Image borrowed from Bingand looked who popped up surly and grumpy.
The World, 20th December 1893
An Atrocious Institution.
Like all intelligent people, I greatly dislike Christmas.
It revolts me to see a whole nation refrain from music for weeks together in order that every man may rifle his neighbour's pockets under cover of a ghastly general pretence of festivity. it is really an atrocious institution, this Christmas. We must be gluttonous because it is Christmas. We must be insincerely generous; we must buy things that nobody wants, and give them to people we don't like; we must go to absurd entertainments that make even our little children satirical; we must writhe under venal officiousness from legions of freebooters, all because it is Christmas - that is, because the mass of the population, including the all-powerful middle-class tradesman, depends on a week of licence and brigandage, waste and intemperance, to clear off its outstanding liabilities at the end of the year.
As for me, I shall fly from it all tomorrow or next day, to some remote spot miles from a shop, where nothing worse can befall me than a serenade from a few peasants, or some equally harmless survival of medieval mummery, shyly offered, not advertised, moderate in its expectations, and soon over.
In town there is, for the moment, nothing for me or any honest man to do.
George Bernard Shaw
Posted over on Friko's Musings
Yes, we have deviated a long way from the intention of the first St Nicholas who made toys and secretly left them for poor children if his village. I'm with GBS, but I do like to see the family together... and we don't get drunk or fight.
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