That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
It’s that time of year again.
A recent offer to buy some new Christmas decorations for my family home was met with a stark warning from my mother: “don’t get anything tacky”.
I was appalled; my mum obviously had some sort of negative view of my taste.
As it turns out, she’s right. When it comes to Christmas, I am incredibly tacky. I realised this on a recent trip to Sainsburys when I fell in love with a dancing penguin wearing a Christmas hat.
It was a toy penguin, just to be clear, and the love was nothing but platonic.
But what exactly is wrong with a bit of festive tackiness? My love of it extends far beyond dancing penguins and other vulgar decorations. In fact, I am currently writing this whilst wearing a rather dashing Christmas jumper. I also have a strange ability to watch any Christmas film, regardless of how terrible it is. Have you seen ‘Surviving Christmas’ with Ben Affleck? Probably not, it bombed at the box office. Yet, I have and I love it. I’m not saying it’s better than ‘Good Will Hunting’, but give me the choice between the two in December and I will choose ‘Surviving Christmas’ every time. Similarly, if you ask me my favourite Arnie film, I will answer with 100% certainty, ‘Jingle All The Way’. ‘The Terminator’ is all good and well, but it doesn’t involve a fight scene between Arnold Schwarzenegger and a gang of Santa Clauses, so I have no time for it. In fact, I can’t think of a single film which couldn’t benefit from being set at Christmas. ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ is the highest rated film on IMDB at the moment, with a rating of 9.2. If Morgan Freeman had dressed as Santa for the entirety of it, I think it probably would have received a perfect 10.
Christmas TV also seems to beguile me. Christmas specials are mostly reserved for bigger shows in the UK. In the US however, most sitcoms do a Christmas episode as they have much more episodes to fill per series. Given my slight addiction to US sitcoms, this works out incredibly well for me. December sees a flood of shows like ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’, ‘Community’, ‘Modern Family’ and ‘30 Rock’ adding a bit of Christmas spirit to their comedy. Even shows I wouldn’t usually give a second glance become incredibly watchable around this time of year. I’ve watched the worst of shows purely because one of the characters has dressed as Santa.
The only exception to this is ‘The Catherine Tate Show’ Christmas specials. No amount of Christmas morning Bucks Fizz will ever make that show appealing.
Each year, I actively avoid listening to Christmas music until the first day of December. This has been a struggle recently given the vast amounts of snow that has fallen upon York in these later days of November. It took a lot of will power not to put ‘Winter Wonderland’ on my iPod whilst I strode through the snow on my way to seminars. I maintain my December 1st rule not because I dislike Christmas music, but because I love it too much. If I don’t set such restrictions upon myself, I will just end up listening to ‘Christmas Wrapping’ by ‘The Waitresses’ on constant repeat each and every day. This would be great for the first 853 days or so, but I think the magic of it may get lost after a while.
As a child, it was easy to get caught up in the present-receiving aspect of Christmas. However, as I grew older and began to see the burden buying so many presents had on my parents, I began to prefer the smaller things. Watching films together or just laughing at each other’s incredibly bad taste in Christmas music became much more joyful for me than receiving presents. Each family argues and each has problems, but it’s good to put those aside and mock Arnold Schwarzenegger’s terrible acting together.
For me, this is what Christmas is about.
I enjoy, just for a few days, allowing myself to become blissfully ignorant and embrace the pleasant naffness that comes with Christmas entertainment.
I know it’s not a wise thing to be in the long term, but it’s nice to be a blind optimist a little while each year.
Being an anxious pessimist gets a bit dull if you don’t take the occasional break and put some ‘Wham’ on.
Absolutly loved this blog. It definately got me in the Christmas mood!
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