XS Xmas Rant

It's Xmas Eve, and I've just had a rant. I hate Xmas, I always have done. I don't have happy memories, I don't have good feelings about it. I rant about Xmas, nor about Christmas. I rant about the puke, the excess, the overeating, the overspending, the obscene bonhomie that is Xmas. It's trashy, it's vulgar, it's meaningless. It's used by brexiters, right wingers and fascists as part of their 'cause'. 
Gifts: a nasty, meaningless ritual, when unwanted items are received by ungrateful recipients. It's so bloody patriarchal, reflecting a time when father controlled the purse strings, and condescended to reward wifey with a gift. My father did that, overspent on Xmas Eve, going into Marshall and Snelgrove in a late rush, while I sat outside in the car waiting. It didn't matter what he bought, as long as it was a luxury item and it cost a lot. My mother always gauged presents by how much they cost: the more they cost, the more love they represented.  What did we get? Utterly forgettable stuff like clothes from Gerald Stuart, mam's favourite shop where she had an account and paid Ron weekly when he came round. Over the years I saw gifts at my sister's, when her six children received masses of presents, and then we would watch as in the course of just a few hours they were discarded and broken. Nowadays Xmas is epitomised for me by mothers struggling down the High St shlepping huge yellow bags from Argos  carrying overpackaged crass toys for their children—or is it the small expensive box containing an iPhone from the Apple store?
Xmas cards: luckily these have declined, as postage cots so much and the postal service is less used. The cards we receive tend to contain just a name or two, and you wonder why they bothered to spend all that money on trashy bits of paper that look awful when displayed, but displayed they are, like trophies declaring how much you are loved. Then at the other end are those cards that contain two sides of A4 of the year's news, wonderful holidays in exotic places, children doing amazing things, illnesses conquered. They used to be wonderfully mocked by Simon Hoggett in the Guardian, who pointed out how they proudly trumpeted Tarquin's level 6 trumpet exams, and Cressida's ballet tests, but fell silent when they dropped out, got tattoos and ran off with the circus. Twenty-five years ago I designed and printed my own Xmas card, more a political manifesto, that I think was called 'Bugger Xmas!'. It was my first rant on this theme.
Food: so much of it, and so much of it disliked and unwanted. I know that next week millions of pounds worth of unwanted food will be wasted and thrown away. Millions of sprouts will decay unloved, tons of loaves of bread will be untouched. There will be too much food, and there will be inappropriate food. So much sugar, so much nibbly trash, so many yucky pigs in blankets, stollen bites and all the other yucky stuff we are supposed to enjoy, but in such quantities it is impossible not to feel poisoned. Another mince pie! another slice of Xmas cake blanketed in a thick layer of pure sugar! Most of that gets thrown away too.
Alcohol: perfect for deadening the pain of Xmas. We received delivery yesterday of TWO cases of wine for our next-door neighbour. I remember going into my office in December, next door to a nightclub, and stepping over the pools of puke. But it's Xmas! Time to enjoy, to relax, to let your hair down, to drink sherry, spirits, wine, beer, anything that the traditional English Xmas demands. (Don't get me started on ranting against Scottish Hogmanay.) So enjoying Xmas includes, of necessity, not just overeating food you don't want, but overdrinking, in the name of jollity and happiness.
Family get togethers: one of the most unpopular parts of Xmas, the enforced cooping together of people with a tenuous bond so that, like trapped rats, they end up at each other's throats. So the murder rate and divorce rate between spouses spikes over Xmas. And 'family': that nasty, exclusive concept, where wannabe matriarchs force their children and grandchildren to cluster round them, carefully excluding single, divorced, gay people out of this tight fold. For a month people are asked 'Are you ready for Xmas?' as if it were the biggest challenge facing mankind. Serve up a bloody meal, for God's sake. Admittedly that's something most people are no longer able to do. And the massive social pressure builds up and up. Watch the adverts on commercial television for just five minutes in December to make your jaw drop in horror at the expectations.
Once I left home I was happy to avoid Xmas and ignore it. I spent one Xmas day alone in Bideford—achieved by lying—and as it was warm and dry I painted the back windows. I loved it. I can well enjoy my own company. For a few years we did 'do' Xmas, for the sake of our parents. Then one Xmas I was struggling with a slipped disk, using a walking stick, and my wife was ill with herpes, but we had to soldier on, running a mini-country house hotel, so that afterwards I swore 'never again!' and for many years we reverted to a quiet Xmas with a low-level celebration: a nice Xmas meal, eventually with guests. The first guests were colleagues from work. We still invite 'outside' guests to break the stranglehold of the closed family Xmas that I find so objectionable.
I do have some good memories. When I was very young, before my grandmother died when I was ten, we received a parcel each year from Italy, which contained a small gift for each of us, and special Italian Xmas foods: panettone, an unheard of and expensive luxury in 1950s England, panforte, torrone, zampone and other stuff. There was always the terror of seeing what had been stolen by English customs, but usually it wasn't more than a couple of items that had been filched. I recall a Xmas at my English grandparents on the farm, when we went to Okehampton and bought a small gift for everybody: a tea mug, for example, from the hardware shop. My strongest memory is of playing a card game called Newmarket with piles of old pennies. Twenty-five years ago we spent Xmas at my grandfather's in Italy, when my aunts and uncles travelled to join us, and we enjoyed a meal together—I think it was a roast rolled fillet of beef—and we exchanged small gifts. We bought my grandfather a smart, silk tie. 
Sometimes in recent years we enjoyed being in Trieste before or over Xmas, but over the years that began to subtly change. Instead of Alpenhorn playing traditional tunes, their replacement one year was American Xmas music, trashy stuff, even trashier than the  awful English Xmas carols that were relentlessly pumped out by Classicfm radio every December. Admittedly, Xmas shopping seemed to be still restricted to one week before Xmas, Xmas cards hardly existed, and the traditional food stayed traditional: presnitz and putizza being the local treats to supplement the ubiquitous panettone.
I have taken a lot of stick over the years from people who just don't get what I'm saying, that think I'm bitter and twisted, that think welcoming the baby Jesus is just lovely, and there's nothing wrong with a bit of fun, relaxing and getting together. Feel free to enjoy it your way, but please have the grace to accept that not everybody feels the same, nor wants to. I feel the same about drugs, about cars, about Jane Austen, about Downton Abbey, about Brexit, about package holidays and several other things. They're not for me. There are things that I love that I'm sure you wouldn't. I won't force them down your throat. Let's leave it at that.