They call it the Silly Season. I call it the Smegging Annoying Season. Christmas is a paradox: It is commonly known to be a time of goodwill and peace, when everybody just wants to be happy. But have you been in a shopping centre full of Christmas Shoppers? Christmas is a time when inoffensive individuals become hagglers from hell. Soccer mums and trophy wives alike elbow their way to the front of queues, raise imperious voices, and demand that jigsaw for Our Young Peter so he can feel loved for another 5 minutes until he opens somebody else's gift. Christmas brings out every person's impatience, exhaustion, rudeness, and selfishness. It is the great equaliser.

Boxing Day, if possible, is worse. We live near a major shopping centre, and yesterday the carpark there was full and cars were blocking streets for about three blocks in all directions. It was madness.

But now it's all over save New Year, and that's just an arbitary date on which to get drunk. Real life returns.

I hate Christmas.