Jesus is coming!

I have seen the light! To be fair, it was a neon light in a shop window, in the shape of a duck, but nevertheless I took it as a profound and deeply spiritual experience. That to me was a sign that we have finally not only crossed the line but advanced so far that we no longer remember which way the line is.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I have found the church or even faith (although I do enjoy a healthy bit of fundamentalism, where ever I encounter some). To me Christmas is just like the other holidays, another way for supermarkets to sell people all kinds of junk they don’t need (I mean, honestly, who really needs a popcorn machine? How hard is it to put oil and popcorn kernels in a pan!?!).

What I’m getting at is how far from the original concept of Christmas we have allowed ourselves to be taken. If a visitor from outer space landed on Oxford Street in central London a few days before Christmas, it might be a pretty damn hard job for him (him, because aliens coming to our planet are always portrayed as male on tv, sorry, that’s just how it is) to figure out what was going on. If I was a betting man I would put good money on him NOT guessing that people are preparing to celebrate the birth of a man who talked about being nice to others and not to worry about one’s earthly possession too much because it would all be sorted after this life ended (and no, this is not a time for Lennon joke!).

I predict that our friend from outer space would think that we are preparing for a draught, famine, or a proper orgy, by stocking up on food, drink, and questionable underwear. If he, however, decided to gain a better understanding of the situation (in the true spirit of inter-galactic investigative journalism), he might sneak into a home of a local family and witness the human practise of Christmas. There he would encounter Christmas pudding, oven baked, winged life-form served with stuffing, and finally conclude that the whole point of the ritual was to poison your nearest and dearest.

Depressed after uncovering the dark secret of human Christmas, he would find the nearest pub, drink himself into a stupor, and in the end be beaten up by a gang of thugs who had noticed his strange accent. On the way back to his home galaxy he would walk around his flying saucer and curse the mankind (except that Branson fella, who is nice enough to help people escape the planet, even if it’s just for a while).

Summa summarum: if I was Jesus, I would be pretty pissed off. I mean, imagine having a cracking birthday for a couple of millennia, and then in the matter of a few years people start to identify Christmas with neon ducks and Ann Summers sales.

I’m telling you, we have one angry birthday boy in our hands here. Someone find him a party hat, quick!