Today was a great day for me – after a three month run of being asked to create endless tacky, ill matched, ill thought out, gaudy, snowflakey, glinty, star-based crap to run across a number of medium and large scale online e-commerce sites, we finally ‘took the decorations’ down! Yes we have reached that magical time where, no matter how hard we try, we cannot send out any more products and reasonably expect them to arrive with people before the big and happy orgy of consumerism that is Christmas.
All sounds a bit Humbuggy?
Sound like I am angry? Well to be honest I am. As a creative individual I am driven by the need to please, and I’m glad to say that in general (at least for 9 months of the year) my clients trust me to create carefully considered media that supports their message and reinforces the strength of their brand. However all of this seems to go out of the window throughout the festering festive period. October 15th rolls around again and suddenly it’s OK to tell your designer that the background ‘will be dark blue with stars’, to demand an increase in baubles/reindeer/penguins to the tune of 20%. It becomes perfectly acceptable to throw all the rules of complimentary colour theory, symmetry and good taste out of the window, because people need to have Xmas rammed down their gullets until they spew forth a torrent of red and green sick, adorned with a Santa Hat (set at that perfect jaunty angle), and surrounded by the drowned semi-digested corpses of 100 cute little elves.
Yes, thank goodness it’s finally over for another year
I think what brings me the most torment is that I genuinely love Christmas. My family are very dear to me and, contrary to what I understand from the stand up comedians, I love the opportunity to spend a few uninterrupted days each year in their company. Having my own family now has only reinforced the true spirit of Christmas to me. The feeling of acceptance, of safety, the wonder of it all, the gentle smell of pine in the living room; I love it all. Yet every year my sincere excitement for the festive period is tempered by the crimes against aesthetics I am forced to undertake in its name.
Leave my Christmas alone
If you’d like a beautiful and wonderful reminder of what Christmas really should be, the genius Tim Minchin says it a thousand times better than I can.
Enjoy!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q[/youtube]