When I was sixteenish, I had a Christmas temp job in a handbag shop at the top of the High Street. It was a pretty uninspiring job, on the whole. I got trained in the properties of the dusty Samsonite suitcases situated at the back of the shop ("they're made of polyproplene, y'know...which is used in some types of aircraft so you can bet it'll withstand just about any impact") yet I was never asked about them. I just worked on the till mostly, selling faux snakeskin handbags and things with tassels on them to bored members of the public. Sometimes I got asked to tidy up the 'purse gondola' as a really special treat.
Accompanying me in these tasks was a "specially created mix tape" of background music which we were ordered to play by the shop's Head Office. This tape consisted of four songs; Paul McCartney's 'Wonderful Christmas Time', Mud's 'Lonely This Christmas', Slade's 'Merry Christmas Everybody' and Elton John's 'Step Into Christmas'. The effect of hearing these four songs on a constant loop from 8am until 6pm every Saturday from mid-November until Christmas itself now produces the same sort of effect as somebody hypnotised by Paul McKenna to dance like Michael Jackson every time they hear the opening bars of 'Thriller', in that as soon as I hear the opening bars of any of them I have to fight a desperate, all-consuming urge to beat the nearest person to death with a polyproplene Samsonite. Or pack myself in one and have it thrown off the end of the pier (where it'd probably withstand the impact of hitting all that mud at the bottom of the Thames and I'd float listlessly back up again to the sound of 800 screaming children visiting 'Santa on the Pier').
So there's an example of a Christmas repetition I'm not exactly keen on. But on the whole I can't really decide if I find the other repetitions (some would prefer to call them "traditions" I suppose) endearing or irritating. Probably a bit of both. I think the trick to their actual enjoyment is in not thinking too much about them or trying to intellectualise them, which unfortunately does leave me at a slight disadvantage!
Take school nativity plays, of which I saw a few this year due to the fact that I now have quite a few lovely children in my life. Wonderful as it was to see them (and it really was!) I couldn't quite stop my mind wandering off to whether it's really a good idea to bring children up with the illusion that the Christmas story of 'Jesus being born in a stable by immaculate conception' is a given truth. It's strange actually, in that for me that whole Jesus-being-born thing was always a weird story to believe even when I was a kid, but now I've heard it so many times that it's taken on a kind of surreal dreamlike quality, like someone's just been slurring it to you under the influence of LSD. Mind you, the schools have obviously got tired of telling the straight story these days and insist on throwing disgruntled snowmen and supersonic lambs into the mix, just to spice it all up a bit.
Then there's the food. I don't like mince pies all that much, but this year I found myself in the kitchen making Gordon Ramsay's 'crumble-topped extra-special mince pies' for reasons unknown, because I don't really know anyone else who likes mince pies all that much either. But if you don't eat at least one in the period covering October to January, you are officially Weird.
There are some repetitions I do rather love, though. Such as watching 'It's a Wonderful Life' and 'White Christmas'; films that don't ever get old or boring, and present-buying and wrapping and seeing people you actually quite like - Christmas makes you put in the effort, really, which can only be a good thing...if it didn't exist, we'd probably have had to invent it.
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