Christmas, minus the humbug

If you have an opinion, spit it out. No columnist could say otherwise. But I would cheerfully consign to a stinking, sound-proofed Tikriti cellar - minus the Bounty bars - the Grinches who, by way of massaging their cool, post-modern, ironic personas, put the boot into other people's idea of Christmas, writes Kathy Sheridan.

For many, whatever their circumstances or beliefs, Christmas is a time of hope, a time when a small corner of the weariest heart is briefly ignited with a faith that good things can happen.

Christmas stirs the soul like no other season. Whether it's the death of a loved one during the year or the absence of a child, the loss is felt most keenly.

And because of that inexplicable Christmas optimism that haunts the heart, pain inflicted at this time resonates like no other. The empty promises of an alcoholic, or the spousal gift that yells "Grabbed in thoughtless, drunken stupor", can erode the most hopeful spirit. Until next Christmas...

I was a robust 12-year-old on the morning that Santa - persuaded by some diseased sibling that I was a sneering non-believer - failed to leave the usual booty at the end of the bed. I still remember the shock, and being unable to look my school friends in the eye.

Equally, Christmas deposits slivers of magic that sparkle forever in the memory's crevices. Heading home, late, on pitch-dark country roads from the customary Christmas Eve drinks with relations, someone usually points to the place in the sky where years ago, a clatter of us (the children too, we swear) saw something brilliantly-lit and uncommonly sleigh-shaped, streaking across the starry heavens. And the time we came out of church to find a flurry of snowflakes wafting onto the little chapel and fields, a dusting of pure Christmas magic.

Scientists, cynics and resolute realists can deconstruct all this in a millisecond, of course. But why would they want to? What kind of warm-blooded creature sets out deliberately to crush the joyful, confused, painful, extravagant, slushy, shimmering blend of nostalgia, delusion, fantasy and hope that mark the season of Christmas for so many?

Do we really need a warning from a former Church of Ireland rector, not to take the Three Wise Men literally, for fear we may all become "fundamentalists"? Or to read a Guardian columnist, John Sutherland, cackling at the good of a "hilariously subversive" movie character called Bad Santa (just out in the US), a foul-mouthed career thief/department store Santa whose main recreation is anal sex, in full Santa regalia, with "heavy" ladies?

It qualifies as "subversive", in Sutherland's view, because America is "slipping inexorably towards theocracy" and Christian self-confidence is distorting American foreign policy. All of which had already been giving some of us pause.

But as a rationale for a Santa who in Sutherland's gleeful interpretation, "defecates, vomits, urinates and ejaculates on Christianity's most sacred festival", it's a tad suspect. Surely it's possible to attend a Hollywood "Hate Bush Bash" at the same time as wanting to believe in a little magic, whatever its progenitor?

Sutherland has a notion that Hollywood now represents the last bastion against Theocracy. But look around the western capitals. In Dublin, not a single department store is prepared to risk a traditional Christmas window of any description. In London, Selfridges' windows feature a pile of plaster casts of fridge freezers. Back in Dublin, interior stylists are making up to €10,000 a throw for filling other people's homes with garlands and dressing their Christmas trees. So much for ritual and meaning.

The other extreme is the glossy magazines fuelling oceans of guilt with their exhortations to women (who else?) to revert to a time when "everything was lovingly handmade". To this end, you should, by December 1st, have created your own "simple stockings in luxurious fabrics and trims to fill with gifts on Christmas Eve".

Since Tuesday, your home should have been fragrant and aglow with fresh flowers and scented foliage. And we do hope you have the ingredients in for the "Christmas morning muffins" (it's all about shared rituals, says Nigella) and remember that the only acceptable ribbon for your wrapping this year is "very wide satin" to be wrapped "only once", mind, around your parcels. Somewhere in the babel is a balance between the magnificent if absurd Christmas imagery of Good Housekeeping and Sutherland's Bad Santa nihilism.

You don't have to have a view on the Three Wise Men to see the modest, old Christmas basics as anything but a force for good.

Laying on the greenery, dressing the tree, giving some thought to presents and wrapping them nicely, collecting loved ones at the airport, sending greetings to old friends, catching up with the neighbours, being a bit creative in the kitchen, visiting Santa. And if you're moved to set up a Crib or shed a few silly tears at the school Nativity play, well, it's still legal.

Of course we should be vigilant for extremists. But leave Christmas out of it.