Well, Christmas has come early. Yes Ladies, you can stop line-dancing in nothing but furry boots and dousing each-other in golden syrup (at least that's what I imagine you get up to when you're not reading my blogs) and gather round the monitor, because the Bunyip is back. And wishing you a merry one.
I do this sincerely. I like Christmas. That is to say, I like it a rational amount. I'm not one of these people who announce to the room that I'm feeling 'all Christmassy' in late November and keep getting up to put Nat King Cole on Spotify. These people are generally the sort who think show tunes are a good choice for a pre-drinking soundtrack and feel frightened when they don't recognise a song being played in a club, and clap and bark like seals when they do. Those people. But it's November. November is for human music.
In essence, I feel about Christmas how I feel about the Smiths. I'd like them more if other people didn't like them entirely too much.
Like Christmas, the Smiths can be responsible for a thoroughly good time. It took me a while to get into them, however, because for years, judging by the manner in which the name was uttered, I assumed 'The Smiths' was a codeword for a love egg that certain trendy people kept gently buzzing against their prostate. It's impossible to talk about them without encountering the kind of quasi-devotional bollocks usually only found in the context of certain faiths. Only a couple of hours ago, an article on an entirely tangential subject could include the detail 'her weekly visits to church were replaced by a new house of worship, the monthly Smiths disco in Manchester (the hymns are better, apparently)'. You suspect she's only sort of joking. In the light of this, you can't just enjoy the music; you must be 'saved' by it. This sort of thing haunts the Guardian's music section (often tainted by its presence up the arsehole of itself) like a particularly fishy case of the clap. One reviewer's nostalgic lookback at Meat is Murder from their 'Favourite Album' series contains the line 'If you were a teenager in the 80s, perhaps – what are the chances? – misunderstood and alone in a fraying household in a northern city with only books and records to save you, well, you might have fallen for them too'. Misunderstood! In the North! Drop your wilting marigolds and save her, Morrisey! Another, which doesn't even appear to have been prompted by anything other that sheer circle-jerkery, argues they made 'a virtue out of eschewing the epic and documenting in hyper-realistic fashion the rhythms and textures of daily life. In 1983, when the Smiths first started playing shows outside Manchester, to stand up for ordinariness – as they did, most forcefully, with their name itself – was a bold statement. It seemed a refusal of the sartorial overload and yacht-rock opulence of most chart pop.' What prophets! Excuse me whilst I orgasm into the Hatful of Hollow sleeve-notes.
Both these bugbears - Christmas and the Smiths - came to a head in November during the infamous John Lewis ad campaign, and for once I was thoroughly on the side of Saint Nick. After the horrid ad machine used a licensed Smiths song, the fanbase spat its chips. The Guardian immediatly shat out a fevered, apocalyptic response, which conceived of the song's use as akin flogging roman crockery with Jesus' face on it. 'Those left standing wondered how The Smiths, of all the anti-consumerist, anti-Thatcherite and anti-establishment bands of the 1980s, allowed a song so clearly about non-material varieties of desire to be used to part us from our festive cash.' (I'm guessing it's because they fancied the dollar, but who knows). 'That song is, definitively, not about wanting things. (Author hint: it is) Nor is it about the cosiness of family life and our fantasies of the perfect Christmas. It is a raw, painful song about alienation and unfulfilled longing, not duvets and crockery and baubles.' Well, that's one interpretation. As he never states the object of his desire, we're free to speculate that what he actually wants is a bunch of really nifty John Lewis bed-linen, making the advert entirely in-keeping with the Smiths' ethical standpoint. If they licensed the song, let it be used to flog tat. Who the fuck cares. You know why I like the Smiths? Because they make nice music. End of. Use it to advertise infanticide if you want. I couldn't give a purple toddler.
So, back to Christmas. I like it. I hate the hype and excitement surrounding it, but I like it. Not being a Christian nor an under 12 year old, it's hard to state what part of it appeals to me. I suppose I enjoy it in the sense of it being a festival to stave off the ravages of a harsh winter, as it was enjoyed in the past. As such I prefer a sombre, introspective response to festivities. My favourite carol - indeed, one of the few I can stand - is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen because with its sonorous and melancholic tone it presents Christmas with an edge of 'oh-christ-I-hope-God-gives-us-a-plentiful-spring-and-we-aren't-forced-to-eat-the-children-to-survive-like-last-time'.
So, in this spirit, I recommend that you spend this evening quietly supping on a tankard of mead. Then, wrap yourself in a sheepskin, stand in the middle of the nearest field, and stare at the rime-coated horizon, contemplating a universe ruled by a vengeful God and devoid of reason and meaning. Then go home, baste your tits in Tate&Lyle and go line-dancing. You'll have a belter.
