Now it’s safely past us, it’s time to ask if Christmas has morphed into something more sinister than a demanding annual festival? Increasingly, it manifests more like an outbreak of toxoplasmosis, making once rational people behave like maniacs.
From October onward, people are forking out thousands of dollars for advent calendars full of luxury products they would never buy individually.
Not me, you say haughtily – but Liberty’s £260 (NZ$570) beauty products “calendar” sold out before December, its fastest-selling item in its 150-year history. It might still be possible to find Irish retailer Brown Thomas’s $660 assortment, Chanel’s $1500 or Swarovski Crystal’s $2200 one, but toxo-Christmosis has mostly hoovered them up.
Then there’s the dubious tucker. The explosion of seasonal potato chip flavours is out of this world – or more accurately, out of the chemical lab. One supermarket chain does a cracking Boxing Day Turkey Curry flavour, and given that other brands offer crisps flavoured like turkey stuffing and turkey gravy respectively, who needs to faff around with actual poultry?
Once, a daffy, reindeer-themed jumper would do for sartorial effort. Now, newspaper think-pieces seriously evaluate the most stylish kit in which one might dish out the dreaded Brussels sprouts: $200 oven mits and a $350 silver apron from the “on-trend” Gohar World.
Europe is ruefully evaluating two standout seasonal affronts for 2024: a Cornwall firm’s Christmas dinner-flavoured scones, stuffing-infused, with cranberry jam, and Chreaster Eggs – German supermarket chain Aldi’s line of Christmas-themed Easter eggs designed to keep its confectionary sales even right through to March.
A further jarring development: a poll by price-comparison website Money Supermarket found nearly half of British respondents thought guests should pay the hosting householder for their December 25 meal. Not just a “Could you bring the pud, hun?” but an actual financial settlement, said 46%.
Another poll, by data crunchers Kantar, found the cost of the bash is up by 6.5%, thanks to soaring inflation for turkey and vegetables.
Christmas is obviously vaultingly burdensome. But does this also show people are simply more mercenary – especially after the advent calendar splurge?
An especially grim “Help!” letter to the Daily Telegraph suggested so. A woman lamented that her sister-in-law had taken to sending a spreadsheet of presents she and her husband and children wanted, and, on Boxing Day, a follow-up email demanding exchange receipts for all the gifts they’d received that weren’t on the list. A fair few readers thought that was quite sensible. It’s beginning to seem a lot like Scrooge had a point.
A further exhibit: Malta, in the Mediterranean, was by late November already in the grip of what you’d have to call Santa-nalia. Its winters are seldom far south of 20°C yet you can’t move for snowmen, candles, icicles, snowflakes, ice palaces and Christmas puddings. At night, when it’s illuminated, the capital, Valetta, is like a Disney hallucination (absolutely beautiful, mind you).
This is one of the world’s hardest-core Christian populations – more than 90% identify as Catholic. What do they need with the hyper-commercialised Coca-Cola version of the Greco-Turkish Roman Empire children’s benefactor, St Nicholas? Yet, iterations of the guy in the red suit massively outnumber nativity scenes, and clash hideously with the bougainvillea.
It’s almost tempting to sympathise with the Anglican vicar who told a group of Hampshire primary school children that Santa wasn’t real. Dr Paul Chamberlain had to apologise to weeping children and distraught parents – and weather the smuggery of aetheists who flocked to disavow the “supernatural” being he purported to work for.
Whether they exist or not, Himself and St Nick would be in agreement: this sort of Christmas is not what they signed up for.
