Four Festive Facts

As my first year of learning draws to a close, Christmas is drawing into view - and I'm experiencing the driest days of the whole experience. If I'm not on ten-hour Christmas lunches, I'm in Woolworths, meandering through the post-apocalyptic chaos in search of cheap tinsel; if I'm not there, I'm wrapping presents with all the panache and dexterity of a panda in boxing gloves. There's barely time for breathing, let alone fact-finding. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the nuggets I've found have had a festive feel, just like bloody everything at this time of year. (My worst experience this holiday season has been buying a 'festive' Krispy Kreme doughnut, whose sprinkles were red and green, instead of multi-coloured, and considerably fewer than average. Merry Christmas.)

We start with the festive singalong. Listening to the radio at Christmas feels a bit like being in the Soviet Union, hearing the same dozen broadly enthusiastic songs over and over again. Each of them has a different effect on the listener; Mariah Carey's works at first, but starts to grate before you've bought the turkey - Wizzard works the other way round. Slade is just plain annoying, whilst Wham is probably the most inoffensive. Fairytale of New York is an opinion-splitter (certainly in Knowledge Towers) but was always my family's favourite, particularly the line about "the boys from the NYPD choir... singing Galway Bay". Well, at the risk of breaking my dad's heart, I regret to inform you that there's no such thing as the NYPD choir. They made it up. Also, Dad, I've heard Shane McGowan likes a drink.

On to presents. Perhaps the most famous of all the rubbish gifts is the chunky, ill-fitting sweater. If you should be fortunate to receive one, preferably adorned with snowflakes and/or reindeer, find out if it was made from Merino wool. I'd always thought Merino was a place, possibly in Italy; it is in fact a breed of sheep. Does that make you feel better? I didn't think so.

Next up, it's Christmas past. Everyone knows that pagans held a midwinter festival that resembles Christmas, but something I didn't know before was that the Romans had their own version, the simply titled Saturnalia. Gifts were exchanged and no doubt all sorts of debauchery took place with Frankie Howerd looking on sheepishly. One of the key themes of Saturnalia was that slaves became masters for the festivities, and probably took liberties they would come to deeply regret in the ensuing 12 months. This tradition is still going strong today, when your office boss offers to buy the drinks at the team do, and then pretends they've left their wallet at home, and you all have to split it, which is really a piss-take when they earn 10 grand more than you and the entire bill is £30. Ahem.

And finally, after Christmas is all over (I'm aware this was hardly a comprehensive guide to Christmas, but I can only work with what I've got) you have January, with it's sleet, dark and credit card bills. Fear not, however, for Santa has had a word with the banks, and interest rates have been slashed - even going as low as "between 0 and 0.25%" in America. Which demonstrates that, when you're in a hole as big as they are, you can actually set interest rates at a variable rate. So spend away - it's like free money*

*Quest For Knowledge does not accept responsibility for debts incurred over the festive period. QFK would like to state that low interest rates are in no way like free money.