Aah, Christmas. How does the Perry Como song go now? It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Well, it certainly used to be; but these days I’m not so sure. I just don’t think it is. And here’s why.

I fear that the true meaning of Christmas is gone dear reader. Long gone I’m afraid. Disappeared in a red, hazy Coca Cola coloured mist. Holidays are coming, holidays are coming. My arse they are! In fact, that’s precisely where you can shove your holidays are coming, Coke.

You see, the clue is in the name. Christ-mas. Not Winter Fest or whatever other PC name you now want to give it. It’s Christmas. Take Christ out of Christmas and what have you got? A mess. And that’s precisely what we’ve done. We’ve just got a reason to splash the cash, and a right old commercial mess we’ve made of it all.

No, I’m not getting all religious on you. Not at all. That’s not my style. I’m getting real. Painfully real. We have taken a wonderful little one day celebration of the most special event that ever happened on planet Earth (whether you believe it or not, I do) and turned it into a garish, obscene festival of consumption and consumerism that begins somewhere in the middle of September, before Summer is officially over, when the first few things begin to creep into the shops and ends abruptly on Boxing Day morning with a monstrous, collective, national hangover, great swarming miasmas of anally vented gas, depleted credit cards and bank accounts and most of the toys already broken. And then it’s off to the sales we jolly well go to buy yet even more stuff that you don’t actually need!!!

And before anyone gets on to me and says that the Christians merely hijacked Saturnalia from the pagans let me just point out the uncomfortable fact that Saturnalia runs from December 17^th to December 23^rd. Christmas, I’m pretty sure you’ll find if you check your calendar, is on 25^th December. Two days after the end of Saturnalia. To say that the Church stole or hijacked it is like saying I hijacked your birthday because mine is on the 20^th July and yours is on the 18^th. You see? Utter balderdash of the highest calibre. Actually, mine is on 20^th July if you’d like to get me something nice. Anyway, enjoy your Christ-mas holiday everyone. But I digress.

And, if I can return to the baby Jesus for just one moment. We all love to watch the nativity play, don’t we? And take shaky mobile phone videos of the kiddies performing in their home-made outfits with tea towels wrapped around their little heads to make them look like biblical shepherds whilst comically forgetting their lines and the words to Away in a Manger; but that’s about as far as most people are prepared to go with it. After that, forget Jesus, school’s out kids, it’s all about Santa Claus now. The carol should go ‘Oh Come Let Us Ignore Him’ for that is what we do.

Ah yes. Dear old Santa. Hey kids, it’s just not cool to believe in God’s only begotten son and his virgin birth but it’s perfectly ok to believe in magical flying reindeer driven by some whiskery, old, bedroom-hopping buffoon until you’re old enough to realise you’ve been hoodwinked for years and it was actually your struggling, stressed out, at-their-wits-end, cash-strapped parents who bought it all. But of course, convention and compliance are at play you see. Convention and compliance say we have to do it. We have to allow eleven months of scrimping and scraping and saving and getting into debt to provide a magical experience for the little ones be attributed to a myth (again, thanks to Coke) just so that we can get all misty eyed ourselves when we see their happy smiling faces on Christmas morning. Be honest now, are you doing all that for the children or for yourselves so that you can feel all warm and toasty inside? Yeah, thought so.

“But Christmas is just for the kids”, all the gurning, gammon faced, polluted sacks of ale will tell you as they prop up the bar at Wetherspoons swilling cheap beer whilst their own children are sat at home doing all the wrapping with their mothers. Well tell that to the lonely pensioner in her council flat who is making a financial choice between keeping warm or eating nourishing food, or the poor, hungry, shivering person sleeping on the street who will have no human contact or the abused and frightened teenager who has no-one to turn to and nowhere to run. Tell them that Christmas is just for the kids. They’d all love some Christmas cheer but it’s going to be pretty thin on the ground for a lot of people.

