I love Christmas. Andy Williams described it as the most wonderful time of the year and I agree with him. In the wet, windy wasteland that is the Great British winter, Christmas is the red and gold beacon that brightens the dark, cold south-west nights with goodwill and tat in equal measure. It seemed fitting, therefore, that I dedicate a blog post to my favourite things about Christmas before being plunged into the eventless, joyless, sunless black spot that is January–March. However, even I can't maintain an unfaltering level of festive spirit and Christmas cheer, and there are a few aspects of the holiday season that irritate me, so there are also a few things I hate to maintain a necessary equilibrium.
The food
If you're reading this blog you almost certainly know me and there's a pretty strong chance that you're related to me (shout out here to my biggest fans: my mum and my grandma). You will, therefore, know that my favourite thing to do in the entire world is eat and if there was ever a holiday dedicated to doing just that it is Christmas. It's not just the prodigious Christmas Day feast that I enjoy, although that is the juicy glacé cherry atop the huge, hyperglycaemia-inducing cake. It's Christmas Eve, Boxing Day, cooking for visiting family and friends, the endless supply of biscuits, the gourmet cheeses, the well-stocked wine rack, the cakes, the chocolates… What other time of year do we sell calendars that actively encourage daily chocolate consumption? None. Whatever Jesus may have thought of gluttony, for the secular foodie Christmas is a time for seeing how rotund one can become over the course of 5–10 days.
The extravagance
As evidenced by my extensive – at fifteen pairs, one could arguably say excessive – collection of leggings, I very much enjoy indulging in things that I don't need and can't afford. Christmas is the ideal time for this. Normally I would avoid forking out 75 Australian dollars (roughly £42) and having an item of clothing shipped from as far away from the UK as you can get without actually leaving the planet, or at least I would avoid admitting to anybody that this is what I did. My salary is designated for things that keep me alive like food, rent and utilities. Any leftover money is usually pumped into keeping my social life alive, and at the end of the month the scraps are usually so meagre that any notion of Urban Outfitters would be outrageously lavish. Enter Christmas money, which exists purely for pleasure. Pleasure, in my case, is importing shiny fabric from faraway lands or spending £100 on designer ankle boots.
This song
I love this song. I love it with all my soul. It makes me want to prance around my house throwing tinsel and glitter. It is completely impossible for me to listen to this song and be unhappy. If I could listen to it all year round without public ridicule I would. Fun fact: this is also officially the most fun song to play on a kazoo (if you can count what you do to a kazoo as "playing" it).
Perfume adverts are back
Specifically, this one. That stuff could smell of a rubber tyre burning slowly on top of a pile of long-dead rodents and you could still persuade me to buy it by having Gaspard Ulliel advertise it.
Time off work
I love my job but I'm still human. The prospect of ten days off in a row is a welcome prospect to anyone who doesn't work as a professional kitten cuddler. This year is particularly exciting for me as it's my first Christmas since leaving education, which means it's my first Christmas in around seventeen years that won't be ruined by the looming presence of the essays and exam revision that is being neglected in favour of a family Boggle tournament.
Christmas films and TV
Time off work
I love my job but I'm still human. The prospect of ten days off in a row is a welcome prospect to anyone who doesn't work as a professional kitten cuddler. This year is particularly exciting for me as it's my first Christmas since leaving education, which means it's my first Christmas in around seventeen years that won't be ruined by the looming presence of the essays and exam revision that is being neglected in favour of a family Boggle tournament.
Christmas films and TV
This isn't limited to the obvious festive flicks – it's a family tradition chez-Ball to watch the delightful and hilarious A Christmas Story every year – but also includes the not overtly Christmassy things that are shown on TV every year at the end of December. For me, this generally involves a lot of animation as I work my way through everything featuring Wallace and Gromit ever put to screen, Anastasia, the under-appreciated Disney classic The Sword in the Stone which for some reason reminds me of Christmas, and whichever Pixar feature is on the BBC that year (2014 was Monsters Inc.; this year I'm hoping for A Bug's Life).
