Have A Merry Islamas

CHRISTMAS is coming, the goose is full of hydrogenated fat…

Isn’t Christmas just so great. Just get a load of that massive tree. It’s amazing how it manages to grow inside Dubai’s air-conditioned and brightly lit Wafi shopping mall. But where there is a will there is a way, and if the protectors of the Arab state can build a resort in the ocean and think it can withstand rising sea levels, then they can sure as heck make a fir tree grow indoors.

We could learn a lot from Dubai. "Ding dong merrily Dubai," chimes the Sun. "MUSLIMS GET IT RIGHT."

They surely do. Christians just haven’t a clue about Christmas. And to prove it the Sun positions its picture of Dubai alongside a snap of the Burnley concrete-scape. The Lancashire town was to have a tree in its own shopping mecca, the Charter Walk market, but the anti-vandal box it was to sit in was prohibitively expensive.

The poor folk of Burnley will have to make do with praying and all manner of other chilly Christmas customs. Not for them a gigantic severed tree shoved in a pot. For shame.

You’d hardly know it’s Christmas at all – which it isn’t. It’s especially hard to spot the holiday if you tune into the BBC’s Breakfast Show. Unlike the view on rival broadcaster GMTV, where there is so much tinsel and bauble, the BBC’s set is as spartan as a Bethlehem barn.

It will not do. And the Mail looks on as readers fire off a volley of emails, text messages and phone calls. No, not to GMTV complaining about the commercialisation of Christmas but to the BBC. The viewers want more glitz. Save the bleak stuff for Easter.

And the BBC has bowed to the public’s campaign. Instead of decking its halls with bells and holly on December 18, as planned, the BBC will spice up the set on Monday.

A BBC spokesman explains: "Breakfast is very responsive to audience feedback and the audience asked for us to bring the date forward and we listened to them."

This is fair. And, as viewers, we humbly request that Breakfast presenter Dermot Murnaghan read the news while dressed in a smock and holding a long wooden stick. Better yet if he refuses to shave and wears a Jewish yamulka.

His co-host Kate Silverton should wear a blue shawl and have a baby live on air. In front of a goat, a donkey and three strange men.

It is Christmas after all..

Posted: 7th, December 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink