Christmas Survival By @TechnicallyRon
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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
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
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
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
Illustrations by our very own Blinker Nathan Balsom
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