A Nation Recovers from Being Around Their Families

Britain is returning to a state of normalcy today after enduring another festive period of forced familial closeness.

Experts are estimating that, as is customary, individuals across the land are once again swearing to cut off all ties from their vaguely racist, drunken relatives in an oath that will last roughly eleven months.

Ugh

The holiday has been criticized for years for being built from the ground up for the purpose of fostering hatred. Kevin Federline, a professor of Christmas studies told us “First of all, you have it in winter, so you basically have to either stay indoors with them or die of exposure if you choose to go for a long walk instead of justifying your life choices to your aunt. Then you introduce near toxic levels of alcohol, an enormous fart-generating meal, a TV schedule that’s like an arid wasteland with Doctor bloody Who in the middle then you introduce the coup de grace: gift giving.”

“After four hours, everyone’s drunk, breathing in each other’s turkey tainted arse-air, staring at Celebrity Strictly Come Dancing on Ice and just seething with rage at the piss poor pile of wacky socks, random stand-up DVDs and whatever bestseller was closest to the till in Waterstones. It could only be worse if there was some kind of religious element at play.”

Christmas survivor Sammy Davis attested to the annual festival that has come to mean to him as with so many others, enduring a period of agreeing with your gin soaked and increasingly loud mother about the problem with ‘all these polish coming over here’ in return for a book about Peter Kay: “I mean I love them, I suppose. I have to, don’t I? But it’s just that being with them. I knew it was coming- sure as death i knew it was coming when winter fell, but there’s only so much you can do to prepare your mind for an argument with your Father that starts off with government foreign policy but somehow ends up being about how you gave up playing the piano, despite all the lessons you had in primary school.”

“Pulling crackers and wearing those stupid paper crowns while some cousin brings up some decade old indiscretion and the radio plays that fucking Pogues song again.....Well, let’s just say I don’t ever want to see those people for as long as I live”

However, at the dawn of Boxing Day a hungover nation wakes to dimly remember what personal recriminations they hurled and which were hurled at them. As is customary, a largely mute breakfast is followed by everybody shuffling to their cars while avoiding eye contact before driving off, sighing heavily and swearing that that was the last time, for real this time.


FP