the season, I decorated my living room with Yuletide bits and pieces today. I now have green tinsel draped along two shelves and on the chimney breast, some little red rosettes, a few groups of multi-coloured baubles hanging in strategic positions, and fairy lights zig-zagging across the window. Hope all you fans of Christmas are pleased with me.

Christmas is still humbug, though. And do you know what’s bugging me at the moment? Every time I flick through the TV channels I encounter at least one group of people singing carols. It isn’t the sound of it that troubles me, since I always have the sound muted when I flick through channels. It’s the smiles. Smiles? That’s not the right word for them. Smiles are nice. The expressions these people wear suggest that the various directors have all applied the stock instruction: ‘Now luvvies, do joy; give me rapture; make the world believe you actually take this stuff seriously.’ Only choristers aren't trained actors, are they? They don’t know how to do joy or give the man rapture, and make it convincing. So what we end up with is a bunch of artificial, vomit-inducing expressions that don’t convince me of anything other than the fact that Christmas is humbug.

I do confess, however, that I pay some heed to the more wholesome aspects of Christmas. I’ve bought a bottle of port and a pack of cigars.