David Mitchell on Christmas

David Mitchell likes Christmas. In a rather silly article he expounds.

My official policy on Christmas is that I like it. That says a lot more about me than that I’m partial to a day spent watching TV and stuffing my face. More fundamentally, it shows that I can’t stand the thought of our most public and celebratory festival being a lie. It is a happy and magical time, I’m insisting, for deeper and more sinister reasons than a liking for brazil nuts and Shrek 3.

Fair enough. Some people like it. I find the saccharine just a bit too sweet for my taste. I was staying with my sister this week and her teenage children put on Miracle on 34th Street. This was the 1994 remake of the 1947 film. I have to say, I really don’t understand why they bothered – it was still unbearably twee. My sister and her clan love Christmas. I hate it. I hate the tack, I hate the deluge of pressure to buy, buy, buy and I hate the expectation to be something I’m not; so I tend to ignore it. Since opting out, I’ve become rather more relaxed about the whole thing. If others want to play, then that’s okay with me; as long as you don’t expect me to join in, we’ll rub along just fine.

Oh…

Other people – my enemies – love to hate Christmas. They rejoice in looking at the sparkle, the bustle, the drinking and the queues and muttering: “Christmas is a nightmare”; “We’re going to Jane’s parents – it’s going to be a living hell”; “The sooner we can forget all the expense and false jollity, this great capitalist hypocrisy dance, the better, I say”, as if commerce were as exclusive to this time of year as mince pies.

Now look here, Mitchell, ever since your somewhat dire compèring of Have I Got News For You the other week, you have dropped in my estimation – not that you were that high anyway, but now you are lower. Not liking Christmas does not make me an enemy, it simply means that I don’t like the same things as you. It really is that simple. Unfortunately, there are those who don’t like others opting out – we all have to be jolly, whether we like it or not and if we don’t like Christmas, we are assumed to be miserable. On the contrary, I’m more relaxed and happy than I have ever been, despite some people being anxious that the opposite were true in the hope of a little schadenfreude. Sorry to disappoint, but life is just dandy – even without the tinsel, Christmas tree, overeating, over drinking and general false bonhomie.

Mitchell then wastes more words on preparing for a fight with the dissenters. Really… I’ll just opt out and we’ll leave it at that, thankyou very much; you go fight with yourself.

It’s all such a lovely break from having to judge and be judged by behaviour, rather than the collection of baubles we happen to have in the attic. I can’t stand people who call it a loft.

Right ho! I’ll start calling it a “loft” then…