Photo credit: Jerrold

This year, I’ve decided not to buy any Christmas cards. Instead all the money which I would have spent on them will instead be put into a special fund which will be kept until the end of the year, and then I’ll go down to BoozeBusters with the lot and get as many bottles of Diamond White as the money will stretch to, and get absolutely papered on it on New Year’s Eve.

Oh yes, and I’m also not buying any Christmas presents either; I’ve got a fair number of family and friends to not buy Christmas presents for, so all in all by selflessly not showing my generosity towards them I’ll be able to go out and buy that iPad in the Apple store I’ve had my eye on for the last few months.

Of course, that isn’t really true; I will of course as with every year try to send some Christmas cards to my friends who I won’t have seen for at least a few weeks beforehand, and as many of my Christmas presents as feasible will be bought from the We Are Birmingham shop.

I do get fair irritated every year though when my friends give presents of A Goat For Africa. I consider this the ultimate in tight-wad charity donation, and middle-class guilt salving; it’s tight-wadded to the charity concerned, and it’s tight-wadded to one’s friends – and the ostentatious nature of it flies completely in the face of the spirit of charitable giving. If you want to give a goat to Africa, just give a goat to Africa – don’t give a goat to Africa on my behalf – I might not want to give a goat to Africa. The particular African nation you’re giving a goat to might have particular human rights policies which I find totally abhorrent – how dare you ‘force’ me to support that regime by ‘giving me’ such a gift? I might have preferred to have received a water well for Afghanistan for all you know. Or, indeed, a new MRI scanner for Selly Oak Hospital. But not the military wing.

If you don’t want to buy me a present, or give me a Christmas card – for whatever reason – well hey, that’s cool, really; I’m honestly not expecting anything off you, I don’t sit there every Christmas Eve night making a list of all the presents and cards I’ve received ticking them off against all the names of people I might have sent out, in order to decide who to send or not send to next year; I, like most people, stopped thinking in those terms when I left primary school.

In a similar box I put the “let’s not spend a great deal of money on proper presents, let’s just give each other token ‘fun presents’, in order to demonstrate our opting out of the gross commercialisation of a religious festival and to help Save The Planet” attitudes. No! I only want to give proper presents (and a proper present doesn’t have to cost an awful lot of money – there’s plenty of fine art and craft work available for under £10 at the We Are Birmingham shop), presents which I’ve thought about and which I hope the recipient will appreciate. A ‘token fun present’ isn’t a rejection of commercialisation, it’s the complete opposite – to buy a lot of nasty plastic tat from  B&M Bargains or Wilkinsons, which probably won’t even work and almost certainly even if the Santa With The Big Cock does work will end up in the bin three hours later is about as buying in to commercialisation as it’s possible to get; it’s buying unnecessary rubbish which has cost more in its environmental impact than its price, and has nothing to do with the loving spirit of giving that lies at the heart of winter festivals the last 10,000 years.

So please – if you want to give to charity this Christmas, then by all means give to charity. But don’t pretend you are giving to your friends in the process. Why not give to charity and give to your friends, and show how truly generous of spirit you are?

I am continually fascinated that the term Winterval, ever caused (and still does) such a furore.

Quite simply, as Head of events at that time, we needed a vehicle which could cover the marketing of a whole season of events – Diwali (festival of Lights), Christmas lights switch on, BBC Children in Need, Aston Hall by Candlelight, Chinese New year, New Years eve etc. Also a season that included theatre shows and open air ice rink, Frankfurt open air Christmas market and the Christmas seasonal retail offer. Christmas, called Christmas! and its celebration, lay at the heart of Winterval.

Political correctness was never the reasoning behind Winterval, but yes it was intended to be inclusive (which is no bad thing to my mind) and a brand to which other initiatives could be developed as part of The Winterval offer in order to sell the City at a time when all cities are competing against each other for the seasonal trade.

Read the rest of his explanation on Andy’s blog!

As we all know, the story’s claim about

“The increasing external pressures to secularise Christmas and even the attempts to rebrand it as ‘Winterval’”

is, of course, a plate of steaming prairie oysters:

“The council had drawn particular attention to the city’s Anglican cathedral during the festival by placing Christmas lights in the trees around the building, and the greeting “Happy Christmas Birmingham” hung in large lights over the main entrance to the Council House as it had done every other year”.

Tip to Andy Mabbett for the spot

I was drawn to this news item by John Humphries foaming at the mouth on the Today programme at how terrible it is that Harrods has opened its Christmas shelf in the middle of August, 138 days before Christmas. Boy, was he foaming.

The thing is, whereas I might vaguely acknowledge They have grounds to moan on the general point (although I do wonder why They seem to let it spoil their day so), I think the complaint against Harrods was just plain stupid.

Let’s examine the points, shall we?

• Harrods is, basically, a tourist shop, selling tat to tourists,
• The height of the tourist season in London is August,
• Tourists by and large like to buy presents for the folks back home,
• People generally like to buy Christmas presents for people,

So is it any surprise that Harrods launches its Christmas range in August?