The Festive Spirit

In the midst of hand-scrawled sheets of lined A4, books big enough to squash rats, clothes that haven't been hung up again days after being discarded onto the futon, half a packet of malted milks, an empty mug, a plate with nay but a splattering of disused tomato ketchup left upon it and the cold air of a house in December without the central heating on, he sits at the computer, in between finishing one mammoth essay and preparing to start another, and tries to collect all the thoughts and musings he's had brewing up over the last three weeks. And, do you know what? He's gone blank again.

Now that December's actually arrived, I don't feel so cynical about people getting excited in preparation for Christmas any more. Sure, I don't exactly get into the festive spirit until about 7pm on Christmas Eve - and even then I quickly snap out of it by the time The Queen's on - but I don't mind others getting excited during the month of December. But this year seems to have taken the proverbial candy cane. My Facebook News Feed (because I'm, like, so up to date, you get me?) faced a torrent of festive, and somewhat illiterate, abuse from the easily distracted. "omg soo exited for xmas" was just one of the fictional examples I just made up to give you the impression of what I faced... in the middle of November.

You know who I blame? Coca-Cola. Well, not necessarily the drinks manufacturers themselves, but the infamous traditional television advert that comes this time each year. For those who may be reading this from Mars or have been under extremely heavy sedation for a vast chunk of life, the Christmas-themed advert for Coca-Cola depicts a morbidly obese, myopic, elderly man, who clearly hasn't shaved since Take That first split up, riding around streets littered with as many people as there are snowflakes in a giant red truck with an obscene amount of fairy lights stapled to it so that he can pass around retro-style glass Coca-Cola bottles to children. Essentially, Band Aid (and subsequently, Band Aid 20) needn't have sang "Do They Know It's Christmas?" at all if only Coca-Cola felt like they could've just cancelled Africa's debt with a snap of their fingers. Nevertheless, for the masses, the first sight of the eagerly anticipated Coca-Cola Christmas advert is the first big signifier that Christmas is on the way. The fact that this momentous occasion happened in November this year made me somewhat irritated at the socio-cultural phenomenon of the Facebook-status boom. That plus it happened during the results show of the X Factor, which just makes me wonder why Facebook itself didn't just develop a consciousness and shoot itself there and then after a vast activity overload.

For others though, the apparently now sadly departed Toys R Us TV spot (which, for the sake of nostalgia, I have included a little linky there) gets people all of a merry. And why do I call it "apparently now sadly departed"? Because even though Toys R Us are still advertising on TV this festive season, they've given the advertising promo a complete revamp. Gone is the magical place we drive down the animated road towards. Gone is Geoffrey the Giraffe, who assured us there are millions of toys all under one roof. Now we get a CGI Toys R Us catalogue with the enchanting, night-time singy voice being replaced by someone who got fired from singing The Tweenies' theme tune and told us there is such a child label as a "Toys R Us kid". For the benefit of all that is right with the world, I won't be including a link to it for two reasons: 1) You can probably catch it on TV right now as it's currently running as opposed to the 90s advert which, as you might have guessed, is not, and 2) because I don't like it.

Other cultural signifiers which allude to the oncoming of the Christmas period come from the world of popular music. "Christmas" can easily be defined as a musical genre in its own right, with the cheesy, the sublime, the heartwarming, The Darkness and the easily-sing-along-able-to all featuring at this time of the year. Songs like the aforementioned Band Aid effort, Shakin' Stevens, Wizzard and Slade have all integrated themselves into the subconscious of many that it's hard not to enjoy them, "Last Christmas" is a nice song haunted by the fact that it was, in fact, Wham! that sang it in the first place, Cliff Richard will always be present and by the time it's taken me to finish this entire piece, Mariah Carey still won't have finished squawking the intro to "All I Want For Christmas Is You".

For many though, the recent resurgence in popularity for festive slanging match "Fairytale Of New York" has gone from strength to strength, which is unfortunate since it took the untimely death of singer Kirsty MacColl in the December of 2000 to boost it. Since then, the song's been praised by many and criticised by the prudish (mostly because is has the word "faggot" in it and non-gay people think it's probably offensive even though they have no concept of context) and has time and time again been cast into the shadow of Christmas number 2, or 3, or 5, or whatever, never managing to reach the festive top spot.

As for myself, I care a great deal for The Pogues' Christmas effort, but that was mostly because I like to go for the underdog, the relatively obscure and unknown and the generally underrated things in life. However, with so many people feeling the love for "Fairytale Of New York", while I don't deny it being a definitive Christmas song, I feel like I have to have a new underdog, a new joint favourite. And luckily, two years ago I rediscovered a Christmas song from my childhood. And I know I remember it from my childhood because my sister told me recently that she held the same sentiments for this particular tune, even after our mother told both of us she was completely unaware of it. Who's the crazy one now, hmmm? Anyway, as much as it appears around Christmas, Kate Bush's "December Will Be Magic Again" revolves around, well, just that, December. As such, I've been doing well to stick to a regime of listening to the song at least once a day from the first of this month, which, I suppose, is more than I can say for vowing to myself to post to this thing once a week. Give me another three weeks to get back to this.

Meanwhile, I'll probably forget to listen to Kate Bush somewhere around December the fifteenth.