And why do we spend 363 days of the year telling our children to not talk to strangers and avoid weird looking men and then, on Christmas Eve, we gladly tell them that some bearded old duffer in a natty, red, two piece suit with matching fur lined boots and hat is going to fly all the way from Lapland to somehow squeeze his fat, hairy arse down the chimney (without getting soot on himself), tiptoe into their bedrooms and leave them a sack full of toys. Ah! But only if they’ve been good little boys and girls. That’s right, child control through the fear of losing out on presents. Great parenting everybody.

Yes, of course I believed in Santa and had a stocking when I was a kid but we weren’t overly swamped with a veritable surfeit of presents every 25th December as some kids are today and Christmas was a much simpler affair back then. I can recall how once my brother’s little Santa bag fell off the end of his bed one Christmas morning (I think our dad had been on the sherry) and when he opened his eyes and saw it wasn’t there and mine was he burst into tears because he thought that Santa hadn’t been to him. We laugh about it now we’re adults but I’ll never forget how distressed he was at the time until my parents came rushing in and found the bag lying on the floor. All because of Santa. But at least we had presents. Try explaining how magical Santa is to some poor child whose parents (or parent) can’t afford anything while the kid next door gets a shiny new bicycle, an X-Box and an iPhone. The financial pressure on some parents at this time of year is just too tremendous for them to bear and yet we willingly tell the children it’s all down to old Saint Nick and his merry band of elves. Oh the sheer magic of it all.

And why did I say 363 days instead of 364? Easy. Because we now happily expose our kids to total strangers on Halloween as well. Thanks America. Only this time it’s the kids themselves that have the natty little outfits on. But that’s for another day.

Back to Christmas. It’s all just become so plastic and false and fake. And we get to endure all those ridiculous, schmaltzy Christmas songs time and time again. Every year like some hideous, glistening, blind boil on the hardest to reach part of the backside of music that just can’t be lanced for love nor money we put up with all those God-awful ear-worm songs for no other good reason than “It’s Christmas innit?” From October through to December you can’t go anywhere without hearing Slade, Wizzard, Shaky, Chris Rea, Wham, Aled Jones (before his balls dropped), dear old Bing Crosby and all the rest of the tired same old same old shash. And the less said about that bile lifting one by the Darkness the better. Call themselves a rock band? Ought to be ashamed of themselves. Year in, year out. The same old tripe. Those songs were never written to bring you joy. They were carefully constructed to help you part with your cash. Do we really need Now, That’s What I Call Christmas to be repackaged and re-released every single year? Give me a nice carol any day. There’s honesty and sincerity in them at least.

I swear that if I hear Mariah-arsing-Carey warbling on just one more time in that nerve-jangling, high-pitched squeal of hers about how she only wants ‘you’ for Christmas I shall scream blue bloody murder and put an axe through the radio. That’s not all you want for Christmas at all is it Mariah? No! You want a diamond necklace, a jewel encrusted Cartier watch and a Louis Vuitton dress. That’s the truth of the matter. Isn’t it? Isn’t it? It’s all want, want, want. Christmas has become all about I and want. What can I get? What do I want? I want this. I want that. I want every-bloody-thing that I think I should have! We even encourage our children to go to the local department store or garden centre grotto, sit on Santa’s knee (again a complete total stranger that you don’t know from Adam) and tell him what they want. How about what they actually need?

I’ll tell you what I want. I want all the excess and greed to damn well stop.

It goes beyond the songs though. Way beyond. The food consumption at this time of year is quite disgusting and also potentially dangerous to our bodies. Ask any doctor if you don’t believe me. People spend more on high cholesterol, calorie dense Christmas food than they do on fruit and veg for the rest of the year put together. Ask yourself. Do you really need all those vegan filo pastry party nibbles from M&S that Dawn French in 3D cartoon fairy form is convincing you to buy? Can you survive Christmas without them? Go on, have a go. I challenge you. Ah yes, dear old Dawn French, once a darling of the left, now selling seasonal party food for Marks and Sparks. Right on sister! This isn’t just a sales pitch. This is an M&S sales pitch.

