Not so much spring, more raging torrent. But before that, this.

There’s many, many things serially broken about Christmas. Not least because it’s become less of an excuse for your righteous atheist to tediously explain to anyone who isn’t interested how we’ve hijacked a pagan festival, and more because we’ve replaced any token interest in the birth of Christ with a full on worship of the great god Capitalism.

The shit we buy. The guilt we feel. The booze we drink. The food we stuff down our throats. It’s a gluttony love in swiftly followed by an orgy of self pity when we open the credit card bill, or stare through frightened fingers at the new digital scales some bastard relative thought we might find useful.

As a mast-nailedunbeliever, there’s somethingbeautifullyironic when to the God of Marketing the spoils, and to the being once held absolute the scraps. There’s a million people that do this argument better than I, and that’s fine because right now it’s missing the point by about 3 days.

21st December. Wintersolstice. Half way out of the dark. Sure our little storm tossed island is still mostly underwater andmeteorologicalevents suggesting the season handle has not yet been cranked over. Snow and ice have been replaced by wet and floods but – horrible as it is for those who have a holiday full of nothing but sandbags and insurance call centres – it’s atemporarything.

But before we feel even the suggestion of the season after this, there’s the brutal horror of January with its storms, new years resolutions, disappointments and reversions to the status quo, followed swiftly by the hardest monthbefore pre-summer arrives with the promise of dry and warm but generally delivers more of the endless damp. Especially if some media prick goes wild with the ‘hosepipe ban‘ angle. Cue Ark Building.

Christmas is a brutal prism on emotion; from joy to sadness, from rhapsody to dysphoria, from can’t get enough to can’t wait for it to end. All suffered under rain clamped skies,coopedup with those you love and those you really wish would just fuck off home. Don’t misunderstand ne here, it’s not a bad thing – spending time with your loved ones and quaffing guilt free booze never is – but save me from the bonhommie and banality.

Instead let’s look beyond Jan the First and accelerate from there. Because care as I don’t about some made up day when we we all go mad with ripping wrapping paper for ten minutes, I am deeply consumed by the chronological certainty that what we’re looking at here is not the onset of winter. Oh no, ladies and gentlemen let me welcome youfulsomelyto the countdown to spring.

And just to show I’m not a total Christmas Clampit, let me add this; for seven years I’ve been writing this shit. I used to think it was for the few people who took time to read it, but really it isn’t. If that was any motivation, I’d have stopped bloody ages ago. It’s for me to keep in practice. Because one day I’ll finally finish something started back in the era when hair, optimism, self belief, that kind of shit was common currency in my world.

Until then you’ll have to put up my random streams ofconsciousnessand lop eyed view on what’s important. Which I suppose means, for those long serving hangers on and occasional readers, I shall raise the predictable glass and wish you all Merry Christmas.

Best of luck with that 😉