Another view: The nightmare before Christmas

It was the same story when I was cycling past the bookshop the other day, at breakfast time. A man with a dog – a small man, once again, with a small dog - stepped into the road right in front of me and as I slammed on the brakes to avoid running into him (or his dog) and skidded to a halt I grunted some sort of noise: a sort of “Whooah!”

He didn’t like that. “You’re supposed to f***ing stop,” he told me angrily. “It’s a f***ing red light.” Which indeed it was by now, although not at the time he stepped into the road without looking: a point I thought of making to him but thought better of. Instead I smiled and gesticulated towards the other side of the road, ostentatiously inviting him to cross unimpeded. As he did, he kept glancing back at me all the time, which made me laugh.

Another dog walker, who had witnessed this minor everyday incident involving a pedestrian and a bicyclist (and a dog) smiled sympathetically at me and suggested something about the aggressor having got out of bed on the wrong side. I smiled back at him and, as the lights turned I cycled off.

Over on the other side of the street, the first man and his dog stared angrily at me. Then he began performing an impression of the man in Shoreditch. “What are you f***ing laughing about?” he wanted to know. “You won’t be f***ing laughing when I knock your teeth down your f***ing throat.”

I had been planning to pick up a newspaper nearby but I was worried that if I stopped the man who was so keen to wipe the smile off my f***ing face might come back and attack me, so I cycled home.

Mortifyingly, I later discovered that the whole incident had been observed by a well-known stand-up comedian of my acquaintance when he emailed me to ask why I was being abused by a stranger in the street – a question I was unable to answer with any accuracy, or even a satisfying punchline for him to include in his next comedy vehicle.

When I got home and mentioned these incidents, of course, my wife and children immediately drew the conclusion that I must have provoked these two strangers into their violent threats. “People just don’t start on you for no reason,” they said. “Oh yes they do,” I replied, since it’s panto season. “Oh no they don’t,” they insisted, for the same reason.

The only thing the two incidents had in common is that I smiled at a small aggressive man. I’m not convinced that would stand up in court as a defence if someone accused of assault offered the mitigation that they were provoked into attacking a complete stranger because he looked at them with a smile plastered over his face.

Anyway, both these incidents set me to thinking about how Christmas, the time of year when we are all supposed to think about other people a bit more than we do the rest of the year, brings out the worst in so many people, resulting in more stress, fighting, and marital strife – but also more eating and drinking - than the rest of the year put together.

And no wonder, when there’s such a compulsion to spend money. I read a recent survey by Deloitte’s that revealed we spend 40 per cent more than any other country in Europe on Christmas gifts – an average of £285 per person – and it’s going up every year.

Then again, what can you expect when we’ve forgotten what Christmas is actually about?

Not only do 36 per cent of small children not know whose birthday is being celebrated on Monday (clue: his initials are ‘JC’), but nearly a quarter of them believe we’re marking the date when X Factor supremo Simon Cowell came into the world. Because if you think about it, they both performed miracles: Jesus with loaves and fishes and stuff, Simon by persuading gullible fools to give him their money for terrible records by talentless chancers.

It gets worse. In the same survey, which must be true because I read it in the Daily Mail yesterday, 30 per cent of children think the news of the birth of Jesus/Simon reached the three wise men (Gary Barlow, Prince Charles and TOWIE star Mark Wright; I kid you not) by following yonder Facebook.

Call me crazy but I’m often a little sceptical of surveys; the rest of the time I’m very sceptical. This one went on to “reveal” that a quarter of those same children, aged between five and seven, believed that Jesus/Simon was born not in Bethlehem, as legend, and indeed the Bible, would have it, but in (wait for it) the Essex town of Brentwood. And specifically the Sugar Hut nightclub.

Now you probably don’t need me to point out the absurdity of that, and not just because of the unlikelihood of finding three wise men and a virgin in Essex.

Happy Christmas!