BAH HUMBUG! List things that suck about Christmas in 2016

1. Mulled wine. Mulled cider. Mulled drinks in general. Used to be an occasional hazard of the season. Now every Christmas-related event is thick with an acrid fog of cloves and wine. HOT WINE. Who drinks HOT WINE? FFS?

2. Christmas jumpers. Once a sort of joke you'd only get in Fred Bassett comics, now every fourth person you see looks like a presenter on Going Live. A thin joke, worn very thin.

3. Christmas markets. Log cabins. Mulled drinks (yeeeuch). Pissy lager. Schlager music. Overpriced trinkets, cheeses, fake snow. In every town and city centre throughout December.

4. Secret Santa. Pick a name out the hat. Now you have to buy Toby the Account Manager something Christmassy and edible that he can also wear (!!) up to the value of ten pounds. FML

5. 5. Christmassified versions of regular pop songs you've heard all year. Just dropped off the radio C-list. Whack on a few sleigh bells and a glockenspiel and you're back on air baby.

6. People moaning that Elf isn't showing on TV this year as if it's somehow a canonical and good Christmas film and not a totally juvenile rip off of Tom Hanks's Big

7. DIE HARD IS SET AT CHRISTMAS THAT MAKES IT THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIE LOLOLOLOL

8. Kids' choirs covering songs by Keane in shopping centres. Keane is not Christmas music. Fuck you John Lewis

9. Christmas specials of your favourite hilarious TV shows. Just stick sport and old movies on and leave us in peace. Double points for festive soap operas and their festive death and misery set-pieces.

10. Oh good, a chance to look back at the best cultural objects/celebrity deaths/hyped news stories of the past year.

11. Budweiser asking its users not to be "pillocks". As the ex remarked: "they might as well have used the word 'wally'".

12. it's 2016

13. People thinking 'Fairytale Of New York' is still some sort of edgy alternative Christmas hit

Who drinks HOT WINE? FFS?

ans = VORTIGERN:
http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Holiday06/images/wassail42_43.jpg

mulled wine is grebt and elf is better than big, fight back against the war on wassail

15. While I'm at it: People giving AF about what's going to be Christmas No.1

NOTE WAVY HEAT MARKS RISING FROM CUP also vortigern's delighted visage

despatches from the WoW: autocorrect just changed "glögg" to "gulag"

16. Christmas menus in restaurants (which seem to have mysteriously replaced the regular menu). Last year I was served a pizza with mushed-up brussel sprouts on it.

mark s, no

are you sure it's not just a nice steaming mug of hot chocolate?

further despatches from the WoW: wikipedia informs me that vortigern's "existence is contested"

vortigern's wife in picture = rowena, which possibly means "horsehair"

her dad was hengist (="stallion") and her uncle was horsa (="horse")

all these made-up ppl drank mulled cider (which i agree is horrible, but all cider is horrible)

Last year I was served a pizza with mushed-up brussel sprouts on it.

countdown to the traditional ilx weird-pizza clusterfuck begins... now

horsemeat pizza is a thing

tetbury wassailers (gloucestershire, 1930s):

http://www.gloschristmas.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Tetbury-wassailers.jpg

not sure whose point this proves but the word "wassail" has taken me right down the weird-old-english-shit rabbithole:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Abbots_Bromley_Horn_Dance_c1900_Stone.jpg

^^^the abbots bromley born dance, 1900s

(this probably belongs on another thread as ALL THESE THINGS ARE AWESOME IN A SCARY LAIBACH-TINGED WAY)

Not sure if this all belongs on another thread (the KRAMPUS thread?) but these are pretty creepy IMO: http://www.raurisertal.at/en/region/traditions-folk-customs/schnabelperchten/

17. Rubbish Winter Wonderlands
https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/15094467_1163377190414595_5814431574381306972_n.jpg?w=748&h=561&crop=1

Definitive word on wassail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8kHKUZlRtE

After her death earlier this year, my family is having what will probably be our last Christmas at my grandma's house (where I've spent literally every single Christmas of my life and which is the only place that feels at all like home to me). This year can suck a quadrillion fucks, for serious.

sorry to hear that, Old Lunch. Hope you can enjoy it while you can

Has been having to fight through crowds on busy streets and busy square cos of naff Xmas market.

