The festive season is a time of excess. A time of more, of don’t-mind-if-I-do-iness that reaches a stupefied crescendo during the enervated limbo between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve — in which Christmas stockings and colons alike are stuffed with inflammatory nurdles.
Trolling the homeopathic approach, we seek to normalise the engorgement by ramping up our fix. My favoured holiday ritual typically includes: a Joan Crawford movie binge, a vodka Martini dance-off accompanied by a flight of luxury crisps, the illogically mournful A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, leftover re-congealed baked brie for breakfast, goodwill to all men, an elasticated waistband. After such Neroic over-indulgence, the new year can’t come fast enough with rash promises to our inner monk to hereafter live simply and limply, renouncing our sordid gluttony. Fat chance.
