My Hero!
Like all intelligent people, I greatly dislike Christmas. It revolts me to see a whole nation refrain from music for weeks together in order that every man may rifle his neighbour’s pockets under cover of a ghastly general pretence of festivity. It is really an atrocious institution, this Christmas. We must be gluttonous because it is Christmas. We must be drunken because it is Christmas. We must be insincerely generous; we must buy things that nobody wants, and give them to people we don’t like; we must go to absurd entertainments that make even our little children satirical; we must writhe under venal officiousness from legions of freebooters, all because it is Christmas – that is, because the mass of the population, including the all-powerful middle-class tradesman, depends on a week of license and brigandage, waste and intemperance, to clear off its outstanding liabilities at the end of the year.
– George Bernard Shaw
Posted on December 25, 2007, in christmas. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
niq's soapbox 
Bah, humbug to you too! Enjoy your day off. 😎
Nice lines from Mr Shaw as always – and I guess the rampant consumerism of Christmas is even worse now than it was in his day. Still, it’s enjoyable to have a few days off work, and overspending and overindulgence are not compulsory – even in Gordon Brown’s wonder world – not yet anyway.