'Tis the season to be jolly?

It is Christmas next week. Ho-hum, yawn, pass me the sleeping tablets and wake me up on the 27th .....

When people mention "Christmas", I am always reminded of the "Andy Williams Christmas Show" that the BBC used to import in the 1960s, and Andy singing the song "It's the most wonderful time of the year". All the references in that show to snow and reindeer usw, and then you remember that the show was recorded in Los Angeles where snow never falls!

Most wonderful time of the year? Not IMHO. The season to be jolly? Ditto.

As an atheist, the religious side of it is irrelevant to me, though rather like with Ramadan (another irrelevant celebration IMHO), I will happily let those who want to enjoy the event sensibly and in context, do so. The problem is just about everything else - the forced celebrations, the ridiculous excesses, and the way that much of the world is forcibly closed down for a protracted period.

In some places it is worse than others. In the UK for years now there have been no trains on December 25th and 26th. So you had better drive a car if you want to visit people who do not live locally - and you had better not drink and drive either! The Germans are, as ever (as might be expected!) more sensible about this - running a limited Bank Holiday schedule.

But the forced celebrations are really the annoying part. I recall one cynic remarking that Christmas is the time when people get together with others that they have not seen for a year and quickly realise why they did not want to see them for all that year!

In my eyes that piece of cynicism is totally and sadly accurate. The whole event also is overhyped, the expectations are far too great and the need to eat too much food, drink too much alcohol and all the other excesses that follow .... No thanks.

Since 1977 I have managed to avoid most Christmas gatherings, since 1991 I have avoided them entirely. My wife and I had a romantic candlelight dinner together a couple of years ago. Last year and this year she was and will be working (I also have an ambition, never to be fulfilled now, to be working in paid employment on December 25th!). That is as far as it goes or has gone.

There are some quite serious points here though. If you want to celebrate why does it have to be on any one day of the year? If you want to get together with your family and/or friends, why at this one particular time? And surely generosity is not, and should not be, limited to one small period of the year at the end of December!

As it is, it remains my view that far from being the most wonderful time of the year, it is actually the time when you see the very worst of people, behaving in a fashion that hardly does them credit. If you want to see the traditional "seven deadly sins" fully activated, there is no better time than this.

And excess also has its negative side. There is over the Christmas and New Year period in most countries across the Western world an upsurge in suicide attempts, whether successful or otherwise. People who are vulnerable are most subject to black and bleak moods during all the forced celebrations. For them it is anything but the season to be jolly.

And frankly I can understand why!