Is divorce preferable to listening for the millionth time to ‘I saw mummy kissing Santa Clause’? Oh no it isn’t! Oh Yes it is!

For more than half a century now I have listened to Jingle Bells, Away in a Manger and Slade doing 1973’s Merry Christmas.

Sadly though, old Noddy screaming like a Brummy rat up a drain pipe “Merreeeeeee Chriiiiiiiistmassss!” has totally lost its charm for me.

I just don’t like it…

But by God am I attacked, berated and insulted for unwrapping my festive peccadilloes!

YES! And all because it’s f*!king Christmas, the season of goodwill to all men.

Well, I’m a man!

What about good will to me?

Do, you know, I’ve even been driven to suggestions of divorce because of the inane copycat second-rate crass pop rip-offs of Phil Spector’s magnificent Wall of Sound.

I am heartily sick of hearing Gregg Palmer sonorously ploughing his way through the jingling bells of 1974’s I Believe in Father Christmas and Mariah Carrey’s risible All I Want for Christmas is You from 1994.

And what about Bing’s White Christmas from 70 years ago? It was, I’m sure very good indeed way back then, homely and warm and charming in the battle-riven era of the early 1940s.

Even I liked it a bit in the Sixties, and I tolerated it in the 70s, viewed it as a charming relic in the 80s, got a bit bored with it in the 90s and tried to ignore it after the turn of the century.

Then in a paranoid way I began to feel personally insulted by it during the last ten years of hearing it over and over.

Over and over.

Over and over.

Seriously, am I wrong? I ask you, am I wrong?

But I get attacked by my wife in my locked-down penthouse apartment above the tinselly lights of Slovakia’s mountain city of Poprad – and then face a pincer movements by friends in the Covid-safe green tents that have replaced the snug bars and restaurants we used to meet in.

Do you know, in the bleak mid-winter last year I actually heard Please Come Home for Christmas by the Eagles being played at a funeral parlour where the painted face and bleached-out body of my friend lay. That was followed by Merry Christmas Darling by the Carpenters …

And at his funeral they played Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.

A few days before his death the poor chap – in his 70s – had to suffer Do You See What I see?

I believe he had been Christmas-songed to death.

Here are the festive songs which dominate playlists across the Western World: Stay Another Day – East 17, All I Want For Christmas Is You – Mariah Carey, Last Christmas – Wham!, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Darlene Love, White Christmas – Bing Crosby and Fairytale of New York – The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl.

And there lies rub… it is the grand old museum to moronicism, the BBC that’s losing me wives left right and centre, family, friends and sanity.

Yes, let’s put blame where blame lies … it is the mindless, moribund cynicism of the Christmas List compilers at the smug twee BBC that are driving me to distraction and making me hate what was once the celebration of an inspirational life.

The Bible may be a mythology but it’s a mythology intended to take us to a higher place – not to Heaven 17.

So, where do the fabled fantasy delights lie in John Denver’s Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk on Christmas), Maroon 5’s Happy Christmas (War Is Over) and Justin Bieber’s Mistletoe?

They should drive you straight to the pub, but you can’t even escape there because of lock down… unless of course you indulge in a mince pie and a Scotch egg when that obviously go very well with a pint of bitter.

The Jackson 5’s I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus and Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmas Time should barely be allowed to claim airplay on an elevator. But they do because elevators are all over shopping malls all over cities all over the world.

We have two here in Poprad.

But then retailers have been using Christmas to get us to spend money for centuries. So, when did the tragic tradition of screaming like Noddy “Only 300 shopping days left til Chriiiiiiistmaaaaaaas” begin?

Well, Stephen Nissenbaum, author of The Battle for Christmas, says that a crucial shift happened when the festival became a domestic occasion, centuries ago.

And when Clement Clarke Moore wrote “’Twas the night before Christmas”, almost 200 years ago, he was glossing over the hell that New York was, streets patrolled by gangs of yobs. Moore wanted to evoke a quiet stay-at-home family Christmas with not a creature stirring, not even a mouse.

The commercialism of the Coca-Cola Santa came about because of the retail revolution of the early to mid-19th century. Advertisements for Christmas presents appeared in the US in the 1820s, and Santa Claus himself was wholeheartedly endorsing products by the 1840s.

And so died the Christian story of salvation.

But right now we have a growing anarchy on our streets and this crass Christmas music has replaced the clarion cry of We Shall Overcome with the Do They know it’s Christmas?

We’ve all seen Covid deniers flinging away their Santa beard-like masks with revolutionary relish. We’ve all watched anti-vaxxers rioting on the street because they believe that Bill Gates is using vaccines to inject us all with micro-chips of control. And what about believers of the Great Trumpian dystopia who are waving guns in the faces of the good and honest and believing its all in the great battle for freedom of speech and spirit.

But what nobody seems to accept is that the Christmas playlists championed by the BBC and local commercial radio are the most mind-numbing, sheep-mentality creating, empty, lazy, thought-controlling unedifying way of separating you from your wife, your family, your wallet and your sanity ever invented by man.

Wait! Actually, I’ve just got it!

The anti-everything, Fake News believing brigade of new anarchists are behaving so badly because 30 days in jail is infinitely preferable to 30 days in your home being force-fed you All I Want For Christmas!

I rest my case.

Have a merry, happy, truthful lifetime with good music everybody!

.#BBc #playlist #christmassongs #eggnog