Christmas is great isn't it? In fact I love it so much that I'm already looking forward to Christmas 2003. I wish it could be Christmas every day. But that's mainly because my only source of income is being a Santa in a department store grotto. If it was Christmas every day, then I would make a fortune. Though to be pedantic, as a department store Santa I never actually work on Christmas Day (unlike the real fella for whom gets to work for one day a year and makes most of his money from merchandise and endorsements), so if it was actually Christmas Day every day, then I would have no employment and soon fall into penury. So I suppose what I really wish is that it was the fortnight before Christmas, every fortnight, though Christmas Day itself never arrived.
Imagine it, all the build-up and none of the release, no sense of closure. Like constant pornographic stimulation, but never an orgasm. On the bright side you wouldn't have to actually buy anyone any presents and on the other bright side you wouldn't be given a load of junk that you don't want, or that is similar to some of the stuff that you wanted, but not quite right. Right enough that to buy the correct thing would be wasteful and insulting to the present giver, but not right enough for you to be able to enjoy the slightly wrong thing in any way.
How much of it could people take? How long before it drove us mad, before we were slaying Santas in their sleighs, before we decked the halls with balls of reindeer, before Cliff Richard was shot in the face with a harpoon (not so close to being a pun about Christmas, but nonetheless satisfying).
And imagine how big advent calendars would have to be, and how many pictures of blind Africans would have to be taken. Charities would have to start poking out the eyes of healthy people in order to keep up with the demand.
Judging by my genuine tolerance of the Yuletide season, I estimate that a fortnight would be long enough. Some six weeks less than Christmas actually lasts at the moment.
For these reasons I doubt that my "fortnight-before-Christmas-every-fortnight-without-it-ever-actually-becoming-Christmas" system will ever be taken up. But it is something we must be ever vigilant against.
