Getting into the spirit of Christmas

Ah well, just over 10 days now and we will be wondering what all the fuss was about.

We will have had the obligatory panics about what to get Aunty Nelly and where the address book was, why the Christmas Letter (Edited to show how bloody clever our family is and how much better holidays we have than the plebs we are sending it to) will not fit the bijoux cards from the specially selected charity to show we care, the Christmas stamps will have been bought and the cards will have gone into the post box by 6pm Christmas Eve.
The panic buying at Asda will have provided us with enough food to solve the food shortages in Africa for three years, feed all the homeless in London for the next generation and still have enough left over from Christmas and Boxing day to bin when it grows mould.  We will also have enough booze left in the house to keep Newcastle paralytic for three days!

The presents will be opened and the sweater from Auntie Mavis mentally consigned to the homeless, the inevitable three or four Boots Special Packs of Aftershave fit to dip sheep, a razor that has replacement blades made (Judging by their price) by NASA for hirsute spacemen attempting a voyage to Mars, and a body spray that can down a hornet at 50 metres and doubles in tropical climes as DDT, travel bag with a zip that will fail the first time it is used in anger, all in a will be stacked in a neat pile by each "man" in the house along with the joke socks and the magnetic compass car attachment given as a poundshop version of a SatNav by Granny who cannot be fucked to understand anything and is sure that everything costs the same as when that nice Mr Churchill was Prime Minister.
Mother will have slaved over a hot stove for about 5 hours slyly knocking back the Smirnoff Ice (Because she knows she is a trendy young thing despite the cellulite) and the odd glass of sherry, just to be sociable, as each of the guests has arrived.  Her guests will have settled down to some solid drinking as they demolish the snacks and salted nuts left out as "nibbles" along with anything else on the coffee tables and any other surface that little Alfie could find when asked to set them out (In four months time the ones on the mantelpiece will be discovered, along with a cure for Cancer in the mould, behind one of the Christmas letters).
Dad will have specially selected the wines from the finest in the BOGOF section of ASDA's wine section and is convinced that Scotsmac and Thunderbird are seriously under-rated by the wine buying cognoscenti - he will be into his seventh drink, "just to show willing!" and will be encouraging the children to "help your Mother" or to "offer everone another drink", from the security of his armchair as he wonders what is making the room spin and also why everyone looks at him strangely when he says something.

Christmas Dinner will have arrived on the table around five minutes before The Queen's Speech and the row with the Grandparents who complain every year at this very time that they "have never missed the Queen's speech!", will have happened while everyone is tucking in to the salmon mousse covered in smoked salmon that hotels can make divinely but when served at home tastes like you are eating someone's dressings at a particularly insanitary field hospital near Mogadishu.
Father will have shredded the Turkey in an attempt at carving in which he is an expert who clearly only needs to practice once a year, and everyone's plates will have been heaped in a burial mound shape which prevents landslips from occurring and then cleared with industrial efficiency by all assembled whilst the Thunderbird has been pronounced "a cheeky little vintage that creeps up on you with a sandbag after the fourth glass".

Finally the meal finished, a washing up pile that would make Sherpa Ten Sing blanch resting malevolently in the kitchen, several snoring corpses on the sofas and armchairs and  the telly showing yet another fecking  repeat of "The Great Escape", the house quietens, the Christmas lights flash sickeningly on the plastic tree and no-one will have noticed the hot plastic and Bakelite smell coming from the overloaded 3 way adaptors behind that tree.
Snogs will have been snogged under the artificial mistletoe, Uncle Ian will have told Aunt Betty "what a fucking whore" she was for shagging his best mate and then, correctly, expecting him to take her back when his best mate stayed with his wife, all the reindeer will be asleep in their North Pole stables with indegestion from a surfeit of carrots and millions of the lowest paid of our society will have set their Alarms for "Feckn Hell is it really Morning?" oclock so they can be behind their counters for the hordes going to the Boxing Day Sales.

We will all be broke, bad tempered, hung over, shagged out and vowing never again but will lose our resolve around the 15th November 2011 and do it all over again!!!!

Peace on Earth and Mercy mild!!

Ghenghis December 2010