Happy Christmas

Christmas is a time for most hypocrites to enjoy their biggest day of the year. Yaaaay.
We’ve finished the shopping. I hope. We once went to Morrison’s on Xmas eve….what a nightmare. If David Cameron was tied to a lamp post next to a bucket of baseball bats, I doubt the queues would be much different in length.
We will be having Christmas dinner at my sister’s. We’ve bought the crackers, they were £15. We could have bought a brace of turkeys for that. Turkey, that horrible dry meat, another standard lowering import from America, that has replaced the traditional goose or duck because they are cheaper to rear.
I don’t believe in God or Jesus or owt like that, I still have enough respect to capitalise them though, which I presume they should be…lol. Neither am I a traditionalist. I’m probably a hypocrite. An honest one. We had nasi goreng one year, it was the best Christmas dinner I’d ever had.
It has become too commercial. John Bishop got it right on Friday night when he said he bought a packet of 6 “Christmas Mince Pies” in mid October that had a “use by” date of 29th November “They’ll never even see an advent calendar, never mind Christmas…!”
My Dad’s nuts have gone soft as well. My Mum says she’d never noticed. CASHEWS….CASHEW NUTS. What is wrong with you people? Me Dad’s presents have gone up in the world this year, instead of socks, this year he has got a new dressing gown. And a 365 page block calendar with dogs doing stupid things, which comes naturally to most dogs anyway. Mum’s got some smelly stuff, Dove I think. And some other bits and bobs.
Mandarijn has got sod all. We once bought Anna in Holland, a packet of cat biscuits, put it under the tree and when we were handing our presents out, she sneaked under the tree and opened hers. Can cats read? I mean, she’s Dutch, the writing said To Anna, Happy Christmas (really), so not only could she read, she could read a foreign language.
They have a better way of opening the presents in Holland, someone goes under the tree, picks a present and hands it to whoever’s name it has on it. They open it, thank everyone, then do the same. It passes an hour or so and it is marvelously relaxing after a nice Christmas meal of zuurkool en witlofsalade (sauerkraut and chicory salad). Unlike the British and seemingly American rubgy scrum where a grands worth presents are opened, discarded and lost under a mountain of wrapping paper within a couple of minutes.
Happy Christmas from Mandarijn. And me.