The season to be jolly?

I've just sat through the film Nativity! with the Hnaefs. The glum bloke from The Office gets back together with the Scottish woman from Ugly Betty while gap-toothed cherubs sing "street" Christmas songs and the posh kids are shown up. I'll be honest, I was already feeling a little queasy after two early mornings on the trot, and now I feel positively nauseous. Still, the little Hnaefs seemed to be all right about it, despite Hnaef insisting that Mary proves that women can stand alone and defiant in the face of an oppressive patriarchal society.

And I've heard three more examples of people using Fairytale of New York as a festive backing to their TV programmes and adverts. And I've had enough of it. And at some point I'm going to have to move fast before I get the self-satisfied, grinning, patronising, ain't-I-great face of Jonathan Ross all over my TV screen. And as if it's not bad enough that on Christmas Day we get The Snowman, I've heard today that they're making a sequel.

Well I've had enough. The Nativity is about a young, scared girl unexpectedly bringing the king of the universe into the mess of human existence. You can believe what you like about the Census, but it's undeniable that the birth was under the shadow of one of the most brutal, hateful empires the world ever saw.  That baby whose birth we so sweetly carol had 33 short years on this planet before he was brutally put to death by his fascist oppressors and their bloated, vicious puppets. The Fairytale of New York is about a drunk man dying, and remembering his junkie girlfriend. And 10 million turkeys have to die so we can all smother their meat in redcurrant jelly, because the meat's too dry to eat.

Christmas? Or, at least, the jolly, all-friends-together, everyone's got to be happy, New Scrooge on the Block Christmas where you all act like it's the end of the Christmas episode of Little House on the Prairie? You can keep it.

I'll just have the one glass of Hnaef's special Christmas Punch, then I think I'll be off to bed. I've had enough Christmas and it's not even Christmas yet.