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| A Pigeon Loft Christmas! |
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| A couple of weeks ago, in a fit of extraordinary generosity, The Pigeon Loft decided to give it's viewers a chance to contribute to our Christmas section by sending in their special Christmas thoughts and anecdotes. We thought it would be a fitting way to get into the festive spirit, and a rare chance for us all to come together, crack open a bottle of sherry and reminisce over yuletides gone by. |
| Sadly, absolutely nobody could be even remotely bothered which meant I had to serve up this half-arsed collection of Christmas-related tossings all by myself, even though I hurt my knee a bit yesterday and should be resting it, and the central heating's broken and the man can't come out whilst Tuesday. |
| Never mind, here it is, a comprehensive guide to everything that is important about Christmas, from dead turkeys to Cliff Richard, from snowglobes and snowmen to people hanging themselves in sheer despair, all sprinkled with just a soupcon of real genuine Christmas Memories from people I phoned up at the last minute. Merry Christmas Everybody! |
| A Brief Overview Of The Many Cultures Of Christmas The word 'Christmas' derives from the Latin term 'Tools Downus' which roughly translates as 'having a day off work even if it's only a Wednesday'. For hundreds of years, people were quite happy to celebrate Christmas for no good reason and in fact it wasn't until the early 1900's that some people sat down one day and decided there should be some kind of theme to it all, a loose reasoning behind the celebration. However, people being people, nobody could agree on the same thing to celebrate. For example. the people of Bethlehem started up a small cult called 'christianity' and chose to mark the day as The Birthday of The Son Of God. However, over here in the U.K, we found that idea a little naive and wet, and so instead we opted to celebrate 'The Coming Of Father Christmas' which was much more fun, and didn't involve any women opening their legs in stables surrounded by donkeys and strange men. The Christian Christmas The original idea for the The Christian Christmas came from a short story written by a struggling Bethlehem writer called Jonah McJones who for years had been trying to put Bethlehem 'on the map'. McJones was down on his luck, having had all his manuscripts rejected by the publishers (some of these early unpublished works included 'Bethlehem Gun Plotters' and 'Bethlehem Casino Murders'). Money was so scarce for McJones that he had resorted to renting out a dirty stable and it was in these squalid conditions that he hit upon the idea of 'The Nativity Play' which would eventually lead him to fame and fortune. Many of McJones's original ideas for 'The Nativity Play' never made it into the final draft - such as the scene with the baby Jesus developing an allergic reaction to the Frankincense and having to be put on a ventilator, or the scene where The Archangel Gabriel descends from the heavens and announces that there's a bomb somewhere in the stable. McJones never had to work again thanks to the lucrative movie and merchandise deals, although he did try his hand at a few less-inspiring sequels. He eventually killed off the Jesus character, having felt that the story had run it's course and Jesus was becoming something of an albatross around his neck. However, in true Bobby Ewing-style, he couldn't resist resurrecting the character one more time , something which he later admitted to regretting. In one of his final interviews before his death, Jonah McJones was quoted as saying:"I suppose the resurrection story was a bit far-fetched, maybe we should have left him alone and gone out on a high. But then I could say the same about 'Only Fools And Horses'. Christmas In The U.K The quaint stories of Jesus never really caught on over here in the U.K, except for a few of the weirder areas down South. We didn't go for the ridiculous miracle virgin birth angle, we preferred the concept of a fat fool in a clown's outfit getting stuck down the chimney, delivering presents made by pissed-up elves in a workshop in the North Pole. Father Christmas was created by a Radio Times illustrator back in 1941 who was fed up of drawing candles and choir singers on the Bumper Christmas Issue every year, and so decided to create a fun new character for the children to enjoy. However, the illustrator was not happy with how the character evolved and is bitter about the project today. "The whole reindeer and sleigh in the sky thing was not my fucking idea," he says now. "My original plan was to have Santa riding around on a motorbike, but the Radio Times editor said that would be unrealistic as he would have to keep getting off it every two minutes and climbing up the houses to get to the chimney. He also said that Santa wouldn't be able to carry many presents on a motorbike. I told him to fuck off." Despite this controversial genesis of the character, the story of Father Christmas went on to enchant millions of children across the U.K, except in Ireland where they developed their own slightly different version of the fun-loving cuddly hero. So whilst most children went to bed on Christmas Eve full of excitement and wonder, having left a mince pie and a glass of sherry for Father Christmas, the children of Ireland went to bed shaking with terror at the prospect of being 'visited' by The Christmas Scissorman and His Sticky Sticky Christmas Scissors. How Some Other Foreigners Celebrate Christmas The Austrian schoolchildren celebrate Christmas by staging annual school plays about the day David Hasselhoff left Baywatch and recorded his first single. Jehovah's Witnesses spend Christmas Day ignoring it, sometimes to the extent that they forget all the shops are going to be shut, and spend the whole day walking up and down dual carriageways trying to find somewhere to buy a packet of fags and bottle of milk. It is a proven scientific fact that the French have no comprehension of Christmas. Muslims celebrate Christmas by eating a nice bit of Christmas Pudding, sometimes with custard, and then they go outside and have a fight. |
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