It’s good to see Pope Benedict XVI attack the commercialisation of Christmas during his Christmas Eve Mass. “See through the superficial glitter of this season,” he said, before adding “and don’t forget to visit the gift shop on your way out for a great 2-for-1 Christmas offer on Pope tea towels…”
I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry Christmas!
Alastair
2009 will be remembered for a lot of events. The inauguration of the first black American President, the death of a pop icon; Michael Jackson, and the worldwide spread of an infectious contagion that originated from a porker… no, not swine flu. SuBo (Susan Boyle).
Not only is it the end of the year, it’s the end of the decade – a period in which the phrase “I’m going to play with my wee (Wii)” became a normal thing to say, rather than something to be immediately sectioned for.
It’s now time to look forward to the new decade and that means the usual new year rituals. So, are you going out with friends, staying in with family, hosting a party, joining a party or burgling the houses of those people who are out celebrating? Here are the options, laid out: Continue reading
Some people do it in January. Others leave it until much later in the year. No, I’m not talking about the shameful breaking of New Year’s Resolutions. It’s Christmas shopping. You can certainly tell it’s Christmas. The women featured on the covers of men’s magazines are all wearing red thongs… 
What is it with Christmas shopping that makes it become such excruciating torture? Never mind about jail sentences for convicts, send them out with a difficult Christmas shopping list on December 24 instead. That’ll sort them out.
Perhaps those traumatic feelings are caused by the way in which the festive season has been taken over by retailers; continually pushing their Christmas offers in our faces from as early in the year as possible. “There are only 242 days of our Christmas sale remaining…” Continue reading
At a time when they’re saying that Father Christmas is too fat and that Sex Makes Men Healthier, surely it’s time for Santa to put two and two together and get himself a partner? It’s certainly not the time to be discussing unhealthy, fattening Christmas dinners. Or is it?
I was chatting with a friend of mine about Christmas dinner and he mentioned the idea of making a ballotine. “What the hell is a ballotine?” I asked him. He explained. “A ballotine is a multi-bird roast.” The most common type of ballotine in the UK is called a turducken. To make one, you stuff multiple birds (ooh-err missus), one inside the other, before cooking. As an alternative, if you use a Goose in your turducken, instead of a Turkey, it’s called a gooducken (I’m glad there’s no ‘f’ in the middle there).
All of this got me thinking, in my usual mischievous way… Continue reading
I saw this on another blog and thought I would share it. Jonathan Macdonald decorated his house with this brilliant Christmas creation this year. However, it proved rather controversial and he had to take the fake man down after only two days. The most impressive incident occurred when a 65 year old lady picked the ladder up (weighing 35 pounds) and attempted a dramatic rescue. It was only when she got to the top of the ladder that she realised that the body was fake. I bet Jonathan was wiped from her Christmas card list after that.
So, what does Christmas mean to people? As a festive experiment, I used the information provided by Wikipedia’s Christmas article to produce this . By inputting the text into the fantastic tool at http://www.wordle.net, I was able to produce a tree shaped word cloud. I then used some basic Photoshop Christmas artistry for extra effect.
The more frequently a word features in the Wikipedia Christmas article, the more prominently it appears in the tree.
The Nutz Christmas Word Tree
The Christmas Word Tree