Pulling plug on awful Christmas smalltalk
Oh, it’s so commercial. Oh, sprouts are revolting. Oh, those terrible e-cards. Oh, be quiet, all of you, says Giles Coren.
Christmas is upon us and I am by no means sick of it yet. Not quite. But I’ll tell you what I am sick of. And that is the same old boring Christmas conversations brought down from the attic, dusted off and hung on me like I’ve never had them before.
At office parties and neighbours’ drinks, on radio phone-ins and down the pub, it’s the same every year. Nobody ever says anything new.
So this year I decided that I would not stand for it. I did not engage in a single boring conversation about Christmas. And I gave short shrift to the people who tried.
Q: Have you noticed Christmas seems to come earlier every year?
A: Nope, got it down here in my diary on December 25, same as always.
Q: Isn’t it a shame that Christmas has become so commercialised?
A: Actually, it hasn’t. People spend a smaller percentage of their accrued annual income on Christmas presents and catering now than at any time since the dawn of money. Christmas has never been less commercialised. It’s just that the world is increasingly commercialised and Christmas happens in the world, so you notice it more and you are too boring to have altered your festive conversational gambits in 30 years.
Q: Are you going to be in London for Christmas?
A: Yes, of course I’m going to be in London for Christmas. Where do you think I will be? At the family pile in Gloucestershire, wearing a green gilet and walking rare mastiffs with congenital ear defects that can be traced back to a single hound in the margin of the Bayeux Tapestry? I am a Londoner. My mother lives in London, my sister and her husband live in London, my wife is from London and her parents live in London. So we will be in London, where we live. Is that OK with you?
Q: Isn’t it a shame that so many people send electronic Christmas cards these days? They just don’t have the personal touch.
A: Yeah, and it’s a shame we have telephones and televisions and we don’t all sit around reciting poetry to each other in the evenings. But at least in return there’s penicillin, eh?
Q: But you can’t string up an e-card on the bookcase for a festive adornment, can you?
A: Hey, if you’re too mean to buy actual Christmas decorations maybe you should think about not celebrating it at all. And anyway, ‘‘bookcase’’? What is this, an episode of Cash in the Attic? Rip it out, woman, and put in a wall-size flat screen like everyone else.
Q: Don’t you feel like getting away somewhere warm for Christmas?
A: Are you mad? Christmas comes but once a year and you do it at home, with your family, unless you are a total psychopath. Why would you want to be somewhere hot when we all know that Christmas is a cold festival and always has been, ever since the lickle baby Jesus was born in a shed in a snowstorm in the land of Israel and the Three Wise Men plodded through the snowy desert on their camels and all the cattle were lowing in the icy Middle Eastern fields?
Q: I hate sprouts. Everybody hates sprouts. Isn’t it funny how ... A: Shut up. Q: In Europe they celebrate on Christmas Eve, which is much more sensible because . . . A: Shut up. Q: Modern Christmas telly is so crap, isn’t it? Not like the good old days with the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special.
A: Actually, I had a Christmas Special on the day before yesterday on BBC Two, called The 12 Drinks of Christmas, co-starring my brother-in-law Alexander Armstrong. Didn’t you see it? We were at least as good as Morecambe and Wise. Everybody said.
Q: Aren’t modern toys awful? All this plastic tat they expect you to buy. When I was a kid what I cherished most was wooden toys.
Q: (a) No you didn’t, not unless you are more than 100 years old, or Amish. And (b) Go on then, buy your kids wooden presents. And watch them, literally before your eyes, go online, join some evil child-grooming paedo website and start looking for a new ‘‘daddy’’.
Q: Don’t you hate these PC cards we all have to send now, which say ‘‘Season’s Greetings’’ or ‘‘Happy Holidays’’ instead of ‘‘Happy Christmas’’ for fear of upsetting some carpet-kissing budbud?
A: Ah, Mr Farage. We have been expecting you.
Q: Wait a minute, Giley. You’re Jewish. Do you even celebrate Christmas?
A: Of course I celebrate Christmas. Jews love Christmas. All that shopping and eating and arguing and crying and all the glitter and tacky decorations. It’s what we do best. In fact, the adjective that best describes Christmas in any language is the Yiddish word, ‘‘sprauncy’’. Some Jews may observe Chanukah for old time’s sake, but it is Christmas they love. For it is the spraunciest day of the year. Q: Do you have a tree? A: Of course we have a tree. If we didn’t have a tree, the neighbours might realise we are Jews. Growing up in a suburb of London that my father called ‘‘Cricklewood’’, but which was really a no man’s land between Hampstead, Hendon and Golders Green, with possibly six Jewish homes for every Christian one, my father used to point out the incredible density, size and spangliness of the Christmas trees, compared with more goyishe postcodes and say: ‘‘The bigger the Christmas tree in the window of a house, Giles, the more certain you can be that there is a Jew inside.’’
Q: So will you be going to church on Christmas morning?
A: Don’t be ridiculous. I’m a Jew.