British families sublimate seasonal rage through chocolate. Now the pick-and-mix tin is going to tear us apart…
Like it or not, Christmas is bearing down upon us. It’s a special time for over-eating, socially sanctioned inebriation and, most importantly, for realising that your immediate family are a bunch of truly appalling, hateful people. T’was ever thus. When I was a kid, growing up with an agony aunt mother who ran her business salving emotional pain and distress from home, the busiest two weeks of the year were always the ones immediately following Christmas. The break stopped families getting away from each other. Cooped up at home because of the weather, crowds of people would end up writing to my mother announcing they now wished to divorce their irritating spouses or put their dreadful children up for adoption or both.
It could have been worse. For decades, many British families have learned to sublimate their festering rage over the festive period, through the medium of cheap chocolate: in particular, via arguments over the contents of the shared Christmas Quality Street tin. By fighting with each other over who ate all the orange cremes, and why there are only toffee pennies left and for God’s sake, you know exactly how important the green triangles are to me, generations of us have avoided arguing about anything of real importance. We bitch and squabble over crap confectionery and, satisfied that we have somehow made our point, retreat into a fine British position of quiet, sturdy mutual contempt.
Related: My 10 Christmas food commandments
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