Le Monsieur à Noël.

Greetings mes readers,

Lately I have been a little distracted by things to say the least. - The neighbors playing Thriller until all hours thinking that a tribute concert is excusable when in fact Michael Jackson would probably have eaten him were he really a zombie in the video that accompanies it. The colder weather making the skin on my hands feel very much like inverting itself and running amok like some bizarre Robbie Williams tribute act. Finally, there's the impending event of sorts that is Christmas. 

The thing that irks this Monsieur the most is the fact Christmas is the season of dutiful entertainment. There is few and far between anything of anything truly, spectacularly culturally rewarding. Of course, culture depends entirely on your definition of the indefinable. For a Monsieur like myself, it involves jazz, wine, cheese and maybe - though entirely optional - a few orgies. Of course, we all know that orgies are so out of fashion that they make The Stones look like Kate Moss. So these orgies are ironic orgies. At an ironic orgy, people don't actually fuck, they talk about the possibility, laugh at the idea of an actual orgy and then go home with the strange sensation they just wasted their time when they could have been doing something far more useful, such as looking for The Stig in his new Where's Wally style book, that is actually quite entertaining in traffic jams, but not in all jams.  

The idea behind my supposition that Christmas is a sullied event has something to do with the feeling of cultural loss I have every Boxing Day when I look around my house and think to myself "Hmm". It's not an Osama bin Laden style despising festival against the seasonal spirit, more a mounting sense of unease at the earlier arrival of brain squishing compilations of Xmas music and chocolate that screams out at me in Satanic tones to "buy me buy me buy me". Honestly, where is the culture in that? Alors, that's the way it is and that's the way it'll stay until the hairs in Santa's beard fall out from overwork and he quits citing long hours and reindeer maintenance. But despite my pessimism I do want to say that I'm looking forward to celebrating the real meaning of this allegedly festive season. Before you ask, that's not the guy who came back to life and got arrested for being a nut, it's time with one's family. 

You may think a Monsieur is a cold hearted, monosyllabic individual who threatens pigeons with his  brooding Parisian masculinity just by breathing out, but you'd be wronger than a food porn movie. No, a Monsieur can love as well. And this Monsieur can be loving when he absolutely needs to be. So despite the screaming Christmas songs, the raging gifts and presents, the tinsel burning around me and the trees flashing at me more than I'd normally tolerate I will resolutely try and enjoy the festivities this Christmas. I shall make it my sworn mission to have a cultural jihad. There will be wine, cheese, coffee beans, jazz and fine art flying from every orifice of the sky. An apocalypse of sorts, for a lack of any real apocalypse.  And hopefully, I'll have a bonne Noël.

À demain,

Le Monsieur