Like flies to the proverbial dogshit, people are once again swarming over our high streets, in our stores, and are generally all over the place. It’s nigh on impossible to park in the city centre on the best of days, but now you have the world, his wife and their badly behaved bratty kids running around the place.<\/p>\n

Why? All because of a two week (well, two month) period of vapid commercialism loosely defined as ‘Christmas’, whatever the hell that is now. I staunchly refuse to bow to the whims of rampant consumerism – I’ve bought some small gifts for people I actually give a shit about, and everybody else can bugger off. Go away with your stupid Lynx gift sets, go away with your pointless Christmas Deals, take your Late Opening Hours and go back to where you came from. My old housemate’s moved to Japan, and they have the right idea – on December the 25th, everybody in Japan (bar ex-pats and Christians) will be doing what they usually do on a weekday, because they don’t celebrate Christmas Day. Sounds like an increasingly good idea.<\/p>\n

And why do perfume companies take it upon themselves at this time of the year to bombard us with inanely similar adverts for their ‘New’ fragrance, usually consisting of the following items merely Pick ‘n Mixed into one homogenous 30 second lump:<\/p>\n

\n
• scantily clad man\/woman\/both, writhing around like a snake that’s just been fed rat poison<\/li>\n
• a boat<\/li>\n
• a bigger boat<\/li>\n
• a hillside\/hilltop<\/li>\n
• waves\/ocean\/seaside<\/li>\n
• a big hotel room \/ house<\/li>\n
• other random expensive shit in-frame<\/li>\n
• occasionally, someone gradually removing items of clothing<\/li>\n
• wind machines<\/li>\n
• pointless dancing about in front of said wind machines<\/li>\n
• a Director who insists that there be camera shake “for artistic purposes”<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  Is it the same ad agency churning out all of the bollocks adverts we see each Christmas? It’s like they have an office Tombola at the end of October and they pick out which elements are going to appear in which order, then just stitch together the clips in iMovie with an 80s pop song over the top and a generic breathy voiceover. Bingo, now you want to buy this smelly toilet water! No I fucking don’t, get off my TV before I throw a bauble at the screen.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

  But do you know what REALLY winds me up about the Christmas period? No, of course you don’t, but you do now: it’s people who, for some reason, develop this bizarre urge to seek out ‘deals’, even if they’re actually only as good as a regular shop deal (or in some cases, far worse than a regular shop deal!) All sense leaves their brain at a rate of knots and they become obsessed with finding every single item marked “Deal” or “Christmas Bargain” or “Special Offer”. (Special Offers for Special People…) And why so MUCH? People don’t need all that stuff. Really, they don’t.<\/p>\n

  \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

  Most importantly though, when you’re out in town and you’re aimlessly meandering around in between one shop and the next – GET OUT OF MY WAY! I shouldn’t have to feed through traffic like motorcyclists do in long queues. Some people still have places to go to and things to do when they’re out and about, and you – yes, you<\/strong>, taking up the entire pavement with your crusty family, sauntering along at 5 miles a day – you’re not helping. Stay in lane! Ideally, walk as close to the road as possible at all times and pray that gravity (or a passing bus) does us all a favour. One of the only good things about this time of year is that they show classics like A Muppet Christmas Carol,which still makes me laugh even now. But on Channel Five, with yet more of those bloody perfume ads interspersed all the way through it! ARGH!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Christmas seems to trigger the Stupid Gene in the majority of our population, even though it’s increasingly becoming less about the sentiment and actual relaxation with your family and friends and more and more about just buying shit. But new stuff in itself isn’t that bad; why do I hate it so much? Let’s investigate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,10,12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poor-efforts","category-progressive-loss-of-faith-in-humanity","category-rampant-commercialism","category-the-general-public","category-the-proletariat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grumpychris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grumpychris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grumpychris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grumpychris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grumpychris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/grumpychris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20,"href":"http:\/\/grumpychris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/20"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grumpychris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grumpychris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grumpychris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}