And here’s a fun festive activity for you to try. Do a bit of Googling and see how much Christmas food is thrown away every year. I’m talking about both the stuff that has been bought by the obedient masses and the towering mountain of excess food that has been left on the supermarket shelves and then shovelled into the yawning mouths of industrial sized waste skips. Millions of people are dying of starvation in this world whilst the rest of us are nonchalantly lobbing boxes of uneaten Tesco’s Finest profiteroles and Asda’s Extra Special Christmas pudding into the sodding dustbin.

I mentioned earlier about how Christmas has become plastic. It literally has. Everything is now made of plastic. From baubles to bells and gifts to garlands. We used to go and cut holly and put it around the house when I was a kid. It was fun and you didn’t really mind the pointy, prickly leaves because it was a family activity. You can still get nice decorations, Wood and wicker work and glass and ceramic. I’ve seen some truly lovely ones recently in the homes of family and friends, but for the most part it’s all Chinese or Taiwanese made highly flammable plastic tat or tasteless plastic ornaments that dance whirringly about and play a jarring version of Jingle Bells accompanied by annoying, hypnotic, trance inducing flashing lights which spring into life at the flick of a battery powered switch. Either that or huge inflatable characters bobbing around in peoples front gardens just waiting to be destroyed by the first windy day that comes along. And why, oh why is everything plastic and covered in fake, poisonous, chemically manufactured snow?

And that’s another thing. Snow! There won’t bloody well be any!!! All those picture perfect cards and magical Christmas films and hideous, vulgar TV adverts that show beautiful, pure white snow everywhere are a swizz. Look out the window on Christmas day. It’ll either be glaringly bright sunshine (like we’ve had for the last few years) or pissing it down with rain and a fairly even chance of thick, pea soup fog. Thanks to all that plastic production that we’ve all bought into we now have global warming and the chance of a white Christmas, however hard you’re dreaming of one, ain’t gonna happen. And if by some miracle it does actually happen it’s going to come in a terrifying, life-threatening blizzard and bring the country to a juddering, helpless standstill, as it always does, if we have any more than a centimetre of the stuff. Remember the Boxing Day floods of 2015? That’s the reality folks; but a scene of a fireman or a soldier pulling distraught parents and their sobbing children along a flooded street in an inflatable dinghy don’t look so good on cards and adverts does it?

And when that longed for snow does finally arrive in mid-January we’ll all moan about it because we can’t get the car out to go and panic buy even more food that won’t get eaten. They don’t show that on the adverts do they?

Oh yes the TV Christmas adverts. Sickening to the very pit of the stomach. I mean every single one of them. I loathe them. They make me want to puke. Trying to convince us that it’ll be “the best Christmas ever” if we spend all our money on their products. From Morrisons to McDonalds and Dunelm to Deliveroo, they’re all at it. The John Lewis one in particular makes me seethe and clench my teeth so hard to the point where I fear they may shatter under the pressure. What have they presented us with this year to entice us into their unhealthily over heated and highly priced stores? They’ve given us that most well-known, beloved and traditional of all Christmas characters – an albino alien. A bloody alien! Not baby Jesus. Not fat old, ruddy-cheeked Santa Claus. Not a grinning carrot-nosed, top-hatted snow man. Not even a love-struck penguin in a scarf (and that one was ridiculous as well) but a weird creepy looking alien. That’s what it’s come to boys and girls, the traditional Christmas alien, and we’re all buying into that crap.

And that one of an overweight, sweaty, black-bearded Scrooge shaking his great big arse about on a thousand quids worth of exercise bike makes me want to throw the remote control through the screen. Awful beyond words. Marketing people can be such shysters at this time of year. I ask you, the gift of a Peloton. Really?

