If someone voices a negative opinion of the Christmas holiday, it can be a bit of a moral minefield, with insults flying around including terms like “Scrooge”. But there is a very good reason why many people worry about Christmas in advance of the holiday. The fact of the matter is that Christmas can cost an awful lot of money, and leave us in a position where we have debts to pay off after the wrapping paper has been recycled, the food digested and the parties processed […]

If you were to run a word association exercise where you say one word and your counterpart says an associated word, then the word “Christmas” could have a series of associated terms. One person will say “tree”, another will say “present”, and still others will say “decoration”. Some people, conscious of what they will be getting up to in the run-up to Christmas, will supply the word “shopping”, because Christmas makes a lot of people think about what they will be buying for others. Some people love […]

Christmas is a time of year that draws strong reactions from a wide range of people. As much as it is a time for family and theoretically to be enjoyed, Christmas does have its opponents. Or, to be more accurate, there are people who are thoroughly displeased by the idea of a holiday which used to be about family togetherness and happiness being turned into a corporate festival which relies on rampant consumerism. Looking at the supermarkets which have Christmas related lines on their shelves from September […]