At this time of year I often think of the not-so jolly programmes you see on TV, such as “Grumpy Old Men At Christmas”, where various celebrities over the age of 50 moan, whinge and complain about how much of a pain in the bottom it is.
Don’t worry though, for once, I’m actually NOT going to be one of them ...
Naturally, though, there are always the odd irritations. I hate it, for instance, when you walk into Debenhams and are nearly choked to death in a stinging, blinding haze of sample perfumes and aftershaves pumped into your face by shop assistants who look as if they’ve applied their make-up by means of loading it into a blunderbuss beforehand and firing it at their faces. And my sister and I have an uncanny knack of buying the same thing. It’s why our parents have 4 DVD players and 6 sets of kitchen knives.
Speaking of which, we now have 'Black Friday', a shopping tradition that began in the USA and is now apparently 'a thing' over here. Every year, on the first Friday after Thanksgiving, hordes of deranged shoppers play a deranged game of British Bulldog with each other in a bid to get their hands on discounted items.
It’s like watching a shoal of starved piranhas stripping a cow down to its skeleton, but only marginally less civilised. I used to think it would take a lot to make civil society break down completely, but in reality, it seems the promise of 15% off a Transformers Stomp-&-Chomp dinosaur is enough to turn neighbour on neighbour into a fight to the death worthy of a Star Wars lightsaber duel. It's probably also why the Star Wars lightsaber barbeque tongs I spotted in HMV vanished before I could think, "My mate Claudio would like …."
But generally, on the whole, I actually enjoy Christmas. Our rope lights come out of box untangled and work straight from the off. I manage to watch what I eat and drink … mostly. I like creating and writing out cards for friends. I find it satisfying to wrap presents. I look forward with baited breath for the “Doctor Who” special episode and the enforced bonhomie of New Year’s Eve. My Mother’s Boxing Day buffet is always a riot and I see nothing wrong with getting some new socks, mostly because my current ones are more holey than righteous.
Christmas is definitely the best, most funniest and most magical time of the year; it’s also certainly the most frenzied. And I've got a theory as to why. A theory so ill-conceived and thought-out, that it probably doesn't even scrape the underside of "vaguely correct".
But nevertheless it's a theory, OK, and in today's chaotic world in which technology changes so quickly that you wouldn't be surprised to look in the mirror on day and discover you've been replaced with a robot and are actually now living on the internet, and that apple you're eating is made entirely out of pixels, it’s important to have one.
You're trying your hardest to keep on top of it all, but that's like attempting to maintain a sturdy grip on a length of greased rope attached to a python that’s been doused with itching powder - in this out-of-control fairground ride of a world we need all the theories we can get, right ?? You don't have time to think of an answer to that, so I'll give you one.
My theory is time is packed into year-sized units it doesn't quite fit into, a little bit like my shoes in a way, which is why it starts being compressed sometime around November and becomes hopelessly crushed right about now. To put it another way, it's like writing something on a piece of paper and running out of room just as you get to the edge, so you have scrunch all the words up together at the end.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not whining. I love Christmas, but I am under no illusions that getting it right constitutes a lot of thought, planning and a healthy dollop of hard work. I'm just saying it's made me think a lot more about how, in the run-up to Christmas that everything automatically feels 50% more hectic than it would if it were happening in the middle of spring. I can't even go to the toilet at the moment without staring at my watch and panicking about how long it's taking.
It’s no wonder that “Die Hard” was set during Christmas. Watching Bruce Willis crashing head-first through windows and machine-gunning terrorists in an ever-dirtying vest would have been downright boring if he'd have been doing it on Pancake Day, Pentecost or on a Bank Holiday Monday.
And it's still the best Christmas movie out there by far.
Period.
So, whatever you're up to, have fun, eat drink and be merry, yet be thankful for what you have. Make the most of these days that only come around once a year, because they may never come again.
Merry Christmas, to all my family and friends, and those who mean so much.