Things I Hate
Feeling bad because I don't cry at the John Lewis advert
To clarify, I do quite enjoy the John Lewis Christmas adverts, as much as I can enjoy an advert designed to make me part with cash I don't have for things I won't even get to use (whoever said giving is better than receiving clearly only got shitty Christmas presents). I also recently cried while watching Lilo and Stitch in an emotionally fragile state, so my ability to be moved to tears by things that aren't real is certainly not in question. No John Lewis advert has ever reduced to me to tears, or even summoned a stronger emotional response from me than, "Aww, that's quite sweet." Mostly because it's an advert for a shop, not a documentary or a piece of art or a heart-breaking true account or anything one might find on a screen that could usually cause me to well up. The idea of actually going into a John Lewis store during the Christmas rush is more likely to bring me to tears than the advert trying to get me to do just that.
Mince pies
Making mince pies a staple Christmas treat merely encourages the false notion that raisins are acceptable. Don't even think about telling me that mince pies contain currants or sultanas, not raisins, because they're all the same and you know it.
Love motherfucking Actually
At some point in the early 2000s someone paid some of the UK's most likeable actors and Hugh Grant to form half-hearted attractions to each other on-screen. Here's the genius part: it's set in December so look how festive and adorable it all is! Snow! Christmas songs! London! Cute! Yay! Except, no, it's not adorable. It's saccharine and soulless and thoroughly irritating, all of which I could forgive of a by-the-numbers romcom if all of the characters (apart from Martin Freeman and the girl from Gavin and Stacy, whom I like) weren't either completely forgettable or intensely dislikeable. Here is a brief list of things I hate about Love Actually, and I really mean brief because I could rant about how much I hate this godawful piece-of-shit film for hours on end, and often try to but am stopped by friends who are more glad than I to suckle at the poison teat of Richard Curtis.
At some point in the early 2000s someone paid some of the UK's most likeable actors and Hugh Grant to form half-hearted attractions to each other on-screen. Here's the genius part: it's set in December so look how festive and adorable it all is! Snow! Christmas songs! London! Cute! Yay! Except, no, it's not adorable. It's saccharine and soulless and thoroughly irritating, all of which I could forgive of a by-the-numbers romcom if all of the characters (apart from Martin Freeman and the girl from Gavin and Stacy, whom I like) weren't either completely forgettable or intensely dislikeable. Here is a brief list of things I hate about Love Actually, and I really mean brief because I could rant about how much I hate this godawful piece-of-shit film for hours on end, and often try to but am stopped by friends who are more glad than I to suckle at the poison teat of Richard Curtis.
- The fact that Liam Neeson's advice to his ten-year-old kid who is "in love" is not, "Calm down; you are ten."
- Keira Knightley's husband's scumbag friend who casually tries to destroy a happily married couple and is rewarded with a kiss instead of told to leave and never come back.
- Bad things happen to Emma Thompson which is obviously not OK.
- Except they're not actually that bad, certainly not awful enough to write off the marriage without even attempting to salvage it, and we never get to see her and Alan Rickman trying to work it out because EW REALISTIC COUPLES FACING THEIR PROBLEMS LIKE ADULTS GROSS WHO WOULD EVER WANT TO WATCH SOMETHING LIKE THAT MORE CONTRIVED SENTIMENTAL DROSS PLEASE.
- Not only does the film insultingly try to convince us that two people who can't even speak to each other have fallen in love to the extent that they want to legally bind themselves together until one of them dies; we're actually expected to celebrate this staggering display of shallowness.
- Colin*'s stupid face.
- Colin's stupid personality.
- God, I hate Colin. I hope one of those hot American girls that the script presents him with as a reward for being an obnoxious, dim-witted misogynist gives him a particularly nasty STD. I would actually watch Love Actually 2 if it featured Colin dying of syphilis.
- Bill Nighy is the only person in this "romantic" "comedy" who is actually funny and he's not in it enough.
- The idea that Hugh Grant could convincingly play the UK's most important statesman.
- Everyone keeps making comments about how enormous Natalie is when she is clearly normal-sized. I can only assume that either the part was originally written for a chunky girl and when one wasn't cast they couldn't be arsed to change the script, or, what I suspect is the more likely option, the director thought that we are so clueless about human anatomy that we could be convinced that Martine McCutcheon is fat.
- 'All I Want For Christmas is You': the version sung by children that nobody asked for.
This is merely the snippet version of the endless problems I have with this film. If you would like the full, unabridged extended edition, simply suggest that we watch the film together.
*Colin the character, not Colin Firth. I have no problem with Colin Firth, apart from the fact that he agreed to be in Love Actually.
*Colin the character, not Colin Firth. I have no problem with Colin Firth, apart from the fact that he agreed to be in Love Actually.
