Blink Publishing: 2015

Christmas Survival By @TechnicallyRon

01:26

Author of Life-Abet and Twitter funnyman @TechnicallyRon A.K.A Aaron Gillies has written our Christmas guest post. Here is his 6-Step Guide to Surviving a British Christmas.

Christmas in the UK begins in September. The supermarkets start selling Christmas-themed washing-up liquid, festive bleach and toilet paper with little snowflakes on it. It’s bloody awful. Like many aspects of modern society, it is easy to criticise, to scream into the internet that capitalism is ruining a holiday about a baby being born 2000 years ago. Capitalism ruins everything. In the last 2 weeks run up to this holiday of forced merriment, there are some steps you need to take to make sure you get through it in one piece.

Step 1: Preparation

When is the correct time to do your Christmas shopping? Who are you buying for? Are you getting something for your nephew you haven’t met since he was born in 1997? Are you expected to write cards for family members you don’t see, labouring over the meaningful message for them to simply look at it for two seconds before placing it in the bin? Are you emotionally stable enough to handle the high street? To go into the shops playing endless Christmas music, the staff behind the counter now having Vietnam-style flashbacks when ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ comes on the shop radio for the 60,000th time that day?

No.

You are not ready for any of these things. Treat everything like a Secret Santa. Get drunk, go on Amazon and hope for the best. Uncle David accidentally got a 3ft dragon dildo? It’s all about the thought.

Step 2: Logistics

Where are you spending Christmas this year? Are your family selfishly requesting your presence? Do you have to leave the comfort of your own home and stay in a house with 16 other people? How are you getting your gifts there?

There is nothing more dejecting in life than trying to navigate the 10.20am out of King’s Cross with 5 suitcases filled with scented candles and a dragon dildo.

My advice would be, rent a horse for the week, they can be found in posh stables or simply requisitioned from fields outside the M25.

Step 3: Bloody Hell

What is the appropriate amount to drink over the festive period? Are you meeting the in-laws for the first time?

Maybe the best first impression isn’t you banjaxed on sherry screaming the 12 days of Christmas into a sink as you evacuate turkey from your body. The key to Christmas drinking is a solid drinking plan. Bubbly prosseco-ey nonsense first, this is light, it’s basically sparkling water with child’s booze in it. Then wine with your meal, the vast quantity of food will soak up the fermented disaster you’ve just poisoned your body with.

Step 4: Rest

It is a British Christmas tradition that you must nap during Christmas day. All the gluttony and greed is tiresome, so in a post-munchfest-haze of gravy and mulled nonsense you must pour yourself into an arm chair, and attempt to sleep whilst children surround you and complain about your general state of apathy.

Step 5: Gifts

The best bit about Christmas is giving gifts. You sit on the corner of your seat watching in anticipation as your relative picks up the badly wrapped box you have decided to get them. You watch their face as they unwrap the packaging to expose a shoe horn or an egg scaler or a cucumber stripper or some such bollocks.

You observe their dejected face as they try to arrange a sentence in their head full of positive words. You have done well. You are proud. Now it is your turn to be the centre of attention.

Don’t over-emphasise the reaction, you can’t be too humble, and you can’t be too ecstatic. You have to display the exact amount of reaction the recipient expects.

You open your gift. It’s another cucumber stripper. You cheer as if you just received a cheque for £100million pounds. Your over reaction was not subtle.

Everyone hates you now.

Step 6: Disgrace

Once gifts have been exchanged, food annihilated and carpet slightly ruined from a misguided wine glass gesture you now simply focus on one thing. Drinking.

This drinking can take place whilst watching whichever station is showing E.T for the third time this year. This drinking can occur whilst the family start the inevitable board game which will result in a low level riot. All you know is that this is the one day in the year in which you are encouraged to drink. The drunk uncle keeps topping up your glass, the children don’t understand why you are now speaking in slurs and at the volume of a jumbo jet. But you have done well. You have survived. You have chased the cat into the Christmas tree and cheated your way through a game of Articulate. All that Boxing Day has in store for you is regret, shame and a hangover than feels like your insides are made of tinsel and your brain is covered in gravy.

Get more of these brilliant insights from @TechnicallyRon in Life-Abet: An A to Z of Existence