Christmas Jeer

You might think it strangely ironic for the Devil to be a big fan of Christmas, but let’s be honest: to most of us, a couple of days cooped up with relatives that we can barely stand the sight of for the rest of the year is the closest thing to Hell that we’re likely to experience this side of the grave.

Yes indeed, this is the time of year when the traditional seasonal values of hatred, bitterness and greed are guaranteed to spurt from the back end of the year like the unwelcome and scalding revenge of ten pints of cheap lager capped off with a bad curry.

You shouldn't have...

Don’t believe me? Then look into your own heart and imagine the loathing that you feel when you snatch the wrapping off your last present, hoping to Christ that you’re going to get at least one decent gift this year, only to find that it’s a cheap pack of knockoff bath salts from the “special” Christmas shop that won’t even exist anymore on Boxing day. Bath salts! If it’s the ruddy thought that counts, then why didn’t the bastard put some bloody thought into it?

Then all you need is for some sanctimonious toe rag to start banging on about the “true meaning of Christmas”. This is bad enough when it’s some Bishop Gobshite’s Christmas message on ITV, but god forbid it should be someone you’ve been foolish enough to invite into your own home. The worst of it is that no one has the minerals to shake off their fixed grin and tell it like it is: “Shut it, you miserable slag or you’ll be walking off that mince pie on the way to casualty to have these blasted bath salts removed from your eye sockets. That is, if our local hospital isn’t one of the ones that’s had to close to stem the spread of winter vomiting.”

This simmering undercurrent of barely contained rage is clearly reflected in the TV schedules. I remember the days when the BBC used to makes us sit through vacuously cheerful rubbish like “The Sound of Music” & “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” every year, when the only rush of adrenaline came from nodding off and dreaming about doing Julie Andrews over the bonnet of a magic car. Now they’ve mercifully dropped the pretence and spike our seething glands with Mission Impossible 9 where Tom Cruise pulls the skin off his own face and blows a hole in some Russian Mafoisi’s face with a handgun.

That’s the magic of Christmas, comrade, “hasta la vista” Now pour me another large one.

Then there’s the Christmas music. Much like the films, playlists used to be dominated by garbage like “Mistletoe and Wine” by the appalling Cliff Richard, a man who apparently models himself after the Saviour by constantly asking himself, what would Jesus do? Well, I’m sure Christ himself didn’t gallivant around spouting nauseating crap like:

Christmas is love, Christmas is peace,

A time for hating and fighting to cease

But if he did, I’m not surprised they ended up nailing him to a tree.

Pucker up

No, these days, the Best Christmas Song Ever is usually voted to be the unforgettable “Fairytale of New York”. This charming ditty was penned as far back as 1987 by the Pogues, a musically talented Irish band, originally called Pogue Mahone, which apparently translates from the Gaelic as “kiss my arse”. Wholly appropriate I feel, in light of the fact that when confronted by the prospect of lead singer Shane MacGowan’s remarkable face under the mistletoe, I’m guessing most people would rather pogue his mahone.

I think what makes this song a perennial yuletide favourite is the touching and appropriate verse that truly captures the spirit of the season:

You scumbag, you maggot,

You cheap, lousy faggot.

Merry Christmas, you arse,

I pray God it’s our last.

I remember watching the video of this on MTV back in 1989. Back in those days they used to bleep out the word “arse” for fear that the evil of swearwords might tarnish the sanctity of our joyous celebrations.

I saw the same video again the other day. They don’t bleep out the word “arse” any more, but they do bleep out the word “faggot”, presumably because the revolting thought of traditional Welsh cuisine might put us off our turkey. It’s strangely reassuring to know that there’s an F-word that even Gordon Ramsay might be loath to utter at this time of year.

If you get ticked off with the film & music channels, you can always sit back with a stiff drink and enjoy the news reviews of the year, most of which will certainly revolve around killing and death. I’ll put good money on the prospect of many of us settling down behind a glass of port to relive the enjoyable sight of excited gunmen playing a game of catch with Colonel Gaddafi’s flabby and lifeless corpse.

Where does it hurt?

We’ll suck our teeth and nobly voice our concern that he wasn’t brought to trial at the Hague, but what’s really needling us is the fact that he was hauled out of a concrete pipe by a heavily armed lynch mob in front of several hundred mobile phone cameras, but there was no footage whatsoever of his infamous all-female bodyguard, or that buxom Swedish nurse that took care of all his “medical” needs.

Frustration like that is bad enough at any time of year, but even worse when, with a houseful of guests, there’ll be no way to find some private space to trawl Google Images while we’re still sober enough to remember what it is that’s causing that warm feeling of curiosity.

No doubt at some point Robert Peston will be dragged back from speech therapy to yodel on theatrically about the global financial crisis, which basically boils down to the fact that the Germans don’t want to pay for the thirty-five year holiday that Southern Europe has just enjoyed on tick. Incidentally, I find it amusing that for many years, the medical profession have been puzzling about how it is that the Mediterranean diet protects so effectively against heart disease and strokes, and now it’s been finally revealed that this is because the Mediterranean diet involves not doing any f*cking work.

Expecting someone else to settle your enormous credit card bill isn’t the only eccentric Christmas custom to be found in the Single Market. No indeed, many of our European neighbours have a fine tradition of seasonal stories to tell their little ones, most of which seem to involve the abuse, kidnap and murder of children.

In Austria, Father Christmas is accompanied by the Krampus, a charming cross between an evil clown and a hideous scarecrow wielding a cudgel that it uses to savagely beat kids that misbehave. I can’t tell you how many articles of the European Convention this monstrosity can claim to violate in its annual frenzy of correctional zeal, but I can promise you that they’re having none of it in Holland.

