The Campbell Academy Blog | Colin Campbell (70)

Done with Xmas yet?

Every year, it seems Christmas gets harder for everyone except for those under the age of 10.

It moves faster and faster through December with more and more opportunities to meet people, socialise, and go out for celebrations of something. The reason for which we were celebrating was long forgotten.

We have more gifts to buy, cards to write, people to contact, more presents to receive, more presents to give, all of these different things, but the amount of intensity of our work and our other activities is still the same.

For many of us, our waistlines start to expand because we eat shit that we would never otherwise countenance eating on a day-to-day basis, and then we feel that the sensation of being overfull with the wrong type of food is some success at this time of year.

I think this has gotten worse and worse for many people over the years, and previously, I thought it was just me.

I remember taking a photograph some years ago of all the Christmas trees in a skip at the dump on about the 6th of January and wondering what the point was of having all those things shipped from Scandinavia for a couple of weeks, after which we just chuck them away and are in misery throughout January because we're too fat and too hungover and it's too dark.

And then I got told off by everybody for being miserable and anti-Christmas, and I'm not anti-Christmas in any way.

But I'm writing this on the 15th of December, and what I think about Christmas now is that the next ten days before Christmas should be a lovely time where it gets slower and slower to the point where the whole country (or almost the whole country) actually stops for a little while.

Emails don't come in, contact doesn't happen, there is nobody rushing about to work or nobody on the roads.

It is the most beautiful time both in terms of the fact that people celebrate family more than at any other time of the year, you see your friends, you talk to each other and are pleasant to each other in a way that you don't tend to be universally at other times of the year.

But the problem now is that we run so hard to get to that point this year, likely five pm on the 22nd of December, that by the time it reaches Christmas weekend, most of us are either busted or have a to-do list so great for the final two days before Christmas there is no enjoyment there at all.

Maybe it's just time to scale it back and see what other things we'd like to do in this break, just two or three things: ride a bike, have a nice meal with family members, go for a walk or sit together and watch a movie that we'd never otherwise have watched and just cast aside all of the excess and the nonsense and the craziness which is driving everyone demented, at least everyone I seem to see around me.

Happy Christmas.

Here's my gift to you for Christmas: The Wombats.

One of the best Christmas songs ever.