Humbug!

Photo by zzathras777 under Creative Commons Licence

Because it was Christmas

An old joke, but a good 'un. Why couldn't Mary and Joseph find anywhere to stay in Bethlehem?

See post title for punchline.

Next week - Christmas Day - will be the final edition, but don't expect much from me and we'll get along famously.

This, then, is the last full post of Here Comes Christmas.

And it couldn't have happened without: The Anti Santa Liberation Army, The Christmas Resistance Movement, Disneyland, the North Pole, Starbucks, Costa Coffee, the Tweenies, Santa Claus, Fat Ninja, pinatas, the Criminal Records Bureau, Wikipedia, the TARDIS, the Netherlands, Sinterklaas, Zwarte Piet, Austria , Christkind, Julemanden, the Danish, Greenland, rice pudding, butter, Nisse, Coca Cola, Russia, the Iron Curtain, Commies, Chris Moyles, Leon Jackson, Leona Lewis, Leo, Mr Blobby, ,East 17, Michael Jackson, Spice Girls, Westlife, Louis “I Like It!” Walsh, Bob the Builder, Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman, Girls Aloud, Michael Andrews and Gary Jules, Band Aid 20, Shayne Ward, Scorponok, M.A.S.K., Action Force, G.I. Joe, Star Wars, meatball marinara, Toys R Us, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, WWF, Power Rangers, Biker Mice From Mars, Gameboy, Mario, Tetris, Buckaroo, Mr Pop, Guess Who, Pictionary, Monopoly, Cluedo, Etch-a-Sketch, Spirograph, Hungry Hippos, Operation, Polly Pocket, Lil Miss Make Up, Sylvanian Families, Barbie, Cindy, Trolls, Teddy Ruxpin, Pound Puppies, Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony, Pokemon, High School Musical, Thomas the Tank Engine (still chuffin'), Fifi and the Flowertots, Elmo, Doctor Who voice changers, Hannah Montana, Tim "Deathproof" Lethaby, The Muppet’s Christmas Carol, Jingle All The Way, The Snowman, Yogi’s First Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, Home Alone 1, 2, 3 and 4, Die Hard, Die Hard 2 – Die Harder, Ghostbusters, Trading Places, A Christmas Carol, Scrooged, Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, 101 Dalmatians, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Boris Karloff, The Poseidon Adventure, Gremlins, It’s A Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Black Christmas, The Nightmare before Christmas, Santa Claus: The Movie, The Santa Clause, Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 – Initiation, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, The Polar Express, Bad Santa, Fred Claus, Elf, Iron Man, Ernest Saves Christmas, Batman Returns, Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, Lethal Weapon, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, Love, Actually, Fargo, Star Wars Episove V: The Empire Strikes Back, 30 Days of Night, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Christmas Evil (aka Terror in Toyland, You Better Watch Out), Silent Night, Bloody Night (aka Night of the Dark Full Moon, a 13-year-old Queen Victoria, General George Washington, a meat tree, Ronald McDonald, Pauline Fowler, Left 4 Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Dead Set, Timmy Mallet, Robert Kilroy-Silk, Hennessy's limited edition cognac, Flawless, Cristal Rose Champagne, brown sugar, angostura bitters, a Cheeky Vimto, Haribo sweet ring, Atheists, The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (may his noodly appendage touch you), and a lot of other nonsense I can't be asked to source.

Finally, let us bow our heads, empty our minds and join together on December 25 to wish a very happy birthday to Father Christmas.

Until next year ... and HERE COMES CHRISTMAS 2: Son of Christmas.

Bit of a do ... and the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Photo by Johnbullas under Creative Commons Licence

Staring at the tubes of Anusol and Glemoroids in Boots got me thinking about deity worship the other day. No, I don't know why, either.

This reminded me of an internet phenomenon suited to pleasing put-out Atheists at Christmas.

Three years ago The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was born, crediting an invisible meatball-and-pasta bodied creature with creating the universe after heavily drinking.

The number of Pastafarians, or Spagnostics, in the world grows daily. They believe global warming increases in line with decreasing numbers of pirates, thought to be pioneers of peace.

May his noodly appendage touch you.

*

I expect we are all gearing up to our office Christmas parties.

A few years ago, reproduction giant Canon did a survey and found that emergency call-outs went through the roof to repair Christmas party-damaged photocopiers.

Aside from some embarrassing paper jams, engineers found a sleeping cat, a snake, a cheque for £6,000, a condom and even a sausage roll blocking copier chutes. What a party!

The office party is thought to date back to the hedonistic Roman times where they ate "without scruple".

Legendary parties have seen the West Wing of America's White House burn down while President Herbert Hoover smoked a cigar.

