I’m staying with one of my sisters for a few days during this trip. Yesterday evening, they put on the latest DVD – Four Christmasses. Not being someone who likes Christmas overmuch (Mrs L and I have tended to hide away in rural France until the whole thing is over) I can’t say that I was looking forward to it – and, frankly, it’s the type of film Mrs L and I wouldn’t touch with the proverbial barge pole. That said, it started well – a young professional couple who don’t “do” Christmas. Oh, good, they get points for that. They don’t “do” children, either. Getting better by the moment. What these two do is what they pretty much want to do and if that is out of step with the rest of the world, then so be it. I really liked them at this point. Their plan is to nip off to Fiji and avoid all the Christmas stuff by lying to their various disfunctional families. Okay, the lying is a bit naughty – Mrs L and I didn’t bother with trying to explain or deceive. We simply announced that we didn’t like it, didn’t want to do it, and that was that. Much easier if less dramatically interesting. The plot twist relied on this couple being caught out in the lie, of course – because this is Hollywood and naughty people get caught out doing naughty things. And not doing Christmas is very naughty indeed.
This being Hollywood with its saccharine outlook on the world, we can’t be having people who are different and don’t want to do all the shitty nappies and projectile vomit and the vomit inducing homilies about “family” at “this time of the year”. So, their flight is cancelled due to fog and they have to do the Christmas thing with their various families – and, magically a la Christmas Carol – they are converted to wanting to be normal just like everyone else.
In the real world, mere exposure to dirty nappies and projectile vomit does not suddenly induce a maternal instinct where it did not previously exist. One of my sisters did change her mind as the biological clock reached a certain point and I don’t doubt others have made similar decisions – but for others of us, the desire not to be the same as everyone else is deep rooted and a few hours exposed to babies and baubles doesn’t change that. If anything, it strenghthens the resolve. I knew even as a child that I didn’t want children of my own. Mrs L is the same. Now that we are in our early fifties, that decision is irreversible, and there are no regrets.
What is a shame is that this film had promise; an opportunity to show a diffent outlook in a positive light. Instead it turned out to be the usual Hollywood morality tale – and if you don’t do the family thing and the tacky American Christmas, you just ain’t normal. You’re a hedonistic, unfulfilled freak. Okay, so be it; better a hedonistic freak than a pious moralistic bore.
I agree with almost everything you say – Can I do Xmas with you next year? 🙂
“the desire not to be the same as everyone else is deep rooted” it’s not quite like that for me; I don’t feel the need to be like everyone else in the herd, and efforts to blackmail me into it just put my back up. Close, but not quite the same thing.
I’m working near Marseille at the moment (still based in the UK) and I must admit I find it much better here than the UK’s emotion-fest…it’s for the cheeeldren, innit, however stupid & expensive the idea.
Getting robbed when the hamper company folds is criminal because it’s theft; don’t try and ramp up the crime because your cheeeldren won’t have the usual nauseating surfeit of unaffordable splurging.
The anglo-saxon paper thin facade of be-happiness over what is basically a marketing opportunity is nauseating.
Bah Humbug, Happy time off
Gendeau
I am the founder of two clubs which I’m sure you and Mrs L would like to know about – SFAC (Society for the Abolition of Christmas) and the Herodians (self-explanatory).
It’s not the carols, the holly and the plum pudding I object to, but the bogus joviality and skin-deep goodwill which the Xmas addicts throw around to make themselves feel good while they tank up with excess booze. Oh – and those dreadful “annual roundup” missives informing you of hubbie’s redundancy (fortunately cushioned by an obscenely huge payoff), little Willie’s mumps and the writer’s utterly boring aromatherapy classes.
I have a cousin who’s always just about to visit me with her brats – this year is the third that she’s promised to but actully didn’t – and who keeps on saying “I just can’t BELIEVE how quickly time flies”. Being twice her age, I mutter to myself “You will, you will.”
Having got that off my chest, a merry Christmas to you, Mrs L, the cats – especially lovely Louis – and all your readers.
Bah humbug!
I like Christmas, I like the (immediate) family around, but I’m also very, very glad most of them live 300 miles away. I don’t do the joviality thing either, but I do enjoy the day, if not the preparations that go into it.
I enjoy the time off – always have. What I object to is the assumption that if you don’t go along with the facile marketing exercise, there’s something wrong with you, that you are miserable. Far from it. The day I shed Christmas was incredibly uplifting. I am happy and fulfilled – need neither Christmas nor progeny.
And, of course, a merry Christmas to all 😉
Anticant – do you do festive cards for SFAC?
I think that I most object to the concept of having to spend money just to show you care. I don’t want to spend £50 showing that ‘I care’, but if you’re in trouble, I’ll be there for you…that’s truly ‘christian’, isn’t it?
I think that I’m pretty good at being a real christian (better than most believers, I think), shame I’m an atheist, and always have been.
Down with faux-caring!
Down with tat that you wouldn’t look twice at…except that it’s Xmas
On self-proclaimed stalwartly “liberal” ex-ambassador Craig Murray’s increasingly dhimmi site – Craig has just proudly announced that he is bringing up his newborn son as a Muslim – we are solemnly informed by a poster that “Made-up stories, music and pictures, the main components of film are all forbidden in Islam. The purpose of film is to create a soap world which allows the majority of the Western world to forget about the violence it is perpetrating in the real world.”
Having been roundly personally abused by several of the other posters there for saying that I don’t look forward to an Islamic Britain, I’ve decided not to leave any more comments on Craig’s blog, where secularist views evidently aren’t welcome and there are several rancid homophobes posting regularly (as there are on Guido Fawkes’ blog, though I’ve repeatedly asked Guido to rebuke them, which he doesn’t). I don’t include Craig himself in these strictures – I admire his courage, amounting to quixotry, in many respects, and agree with a lot of his viewpoints; but whatever else he is, he can scarcely be regarded as a sorted liberal – much less a libertarian. Otherwise, he would not look so benignly upon the religious and social intolerance of Islam.