"Christmas will always be the summit of the year for me, maximum life, a magnificent crisis, all dappled with loss that flickers with the fairy lights. At Christmas, my natural desire to please knows no bounds but so does my desire to be pleased. I think of it as the courtly/Courtney Love conundrum — I want to be the one with the most cake but, ideally, while laying down my cloak for others. This is a fraught state, with dodgy wiring, likely to end explosively, but you cannot beat it for adrenaline."
Every now and then someone writes an article about Christmas that sums up how I feel about it so perfectly that I feel they've seen into my head. This is one of those times: This Year, Christmas Needs Its Devotees, by Susie Boyt for the Financial Times. When I tried posting it in a standard Tumblr link post, it threw up an unhelpful "Subscribe to read" boxout, but I'm certainly not a subscriber and was able to view the whole piece, so hopefully it'll work for you too.