Good times!

Santa's dark, terrible secret

Digitally manipulated hoax by unknown author

Only three weeks left to C-Day.

This week is Santa's dark, terrible secret. A mystery so sinister only grown-ups can know it.

To stop curious under-10s (maybe a little older) from reading, this blog is going to be written in code.

Parents, final warning, this post is not suitable for the young, unless you want them knowing the truth about Mr Christmas.

Here's how to read from this point on:

Click here with your mouse and keep that button pressed.

Drag the cursor slowly down the screen.

You will end up highlighting the blog text. Do this until you get to Next: Bit of a do

Congratulations: you've learnt to use a mouse. Keep going.

Keep going.

Don't stop here.

If you're reading this, you stopped too soon.

OK, Santa's dark, terrible, forbidden secret is ... he's a time-halting reindeer-levitating alien from the same planet as Mork.

Only joking. He doesn't exist!

Despite my best efforts to keep Kringle's secret secret, there are some out there who scream it from the rooftops.

Wikipedia has a section on its Father Christmas page called the Deception Controvesy, which advises us not to buckle under society's expectation of handing all credit of giving your kid/s an amazing day to a fictional fat man.

This vicar got in trouble when he dressed as the big, red dude and told five-year-olds Santa was dead.

This website says if reindeers were to pull a sleigh weighing four times the weight of Queen Elizabeth through the skies, they would need 14.3 quintillion joules of energy - each - per second - and would meet fierce wind shear.

However, this would lead to deafening sonic booms and result in them being vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second.

On a more serious note, an 82-year-old agent of Santa died while handing out presents at a party, leading to some awkward questions.

And apparently Dead Letters' Offices across America get swamped with undelivered mail from kids addressed to the North Pole. Zip codes, people!

To finish, a selection of my favourite dead Santa headlines found on Google:

Santa Claus' Falls Dead; Children, Seeing, Weep

DEAD MAIL KEEPS POST OFFICE BUSY; Despite a Persistent Campaign to Induce Greater Care on the Part of the Public, Undeliverable Matter Fills Many Bags Daily Efforts to Reduce Carelessness. Twelve Bags Full Daily. Santa Claus's Address Known.(A nice, terse headline)

And finally: Arkansas Girl Asks Police Here: Is Santa Dead? Learns He's Not

Next: Bit of a do

Blame Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Photo by Nikita Kashner under Creative Commons Licence

"There was much rejoicing for London suburb resident one Christmas Day when Santa Christmas left the corpse of one Pauline Fowler beneath Albert Square's Christmas tree."

Christmas trees - pointless, aren't they?

According to that big, fat, bastion of knowledge - Wikipedia - we probably have King George III's wife Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to thank for the custom of putting bits of pointy hedge in our living rooms.

A 13-year-old Queen Victoria was most amused with the Royal family custom, which later became widely copied in 1832.

Another website credits the Christmas tree for defeating Hessian mercenaries 232 years ago in Trenton, New Jersey, America.

When the battle-hardened mercs caught sight of everyone's favourite have-a-go-fir during Christmas Eve, 1776, they became so home struck they abandoned their guard posts to eat, drink and be merry.

Then General George Washington rode in and slaughtered the lot of them.

Veering off slightly, a Manchester-based tabloid broke the "news" that science boffins had invented a meat tree.

This miracle of modern science bore grapefruit-looking pods that contained fresh beef - the answer to vegetarianism.

Shame it was all fibs.

And while veering off sharply towards lunacy, a plastic life size-replica of McDonald's cheery mascot, smiling clown Ronald McDonald, had to be cut from a noose hung from a tree in Billings, Montana.

Police were seen hauling the victim away from the scene, with Burger King Rules scrawled on to the hapless clown.

Of course, there was much rejoicing for local residents of one London suburb on Christmas Day two years ago when Santa Christmas left the corpse of one Pauline Fowler beneath a Christmas Tree in the middle of Albert Square.

Next: Santa Fraud

Christmas Day ... of the Dead!

Photo by Miyaoka Hitchcock under Creative Commons licence

"Do I write a blog, or go online as Captain Beefgun and spend the next 16 hours on a zombie kill kill faster faster shotgun-fest?"

Let's start with two apologies.

The first was the temporary death of my modem in Casa de Mat.

Despite a two-hour call of bad advice and misinformation from an Indian call centre, I breathed life anew in to it. That was Saturday lunchtime.

The second apology follows the first: why no blog until late Sunday?

It was zombies, you see.

Imagine it: you've done the impossible by making a modem work through sheer will power.

To celebrate, you go to the shop for a pastie.

On your way home you pass a computer game shop.

You pop in, pick up a few games, read their descriptions and browse the goods.