By this point, if you’re still reading and I honestly wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t, you’re probably thinking I’ve got some kind of massive downer on Christmas and I’m trying to spoil everyone’s fun. Well, you couldn’t be further from the truth if you tried my friend. I blummin’ well love Christmas. I really do. I love it to bits. I love anticipation of the run up week and the those precious few days after. I love to wrap a few presents. I love to wish total strangers a happy one. I love a nice carol service. I love to put a few trimmings, a small tree, some lights and a bit of tinsel up around the place. I love to spend quality time with the people I cherish such as my gorgeous family and dear, good friends, and open a few modest gifts and share some fun. I love to raise a glass or three and have a nice dinner together. I even have a set of those beard baubles that you can buy now. Just for a laugh. My granddaughter likes to decorate my face. And no, they’re not plastic before you ask. And why can’t it be that way? Why can’t it all be simple? Why is this fake and hideous spend-fest, for the sole purpose of making rich men even richer, thrust upon us for months beforehand? I picked up a box of mince pies in Aldi during early October just to look at the expiry date. They expired in mid November. I’ll just park that one there for you to think about.

Christmas cards are a nice idea. They are! They’re an inexpensive way of letting people know you’re thinking about them and that you care. We don’t do really do Christmas cards ourselves except for family and one or two close friends. We make a charitable donation instead, Sally Army if you really must know. I’m not telling you that to sound virtuous and self-righteous, but to make a small point. An awful lot of people do charitable donations instead these days, thank God, and that’s a truly great thing. Everyone should do it. I’m not opposed to the sending of Christmas cards by any means, I love to receive them, it’s just that we prefer to do it that way. But, hey, why not do both? You’ll be wishing Merry Christmas to the people you do know and to people you don’t. How cool is that? I best go and get a box.

Yes. I do love Christmas. I love what it does actually stand for, or rather what it used to stand for – it used to stand for peace, love, good will, forgiveness, tolerance and hope. Now it stands for greed, gluttony, financial ruin and what the hand-rubbing, soulless advertising executives can push onto us. And call me a hypocrite, by all means do. I shan’t be offended. For I confess that I truly am one. I’m pedalling my new book as an ideal gift. And it is a nice little gift, for the reader in your life. I’d love a nice book as a present but not at the expense of it sitting atop a groaning pile of other costly things that I neither want nor need.

But Christmas used to be special and I want it to be again. Maybe I’m just romanticising about the good old days. I don’t know.

You could argue that people need all this wild excess at the end of a long hard year to let off steam and that it’s meant to make us all feel happy and Christmassy. That’s fine, of course we all need something to look forward to. Of course we do. But that happiness and that Christmassy feeling is only fleeting. It’s back to grim reality in the cold, damp, murky new year and counting down the days and wishing our lives away until we can do it all over again. And that’s because we’ve made it something that cannot live up to our expectations. Instead, we need to keep it simple and special and not overblown so that feeling does last into the new year.

Seriously, I do wish every single person on this planet, whatever colour or creed they may be, a happy, calm and peaceful Christmas. But, sadly, it isn’t going to be that way for an awful lot of people. Even whilst you’re reading to this there are warplanes in the air all over this world. Not a magical flying sleigh stuffed with toys from the North Pole but very real warplanes stuffed with cluster bombs from armament factories. And the only similarity between the two of them is that children will be on the receiving end. Sorry to be so blunt but the truth often is. Think about that whilst you’re listening to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree or Santa Baby won’t you. And, perhaps, just maybe, give thanks that you live in a country where that isn’t happening.

Ok, rant over. I’ll stop there. I’m sorry if I’ve put a dampener on things, really I am, that was never my intention. I just want Christmas to mean something deeper again other than just spend, spend, spend and eat, eat, eat, and for us all to dispense with the commercialism, hype and falseness. For everyone’s sake. I want peace on Earth and goodwill to all men, women and children everywhere. Not just at this time of year but all throughout the year, every year. I wish everyone on this Earth could adhere to that.

There you go. I’ve had my say and you’re probably thinking, what on Earth is wrong with the man? Just a big old Christmas load on my chest that I needed to get off. Thanks for reading. If you’d now like to hurl abuse or vent spleen at me please feel free to do that in the comments section. I look forward to receiving a thorough festive ear-bashing from you and I’ll happily take every word with good cheer because I want to be more tolerant and peaceful myself.

Thank you.