Tis (nearly) The Season

We’re approaching that time of year - the beginning of December - when our house goes in to a mad state of anticipation as the Christmas CDs are dusted off while the freshly cut tree is put up and we chase all the little bugs that came with it as they set up home in our skirting boards, refusing to budge even when we’re still sweeping pine needles up in March.

It’s also the time of the Advent calendars, those little cardboard windows our kids open while counting down to the big day and filling their chops with chocolate shaped rocking horses and jolly bearded men, before joining in the Yuletide kids’ tradition of throwing up.

This year I thought we’d do away with the usual High School Musical and Jonas Brothers countdown calendars and opt for the religious ones that tell the story of the first Christmas instead. My kids were up for it - after all it ticks all the teen boxes as the baby Jesus is a celebrity, his story has been made in to a movie and they know the soundtrack or, as we adults call it, the carols. But they had one stipulation. If the holy calendar was going to have a message, it also had to have chocolate.

I have now looked exhaustively and can’t find a single Nativity calendar with chocolate inside anywhere. I can get sweets hidden behind advent calendars counting down to when Tinkie Winkie wakes up on Christmas day, to the day Ken gives Barbie her present, or when Liverpool FC win silverware – admittedly that calendar is marked in years rather than days – but I can’t find a stable in Bethlehem with some mini chocolate angels hidden behind windows anywhere. Even the inn keeper must have left sweets on the pillow when he turned down the beds at night, surely?

I don’t want to sound fundamentalist here but if we’re going to call it Christmas, as opposed to Decembermas, Wintermas, EndOfTheYearmas or StuffYourFaceTillItHurtsmas, then someone enterprising should be able to come up with an advent calendar containing chocolates and a message. I don’t care if Torvill and Dean are Joseph and Mary, or the Strictly Come Dancing judges are the Three Wise Men. I’d even let Kai Rooney play the baby and his dad the donkey.

If the story was set today, of course, there is only one baddie who could play Herod. I can imagine the boos and hisses as Simon Cowell asks viewers to vote before sending out his soldiers. That’s after, of course, taking Joseph aside and suggesting an evening of Carpenters’ songs.

I spoke to Shakin’ Stevens this week and another piece of the magic disappeared when he told me his Christmas hit, Merry Christmas Everyone, was recorded in Spring. I know Slade’s big Christmas hit was recorded in T shirts and shorts in June and that even my favourite Christmas movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, was made in a sweltering studio in the height of summer. Perhaps we’ll find one day that David Bowie’s hit “Fashion” was inspired by Primark, Cliff’s “Summer Holiday” was recorded in the Arctic Circle, and “Hey Macarena” was actually a tribute to pasta.

As we get older, much of the magic of Christmas disappears as we discover that we’re no longer the centre of attention. This was brought home to me when my wife told me that Santa isn’t interested in leaving a new HD television and DVD Blue Ray player for me on Christmas morning this year - not even if I get a bigger stocking.

But I may go to the North Pole and plead with him. It’s where Wham recorded Club Tropicana you know.