The Newfangled Festive Spirit

As the big day draws near I'm trying to perk-up my Christmas spirit – as you can see, The Major has already found his.

Despite hating most traditional Christmas foods and being non-religious, I've always loved Christmas - for me it's about family and tradition. Every year in the run-up to Christmas I start re-watching my large and somewhat embarrassing Christmas film collection and planning our annual Christmas party.

This year's “Echo Christmas” managed to avoid the ridiculously repetitive playlist we created on Spotify last year, instead opting for background sounds courtesy of music channels with Christmas shows. Momentarily stopping between putting batches of snack foods in the oven, I was disturbed to see what had been deemed “Christmas music” - Rockin' Robin seemed to have been replaced with amusing 80s ballads and one-hit-wonders.

As the night progressed, a monumentally unfestive discovery was made – something that managed to slip me by at the time of release. The video below is likely to cause children nightmares and make it very difficult for Santa to delivery presents:

Several days later and we're browsing through TV channels, shocked to discover the so-called “Christmas Channel” is showing Predator followed by Piranha. This year feels distinctly unChristmassy, despite my best-efforts. I've even over-heard people in the hairdressers talking about a local library banning the term “Christmas Tree” and using “Festive Tree” instead, deeming it to be less “offensive”.

With music channel playlists avoiding Christmas tunes and the designated TV Christmas channel showing slasher-flicks, it's no wonder I've lost that festive feeling. It's lucky Lonely Island are on hand to remind me about the spirit of giving at Christmas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZLIQodHaFk

And if like me, the video on the above link is enough to make you chuckle, then you may also perhaps enjoy two more particularly entertaining Lonely Island videos:

Perhaps, instead of searching for bad taste joke videos, I should get back to supping on vast amounts of mulled wine while wrapping presents and up my intake of Christmas classics like It's A Wonderful Life, Santa Claus: The Movie and Rare Exports.