Bah humdrum! Scrooge was half-right

Whilst watching the John Lewis Christmas advert, you may find yourself flooded with a bitter sense of nostalgia. What happened to Christmas being a time of excitement? That earthly, coniferous smell wafting from the corner of the room; the strange glow of presents wrapped up with love, dispersed across the floor; eating four tacky advent calendar chocolates in a row and feeling full, but guilty. Yes, what happened to the blissful excitement of knowing that you were in a special place, at a special time?

Perhaps it was family tension starting to rear its head. People do seem less inclined to put on a happy face for the sake of love when you start to get older. The minute one gains what we often title ‘maturity’, one often finds themselves wrapped up in a spiral of pettiness, bickering and eerie psychological jousts. The whole notion of ‘coming together as a family’ is skewered as soon as you start to define what the notion of a ‘family’ really is.

All this is well-known, and it isn’t meant to depress you. It seems natural that, as you get older, Father Christmas fades further and further away. First you stop believing in him, and then everything he stands for lies comatose on the pavement, with Rudolph and co.’s contorted bodies writhing beside him.

Again, this isn’t meant to depress you. But let’s for a moment think about the people who aren’t unequivocally cynical about Christmas. One can’t group them together, but, often, family ‘togetherness’ isn’t the thing that stands out. It’s the aesthetics. It’s how it all feels. It’s the cold pull of winter outside, and frost on the window ledge. It’s cups of tea and streamers and satsumas and pieces of paper cut up like snowflakes. It’s Edward Scissorhands and Babe.
But this is all a bit selfish, isn’t it? It’s quite sad that for us to have a good time at Christmas, we have to trade ‘togetherness’ for self-indulgence. ‘Ah,’ says the wise old uncle on his fifth glass of brandy. ‘That is the folly of man…’ Quite.

Perhaps we revert to a shell-like hibernation underneath our duvets because we are scared of actually coming together. We slop gravy all over our lives because, well, they are a bit dry after all.

This is getting dangerously close to the familiar cliché: ‘Embrace the Christmas spirit.’ But should it be a cliché? Human beings label things as trite or hackneyed before they really understand what the idea entails. This isn’t an imploration for us all to become Jesus Christ, but can we really stand any more cynicism?

Christmas is the perfect time for starving yourself of worldly goods. It is the time for giving up our shared sense of self-satisfaction, and, for once, actively seeking to help people.
No sickly smiles. No hand-in-hand singing around the living room. No Secret Santa sociopathic politics. ESPECIALLY no turning around and faking warmth and comfort. After all the feasting and gorging and lard and ugliness, all we have left is the ongoing struggle to be nicer to people, to help people, and, dare I say it, love people.

Yes, yes: this doesn’t sound particularly original, or insightful. But people often claim how much they hate Christmas because of how sexed up it is – how everyone makes such a big deal out of it. Well, instead of wallowing in cynicism, making it even more of a big deal by outlining your rage at the November decorations, or the emotional blackmail of advertising – keep the ‘spirit of Christmas’ unsaid. Understate it.

There’s no glory in being nice to people. It is, essentially, remarkably unsexy. Disney films and fluffy Christmas specials make acts of kindness a phenomenon, and, in doing so, only feed on the egos that watch them. There is no grand statement. There is no climactic finale. Just you, your family, and everyone else you share the world with. How bland is that?

So, if there’s a point to all this, it is to suggest that the tedium of Christmas isn’t meant to depress you. Being generous and kind is tedious. It is unbelievably tedious. What we lose from childhood is the excitement and the ‘Big Day’ itself – but we must not lose the sense of morality it’s all about in the first place.