Festive Fear

It's a sad thing to think of yourself as a cynic before you've even reached 25. Nonetheless, not being one to do things half heartedly I'm going to go to town with this particular characteristic and when better to make it known than the 'happiest time of the year'. And by that ridiculously irritating not to mention inaccurate slogan, I mean Chritmas. Here we are again in mid-November and every child old enough to write is asking a fat man they know from the Coke advert for an iPad and every single female over a certain age is holding out for Graham from Accounts to confess his love at the office party. So he's losing his hair, whatever, the prospect of being alone during the limbo land of Christmas and New Year is scarier than his collection of Star Wars figurines.

However, true to form yet unfaithful to the pure definition of cynicism I propose one of the few if not the only saving grace of this stressful, overwhelming (or underwhelming, if you don't get the Scrubs boxset you asked for), and overrated time of year. The shoes. That ' 5-day LBD diet' you ripped out of Glamour and stuck on the fridge isn't going to turn you into Nicole Scherzinger and after several Quality Street induced comas, the likelyhood of that is slipping away faster than the bottle of  Baileys you bought 'just in case'. But your shoes don't care. They will look as good as when you first tried them on and give you something to hold on to during the mid-January downer. Lets be honest, no-ones Christmas 'diary' is as packed and festive as almost every magazine and advert likes to make out. "No my only plans are NOT my mum's uncle's annual cold buffet trying to keep the conversation to the most mundane topics to avoid a domestic....I've got that er, drinks thing."

I don't need an excuse, you don't need an excuse and yet, unless your surname is Ecclestone, you always have to justify a purchase. Which is why, you should feel no guilt in buying a, if not all, of the following. Because, repeat after me: "It's Christmas."