Nearly getting addicted to Liebkuchen before realising it had glucose-fructose syrup as a major ingredient.

& this year most things because of what's happening less than a month later.

But at least weather here hasn't been that bad, though it's raining at the moment so I hope that isn't going to be a constant.

Lack of energy and money.

mulled wine is great wtf

My 91 year old mom is finally too enfeebled to be able to come to our house for Christmas Day. It definitely sucks, but was not a surprise.

family feuds

mulled wine is great wtf

^^^^^^^^^^

you fucking people make me fucking sick

not you Aimless. I'm sorry to hear that.

elf needs more love itt

overheard someone at work moaning about Elf not being on TV and when I said it wasn't a very good film the whole office did a needle-scratch and I got Maltesers thrown at me.

Don't care, it still sucks.

there are so many great 'lost in the city' comedies to choose from - Home Alone 2, Big, Crocodile Dundee... why would you want to watch Elf??

I'm with you on Elf but against you on mulled wine. Which is the greater ire? Can we reach a détente?

Thing that sucks about Chanukah 2016 is it overlaps Christmas so I while on the one hand it's cool I can travel home for all of Chanukah I have to do it during the fucking Christmas season which is expensive and bound to be extremely aggravating.

I don't like Christmas.

Also every single goddamn thing is closed on Christmas, what the fuck

6. People moaning that Elf isn't showing on TV this year as if it's somehow a canonical and good Christmas film and not a totally juvenile rip off of Tom Hanks's Big
― Lennon, Elvis, Hendrix etc (dog latin), Monday, December 12, 2016 5:59 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

7. DIE HARD IS SET AT CHRISTMAS THAT MAKES IT THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIE LOLOLOLOL
― nashwan, Monday, December 12, 2016 6:16 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Back-to-back truth bomb.

Clearly Gremlins is the best Christmas movie.

I'll never understand how people think anything other than Scrooged is the best Christmas movie of all time.

Ha! x-post, but that would be a very very close second.

All x-mas movies should be dark comedies basically (see also: Bad Santa).

the weird thing about Die Hard is i've spent years thinking it was a winter release bc of the christmas thing, but i was released july 15.

have we ever polled non-canonical christmas movies? my vote would go to Brazil

Psycho just happens to take place in December. Die Hard has "NOW I HAVE A MACHINE GUN HO HO HO" written in blood on a sweatshirt. Festive!

yes die hard is literally about a man coming to spend time with his kids and his wife at christmas and then foiling a robbery at a xmas party.

Eyes Wide Shut
All That Heaven Allows
Black Christmas

and then the rest.

We haven't polled them but we've definitely had a thread about them.

these days Die Hard isn't even my go-to Shane Black Christmas movie

I want to see more examples of depressing winter wonderlands.

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/54FD/production/_92575712_img_2847.jpg

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/12/15/1387129814320/Winter-Wonderland-MK-008.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03136/harrogate_3136434b.jpg

lapland new forest:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/uk_lapland_new_forest/img/1.jpg

"santa's dead, ticketholders were told. elves had their faces slapped as tempers flared"

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00130/84143265_Lapland_130726c.jpg

https://www.kyivpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/24/p199uer3lpk16kv811227rk16as4/original-768x520.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEJMnLZKuVU

okay, Invasion USA isn't exactly about Christmas, but the pivotal scene of them blowing up suburban houses with real rocket launchers (which opens in the trailer) deserves some attention.

Batman Returns is super-Christmas-y too. Die Hard is still an amazing movie and no amount of irony or whatever will change that.

o shit I forgot about Batman Returns!

http://giphy.com/posts/7-gifs-that-prove-batman-returns-is-a-christmas-movie

is Hook set at Christmas?

Depressing Pantsless Alien Santa upthread. Why?

I want to see more examples of depressing winter wonderlands.

Don't we have a thread for this, too, or did I dream it?

xp I think that's supposed to be the Grinch

xp Ah, there is!

