Christmas rush

Not the zombie-like shoppers frantically grabbing anything in sight, no. I completed that most distasteful part of Christmas by the end of November, and I did it online. No battling insane pensioners for me, I have Christmas delivered. It also saves a lot of money if you have few friends. Anyone who won't speak to you because they didn't get a bit of cardboard with a robin on the front is no true friend, and you're better off without them.

What I'm talking about is the Work Rush.

Everything has to be finished by Christmas. Before the staff go off on their holidays, before the lunacy of the staff party, all milestones and deadlines (often new and unreasonable ones) must be completed. You're expected to sit at your desk on Christmas Eve, scratching away with your quill pen with one lump of coal on the fire.

Here, and in my previous employment, it is seen as weakness to leave work before Official Closing Time - 2 pm on Christmas Eve. Anyone leaving early is scoffed at. Not by the usual office moron, but by Management. You are obviously not committed. You are unreliable, a slacker, disloyal.

What a load of crap.

Why doesn't this apply when the boss takes a month off in the summer?

It only happens at Christmas. Now, I'm not religious (although I could drop a few hints about Y-chromosome Noah -- Look up Y-chromosome Adam in Wikipedia and see if you can work out what I mean) so the whole church thing doesn't affect me. I don't put up decorations because they annoy me. I don't like turkey. I have a T-bone steak for Christmas dinner.

What does annoy me is the pointless pressure exerted just before this holiday. There's no sense to it. Do they think the world will end on December 25th? Perhaps it's a Pagan race memory. They believed that, if the priests failed, the days would just keep getting shorter until total darkness covered the world. Management are, as everyone knows, gullible simpletons, so that's a real possibility.

That's why, every year, I start my holiday before December 22nd. I tell them I have to be off for the solstice, and leave the rest to their imaginations.

The truth is, I don't want to be there during this silly season.