Celia Walden

Our satirical approach to seasonal joys is wearisome. Illustration by Laura Laine

Ask any expat what they miss most about Britain, and they’ll always say ‘irony’. That this trumps Fry’s Turkish Delight is a source of constant bafement to me. And, of course, it’s a lie: there is plenty of irony in LA – you just need to look for it in the right places. You won’t fnd it at the school gates, in the Pilates studio, or in your daily interactions with the Cofee Bean baristas, but late-night TV scripts, industry dinner parties and the speakeasy-bar fxtures of old Hollywood are full of it. You won’t fnd it at A-list award ceremonies (as Ricky Gervais knows only too well), in the Bloomingdale’s ftting rooms (telling your ‘fat cow’ of a girlfriend that she may need to size up as she winches her Barbie stats into a bodycon number may be de rigueur in Blighty, but in LA it is done at your own personal risk), and you certainly won’t fnd the Christmas period engulfed with it, as it is back home.

I’m not sure when we decided that the only way to serve up Christmas was to douse it in irony and light a match, but I’m fnding it wearing. ‘The holidays’, in LA, are a straightforward, sacred afair, festooned with heartfelt hydratedpolymer non-toxic snow. Until I touched down in London, I hadn’t seen a single ironic Christmas card, garish jumper, or bobble-hatted tongue-in-cheek carol singer. I hadn’t drunk satirical Stone’s Ginger Winebased cocktails or wry eggnog. ‘Are these ironic?’ you would do well to check with your host, as she hands round Jamie Oliver pigs in blankets (the ironist’s chef of choice) – ‘Only I’m on an irony-free kick right now.’ Lord knows, I have witnessed a couple lock leering lips beneath the mocking mistletoe to David Hasselhof ’s The Night Before Christmas, before going on, one assumes, to engage in ironic carnal relations in someone’s guest room. Quite what ironic sex looks and sounds like is anyone’s guess, but I’m guessing the nudges, winks and exclamations of ‘oy-oy’ are as big a passion-killer as the Rudolph socks kept studiously on throughout.

In the ofce Secret Santa and beneath the Christmas tree a whole host of gilt-wrapped facile ironies lie in wait. If you’re lucky, that bumper pack of Cystopurin could be yours. As long as your gift is vaguely insulting (or at least irreverent), chances are you’ve hit the right note. What you want to avoid at all costs is anything resembling sincerity. Up there with Christianity in embarrassment terms, sincerity is one of the things we strenuously try to drink, dance and ironise away over the Christmas period. Which is why we have no choice but to turn, en masse, into seasonal hipsters for the whole month of December. And why, since the 1980s is as far back as any hipster can remember – and, as a decade, synonymous with both bad taste and zany celebration – Christmas has become a kind of month-long ’80s karaoke night. Because it’s so much easier to enjoy the ofce party when howling out Last Christmas in an Ann Summers Miss Sexy Santa Dress. And as any hipster will tell you, overlay any ‘old-school’ celebration with enough irony and you do away with niggling British embarrassment entirely, freeing you up to the same childish enjoyment that once came so easily.

I’m not sure when we decided

that the only way to serve up Christmas was to douse it in

irony and light a match, but I’m fnding it wearing