Five Things I Hate About Christmas

Warning! Bah humbug theme throughout this post, which may not be suitable reading for those who absolutely love Christmas and everything about it...



1. Christmas shopping

It’s not the gift buying per se that I object to (my name’s not Ebenezer Scrooge, although I did once live in Ebenezer Road) but it’s the marauding masses with their screaming, sulking brats little darlings in tow that can make shopping such an awful experience. Long queues at the checkout, unhelpful shop staff and items that I want always out of stock on the shop floor, can add up to a very bad day out. Therefore, in the interests of personal sanity, this year I’ve done my entire Christmas shop online...I think I may be developing a bit of an obsession for internet shopping in fact... but I just love it! Clickety click....ding dong.... “Just sign here”....what a pleasure! Only problem is, half the jolly country has decided that this is the way forward, and, coupled with the snow disruption, there’s apparently a back log of over 4 million parcels to deliver. I’m now getting just a tad worried that not everything is going to arrive in time...



2. Brussels sprouts

I’ve already ranted on about my hatred of Satan’s green balls on here ... and you’re right, no one is actually forcing me to buy them, let alone eat them. They do, however, have a nasty habit of cropping up, completely uninvited, on my plate at Christmas parties. Apparently, they’re festive fare....fair, my foot! Just the sight of them, let alone their stench, is enough to make me retch!

 

3. Christmas pudding

Again, consumption of this stodgy ball of fruity, alcoholic fat is (thankfully!) not compulsory, and passing on the dessert course is one way to cut the calorific load of the Christmas day feast. I just don’t understand why anyone would pay vast sums of money for one such pudding, but that’s exactly what has been going on here in the UK this year. Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal (famous for serving up such culinary delights as snail porridge, and bacon and egg ice-cream at his Three Michelin-starred restaurant, ‘The Fat Duck’) designed The Hidden Orange pudding, which has a whole candied Valencia orange at its centre, and is reputedly The Must-Have Christmas Pudding of The Century. The puds went on sale in Waitrose for £13.99 and were almost all sold out in a week, then started appearing on eBay, selling to the highest bidders for up to £129! The proof of that pudding will be in the eating, me thinks, but just don’t choke on that candied peel or it won’t be such a Merry Citrus....

4. Annoying fragrance ads

Until we get TV that emits a scent (possibly a good idea for cookery shows, not such a great one for workout programmes, or documentaries on sewage works), ad agencies are always going to struggle to sell perfume, the product, opting to rather promote the ‘lifestyle’ that apparently comes with it. And judging from the ads on TV at the moment, spraying yourself with perfume will immediately transform you into a sullen-looking, hollow-cheeked girl who dances bizarrely around rooms, or else drapes herself uncomfortably over a sofa, and awaits the entrance of some equally sullen-looking, rather effeminate bloke. Why do all perfume ads have to end with some random French words spoken in a breathy, exaggerated whisper?



5. Writing Christmas Cards

Spending as much time as I do on a keyboard, I’m rapidly losing the power to write anything by hand...how on earth did I ever get through university lectures taking notes, and write 4-hour exams? These days, just signing a couple of Christmas cards is enough to send my hand into arthritic spasms... forget putting little personal messages in each card, the recipients are lucky to get a spidery, scrawled “Love Nat”... maybe just an ‘N’ by the time I get to the end of the pile of dozens of cards I somehow feel obliged to send out each year. Then there’s the inevitable hour-long queue in the post office to contend with, followed by the heart palpitations that accompany the realisation of just how much it’s going to cost to send those cardboard creations across the globe...next year I’m doing e-cards!

 

So, is there anything you hate about Christmas....or do you just love, love, love it all?