No, in the Netherlands, this apparently vital punitive role is taken on by Black Peter, who in typical Dutch fashion, is far too trendy and enlightened to assault minors. Instead, he merely abducts them and takes them, for some reason, to Spain. I think we do something similar for young offenders in this country. At least that’s what I’ve read in the Daily mail.

Travel East across the continent, and Santa Claus mutates into the dark and sinister figure of Grandfather Frost, a vicious and evil sorcerer who used to steal human offspring and ransom them back in exchange for presents, preferring sometimes simply to freeze them to death instead of returning them at all. Now given a clean bill of mental health by the alarmingly liberal yuletide parole board, he does community service, visiting children’s bedrooms to reward them with gifts for good behaviour. Russian youngsters unable to sleep on Christmas Eve must presumably hope that he doesn’t suffer some kind of terrifying relapse while he’s stuffing presents under their beds.

But of course, the prize for the most horrific legend must surely go to certain parts of rural Finland, where the spirit of Christmas is simply a child murderer with the head of a goat. I don’t think presents even come into it.

So my final message at Christmas is this: you might hate your family so much that it hurts your eyes to look at them, be so sick to your ruddy back teeth with turkey that it doesn’t even smell like food anymore, and be hundreds of pounds out of pocket with nothing to show for it but a case of heartburn that would bring a camel to its knees and a jumper that you’ll never wear because it’s such a disgusting colour that even the dog barks at it.

Hyvää Joulua!

But at this time of year, we must always remember someone less fortunate than ourselves, and at Christmas, it’s a five year old child, lying awake in bed  in a small village between Helsinki and the Arctic Circle, waiting to be decapitated by a half human monster wielding a machete.

Happy Christmas!

Korea Change

I was deeply saddened and shocked to hear of the death of my old friend, the Supreme Leader of North Korea. I had no idea that Kim Jong was so, er, ill.

Mind you, I’m not convinced by those videos of his loyal subjects weeping and gnashing their teeth at the news of his sudden demise. I’d put good money on the fact that those poor sods are just crying because all they’ve had to eat since he came to power are a few mouldy turnip husks and the dry shin bone of someone else’s child.

Kim Yum Yum

I understand that his successor is to be his son, who I think is called Kim Young ‘Un which sounds like it should translate as Little Kim. Looking at the emerging photos of the heir, I suspect he’s been dealing with the harsh legacy of having grown up with a girl’s name by eating most of the food that’s been denied to the rest of the populace for the last 20 years.

It seems that his official name is to be: The Great Successor. I would tactfully suggest that, in the light of this recent photographic evidence, the title Fat Controller would probably be more appropriate.

While he continues in his father’s philanthropic mission of selfless leadership, and the halls of his palace echo to the moving refrain of his country's new national anthem: “Who ate all the pies”, he can get on with the really important North Korean tradition of winding up whichever semi-detached and free spending loon happens to be President of the United States.

Kim The Elder managed to do this very effectively for years by conning Uncle Sam into believing that this shining, communist utopia, a country that makes Haiti look like a technological investment opportunity, actually has nuclear weapons. Of course, the closest thing in North Korea to a nuke is a half empty box of matches that fell out of a BBC journalist’s pocket back in 1984. My spies tell me that in 2006, one of Kim’s top physicists finally figured out how to strike one, and was so stunned by the miracle of this advanced fire-making technology that he managed to drop the burning end back into the box, setting off the whole ruddy lot in one go.

Inadvertently “doing a genie” in a land which, thanks to Kim Jong-Il’s visionary economic leadership is nearly as dark from space as France, created a flash of light clearly visible to the American military satellites that hover permanently over North Korea in case its fearsome, million strong standing army starts trying to eat the barbed wire that marks the edge of the demilitarised zone. It was this mini mushroom cloud that fooled the dolts at the Pentagon into believing that KJI had the A-bomb, when in fact, all he had was a chief scientist with no eyebrows.

Should've gone to Specsavers

The ill One has been suckering the yanks out of millions of dollars worth of aid ever since, even though all he ever had to show for these vast injections of cash was a gigantic pair of horribly unfashionable glasses. I understand that this is to be the inspiration behind a new Specsavers ad due to run in the new year.

But still, even if Fat Boy Kim doesn’t turn out to be as good at plutonium poker as his old man, I’m sure that he’ll be able to rely on China to keep him supplied with those live frogs that he likes to dip into his martinis.

Oh no, sorry, that’s Jabba the Hut.

French Stick

So David Cameron stood up to the French over the Eurozone crisis did he?

Bollox! I don’t know why we don’t just settle things the old fashioned way by invading each other’s countries and hacking lumps out of each other with badly made, bladed weapons for the best part of a century.

Not now, Dave! I'm decorating the nursery...

OK, so maybe in the light of public reaction to the recent wars in the Gulf, European stomachs may not be as strong as they once were. But perhaps our respective leaders could engage in some sort of contest on our behalf.

Single combat seems to be ruled out by the fact that the Frenchman is a midget and our guy is a public school toff whose hands have never done anything rougher than yank down his posh wife’s agent provocateurs after a night on the Pimms with Boris and Ozzy. But that gives me an idea.

Big Dave’s obvious height advantage favours a pissing contest, though if it was their countries’ cash and not the contents of their respective bladders, Sarkozy would win hands down when it came to spunking that up a wall.

Alternatively, we could send the England Rugby team over with William Hague. Those mannerless thugs could stand at the end of a Calais pier with Little Bill, Sarkozy and Angela Merkel. The nationality of the dwarf that gets flung the farthest gets to run Europe forever.