Has anyone been to the Lapland Theme Park?

http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/barrow/Santa-sacked-and-market-traders-fail-to-show-as-Barrow-Winter-Wonderland-is-branded-unacceptable-and-shocking-9977482b-e0c8-453c-8772-95d46855fcdc-ds

Santas caught smoking seem to be a perennial hazard at these things.

hey, it's a stressful time of year for him

Freezing yer balls off as Christmas music plays "It's the most wonderful time of the year" - FUCK OFF

muppets christmas carol and the grinch are the best christmas movies

Rugrats Chanukah is the best Christmas movie

I don't think I've ever heard all of "Fairytale of New York" tbh but I also try not to hear the Pogues. (Thankfully, this has not been hard since the 1980s.) "I Believe in Father Christmas" = forever tho.

And Elf is fun enough.

elf is kinda rubbish. lots of better examples of the idea.

Every snowfall is just another reminder that too soon, snow and ice will be forgotten altogether as we head towards a climate apocalypse.

doommongering of 2016 wont be missed

The Thin Man or GTFO.

Just to balance things out - a colleague told me they experimented by putting a knob of Boursin under the lid of a mince pie and apparently this is a revelation and now I can't stop thinking about this idea FML

ok mince pie w/boursin does sound awesome and i am going to try it v soon!!* (does FML mean "for my lunch"?)

*(very likely with some m***** w***)

The post office is a Mad Max hellscape at Christmas. But the thing that sucks is the person buying 7 books of stamps to mail 150 cards. Get a fucking postage meter you senseless asshat.

I dont even *know* 150 people. Guarantee only 20% of them even want a card

who sends Christmas cards to all their friends these days anyway? I remember my mum going spare one year in the mid 90s because she didn't know what to do with all the cardboard being shoved through her letterbox every day. The French never really did the whole Christmas card thing half as much as the Brits, who if seems felt duty bound to hand you a Christmas card in person if they'd so much as bumped into you with their shopping trolley in the supermarket.
thank god for social media.

*it seems

Antifa Sell – ‏@andy_sell

You become a reasonable & worthwhile adult when your favorite Christmas movie switches from Die Hard to Tangerine.
10:54 am - 13 Dec 2016
16 RETWEETS41 LIKES.

this is how you sell a movie, by making it sound doing your taxes

https://itself.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/the-true-spirit-of-christmas/

We see the parents literally forging their child’s letter to Santa, including the details of his handwriting. When the son walks in, he turns on a dime and demands to be cut in. Ultimately, the happy family gets both their Lexus and a puppy. Other children are confused, and others are pressed into service and try to perform well to please their parents — including during high-pressure moments on Santa’s lap — and this lends an air of innocence and idealism to the very cynical premise. In this example, though, even that small veneer is ripped away, as the child is every bit as nihilistically opportunistic as his parents.

It's an excuse to put their product and a puppy onscreen at the same time.

Christmas is dumb as fuck

Christmas is great fun as long as you don’t have to do things with your family

"This headless drummer boy was just one of the disappointments at Brooklyn Museum's Winter Fair"
https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/winterfair.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=642

"Families slam Bolton Winter Weekend over plastic ice rink, deflated snow globe and 2-hour queues for Santa's Grotto"
https://i2-prod.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/incoming/article15464185.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/1_SR_MENN_251118BOLTONWINTERWEEKEND03.jpg

"Parents were left underwhelmed by the Santa South West Christmas Village"
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/NINTCHDBPICT000453802634-e1543927069354.jpg?w=960

"Visitors to Reindeer Lodge in Leeswood, near Mold, Flintshire, claimed they had to walk through boggy fields, queue for ages to see Santa in his 'grotty' grotto alongside 'sleeping' reindeer with 'grumpy' elves."
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2018/12/03/15/6948246-6454937-image-a-21_1543851000790.jpg

i'll probably post this picture at least 5 more times before the 25th

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DuG_6iYWwAAyjRn.jpg:large

i'm that dog every year

that santa looks eerily like Vivienne Westwood

Supermarkets stuffing their shelves with row upon row of Christmas party food which nobody seems to buy and which will have gone off by Christmas anyway.

Target’s Christmas section always looks like a war zone, i am convinced they actually stock it to look that way

Whamageddon

still upset about this mulled wine slander