Then you see a box with a dismembered four-fingered hand on a green cover and the title Left 4 Dead written in blood.

Some genius has created a new game in the style of a zombie film that sees you logging on to the interweb and blowing away hordes of the undead.

So it's not surprising you leave the store with said game and a telling off for eating food on the premises.

Now, when I get home do I write a blog, or go online under the pseudonym of Captain Beefgun and spend the next 16 hours on a zombie kill kill faster faster shotgun-fest?

Which brings us to a third apology. HCC is all about Christmas, nothing more, nothing less.

And this week I was going to write about the harm Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz has done our carpets since year dot.

For that, tune in next week. This week it's zombies. Don't worry, they are relevant to Christmas.

George A Romero satirised capitalism in Dawn of the Dead with shopping mall-plauging zombies.

Charlie Brooker resurrected this idea in the recent Dead Set by imagining a Big Brother audience as a mass of braindead scum.

And is not Christmas the time your brain dribbles out of your ears and eyes from overexposure to that advert with the jingle "Holidays are coming" and "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"?

Shoppers hand over their credit cards in exchange for £4.99 brain teasers, the 2009 AA road map and other stocking fillers.

Pure brown crap swamps our TV sets in the form of X-Factor and Timmy Mallet bullying Robert Kilroy-Silk on I'm A Celebrity.

It is only a matter of time before someone welds makes a truly great zombie apocalypse Christmas film.

Next: Blame Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Blog, interrupted

My internet router refuses to work, despite the threat of a violent kicking.

So no working internet connection = no blog, until fixed.

Red 20/20 and blue Ben Sherman shirts

Photo by kleer001 via Creative Commons Licence

"Where was the Cheeky Vimto, when I was retching down a bottle of red 20/20 before wobbling into a Christmas disco in my Reebok Pumps?"

Christmas is a time for spirits. Great, big, snifter glasses full of spirits.

If you don't get drunk at Christmas, then you're a robot.

And what better way to get festively smashed out of your skull than a bottle of Hennessy's limited edition cognac - a real bargain at £105,000.

But if that's too pricey, then settle for just a glass. A £5,000 glass.

Come on, people. If we don't fork out, then we may as well let the credit crunch roll over us.

But be quick, there are only 100 bottles in existence.

If spirit is not your thing, then what about a cocktail?

A £35,000 per glass cocktail.

The Flawless debuted last Christmas. You can, of course, make them at home.

All you need is: A large measure of Louis XII cognac (£963), half a bottle of Cristal Rose Champagne (£449.40), brown sugar (£1), angostura bitters (128.40), and 24-carat edible gold leaf (an eye-watering £2.95).

And a 11-carat white diamond ring to put at the bottom of the glass (Just imagine 11 of these).

If you're having problems finding those on www.comparethemarket.com then put away the mojitos and follow the HCC recipe for the Flawed:

All you need is: A double of port and a bottle of blue WKD.

Mix the two and it becomes a Cheeky Vimto, totally indistinguishable from its namesake but makes you fall down.

And don't forget to place at the bottom a Haribo sweet ring. Classy. Watch those bubbles flow!

Where was the Cheeky Vimto all those years ago, when I was retching down a bottle of red 20/20 behind a skip before wobbling into a Christmas disco in my blue Ben Sherman shirt and Reebok Pump basketball boots?

Next: Blame Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

The one where a reindeer ate my mate

Photo by Keven Law under Creative Commons Licence

My friend had his beard eaten by a reindeer, once.

He was a council employee back in Wales and fell victim during the annual December tradition held in our home town.

Every year, on a dark winter Friday night, a council employee dressed as Father Christmas is towed in his reindeer-pulled sleigh up the town’s sloping high street.

Hundreds of parents line the procession, hoisting children on to their shoulders to see over the hazard barriers.

When the sleigh reaches the peak of the street, it stops outside Woolworths.

The shop was a former multi-story cinema and bingo hall until the American giant turned the ground floor into a shopping area during the sixties.

So every year Santa pulls his reindeer over at the hill’s zenith, gets out of his sleigh and goes through the lit shop doors.

Five minutes later children start pointing at the tall building’s roof, where a red blob has been picked out by a spotlight.

Then a fire engine from the town’s fire station pulls up, sirens blaring, before winding out a vertical ladder, climbed by a fireman.

The fireman then climbs backs down, followed by Father Christmas.

One year, my mate agreed to be Santa.

So on a crisp Friday night he found himself being towed along by a smelly reindeer, dressed in an itchy Santa outfit with a badly-fitting beard, waving to the crowd.

When the sleigh reached the brow of the hill outside Woolworths - hundreds of families scrunched together to see Santa - he pulled in the reins. Hard.

That’s when the reindeer’s head snapped around, nostrils flared, and clapped its blood-shot eyes on my mate.

The festive fiend then lunged at his face and ripped his Santa beard off with its teeth.

My mate fell out of the sleigh in trouser-wetting terror, while the beast washed the beard around its mouth a few times then spat its dripping wet remains at a surprised child, who started crying.

Good times.

If you want to learn how to identify the nice from the naughty and how to evacuate a grotto, click here.

Next week: Red 20/20 and blue Ben Sherman shirts.

Santa Claus the Movie and other crimes

"Here’s what we will be watching for the 78th time come December: "The Muppet’s Christmas Carol, Yogi's First Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, Die Hard and Gremlins"

With calls for Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross to both get the “Sachs”, HCC has found an undiscovered starlet capable of filling the impending celebrity vacuum.

Step forward assistant editor Tim "Deathproof" Lethaby.

If you’ve done the clicky on the video, you’ll remember HCC is all about bringing the bother of Christmas forward to leave December free for other things.

With one day remaining for the Glorious October Revolution of Christmas (GORC), Tim brought cheer to the offices of Mid Somerset News & Media with the official switching on of my fairy lights and dancing, singing hamster.

But on matters of crimes against celluloid, Hollywood is not above cashing in and making junk to fill our TV guides with for the festive fortnight.

Here’s what we will be watching for the 78^th time come December:

The Muppet’s Christmas Carol: Michael Caine discovers the meaning of Christmas – make a festive movie and collect annual royalties.

Jingle All The Way: Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a toy shop.

The Snowman: Animated classic. Aled Jones is still called “that kid from that cartoon”.

Yogi’s First Christmas: Sadly not his last.

Miracle on 34^th Street: Man thinks he’s Santa. A common December affliction.

Home Alone 1, 2, 3 and 4: Child neglect comedy.

Die Hard: Estranged husband and cop runs around with no shoes shooting German terrorists. The use of snow implies Christmas time.

Die Hard 2 – Die Harder: Estranged husband and cop destroys an airport full of terrorists wearing a parka jacket. More snow.

Ghostbusters: Set in Christmas time, making it a festive classic by default.

Trading Places: Starring Ghostbusters fat man and former skinny Blues Brother Dan Ackroyd.

A Christmas Carol: Miser does good, like The Apprentice.

Scrooged: Starring Ghostbusters sourpuss Bill Murray and ghosts in a heart-touching satire.

Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence:

101 Dalmatians. White dogs with black spots, or black dogs with white spots?

How the Grinch Stole Christmas: Jim Carrey spoils Christmas, and also makes a film about the Dr Seuss character. Not as good as the Boris Karloff adaptation.

The Poseidon Adventure: Because they climb up a Christmas tree.

Gremlins: Avoid those Chinese thrift shops.

It’s A Wonderful Life: Never seen it but heard it’s OK.

White Christmas: As above.

Black Christmas: Sorority house serial killer.

The Nightmare before Christmas: Children throwing snowballs instead of throwing heads.

Santa Claus: The Movie: John Lithgow munches magic candy canes before floating in to space.

The Santa Clause: Tim Allen dons a fat suit and grows a beard.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 – Initiation: Not shown enough.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: Chevy Chase during his funny days.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles: John Candy and Steve Martin classic.

Uncle Buck: Another Candy classic.

The Polar Express: Runs better than the Strawberry Line.

Bad Santa: Discovered it was funny to make an anti-Santa comedy.

Fred Claus: Discovered it was funny to make an anti-Santa comedy too late.

Elf: Will Ferrell stars, so avoid. Watch Iron Man instead.

Ernest Saves Christmas: They don’t make them like this anymore, fortunately.

Batman Returns: Missile-packing penguins threaten to return Gotham to the ice age.

Terry Pratchett's Hogfather: A good at an adaptation.

Lethal Weapon: I'm reliably informed it involves a gun fight with a Christmas tree in the background.

Sleepless in Seattle: Rom-com Christmas heartbreaker.

When Harry Met Sally: Another rom-com Christmas heartbreaker apparently.

Love, Actually: Another, another Rom-com Christmas heartbreaker.

Fargo: Snowy enough to be Christmas.

Star Wars Episove V: The Empire Strikes Back: Same reason.

30 Days of Night: Same reason.

Bridget Jones’ Diary: Another snowy bit.

Christmas Evil (aka Terror in Toyland, You Better Watch Out): Robbed of its rightful place on Christmas Day TV.

Silent Night, Bloody Night (aka Night of the Dark Full Moon: Nothing to do with Christmas, apart from the title.

Next: The one where a reindeer ate my mate