Metro 95

Richard Herring ponders what life would be like if Roy Wood got his wish and it really was Christmas every day

‘I wish it could be Christmas every day,’ sang Roy Wood of Wizzard, perhaps thinking of the royalty cheques he’d be receiving if he could make that a reality. One Christmas a year not enough for your bank manager, Roy?

I don’t think Wood really thought it through. If it was Christmas every day, then most of the shops would be shut and none of the online stores would be delivering. How would we buy presents for each other? Or food? How would any of us earn the money required to keep this celebration of gluttony and excess going?

Perhaps we could work out some kind of delivery system, where an unfit old bearded man on a magic sleigh could bring the necessary stuff to every single person on the planet in a single night. There’s no doubt that would work for one day a year, but if he had to do it daily then the workload would surely kill him. We could make his appearance so generic that he could be easily replaced by any tubby white-haired pensioner in a red suit – but could we really justify the Santa slaughter?

A never-ending Yuletide would have a terrible effect on agriculture. Every farmer would need to dedicate their land to rearing turkeys and growing sprouts, parsnips, carrots and potatoes and nothing else. As it is, ten million turkeys are sold in Britain every Christmas, so for a daily turkey meal we’d need more than three and a half billion birds a year. They’d fill every park, garden and street corner.

The smell of turkey poo would cover the country like a shroud and you wouldn’t be able to escape it by going inside. Every home would reek with the lingering odour of postprandial sprout guff. This is what Roy Wood wants. What kind of monster is he?

If you’re going to go all Groundhog Day and repeat a 24-hour period over and over again, then Christmas Day would surely be the worst one imaginable. It’s nice to catch up with the family once in a while but to be locked in a house with them 365/52/24/7 (or 366/52/24/7 in a leap year) would drive us all to murder. Even if you are one of those weird people who enjoys hanging out with your relatives, then the rich Christmas diet would clog your arteries and kill you within a month of Christmases.

Does Roy Wood want it to be Christmas every day because he hates humanity and hopes for us to be wiped from the face of the Earth? Is he trying to make us consider the over-commercialisation of the season and how it has lost its religious message? Only by making us endure it day in day out would we realise what awful, selfish, wasteful people we are and how Western society is doomed. I am not claiming that Wood is al Qaeda’s most successful operative, though it would certainly explain his beard.

Personally, I think Christmas comes along a bit too often already, a problem that is accentuated by coffee shops and department stores deciding that it begins as soon as Halloween is done with. They seem determined to push back the start date until Wood’s dire prophecy comes true.

I wish it could be Christmas once every two years at the most. In fact, I’d go for once every four years, like the Olympics. We’d look forward to it and enjoy it a lot more, believe me.

You might not agree with me now, but I bet you will at 3pm on the 25th.

Happy Christmas, readers!