Bah humbug to all this Secret Santa nonsense

PAV’s Goodwill-to-all-men Christmas Patch:

WHAT is it about women and Christmas?

I don’t know if any of you are “Frasier” fans, but there is an episode in which Donny is snapped at by his fiancee, Daphne, and then turns to the eponymous Dr Crane and says: “It’s the holidays (Christmas). They make women go crazy.”

I couldn’t agree more. This time of the year awakens something strange in females. I thought I’d come across all their crackpot schemes — cards to anything that moves, presents for animals — but this year I’ve come across a doozer.

A couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail asking me if I wanted to join in a Secret Santa scheme. This piece of schmaltz would involve me joining nine other people in picking a name from a hat. Then, keeping things secret all the time, I would have to buy that person a £10 present and give it to them at a special lunch tomorrow.

Well excuse me, but I have never come across anything so hare-brained. I immediately said no and then sent a rejection e-mail when I was invited to the meal.

Amazingly, my female colleagues have decided I am the most miserable man on Earth.

Trouble is, they don’t appreciate that I take it as a compliment when they call me Scrooge. He was a fine man in my book and I’ll never tire of repeating his most famous quote: “Every idiot who goes around with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart”.

For a start, what would I buy a woman of about 35 for a tenner? If it was a box of chocs, her twisted female logic would dictate that I was trying to get her fat. Make-up? Haven’t a clue. Clothing? Wouldn’t dare. Jewellery? What sort of bling can you get for £10?

I’d be on a loser from the start. A tenner wouldn’t do for a woman. I’d have to spend more and adding that to the cost of the lunch would mean I had to fork out around 40 quid on some sickly office whim.

And, more importantly, what would I get in return from my Secret Santa? Probably something I never use such as cuff links or smelly stuff. You can bet I wouldn’t get a book, or if I did it would be Robbie Williams’s autobiography.

Miserable I may be, but as the great Scrooge replied to his nephew’s complaint that he didn’t keep Christmas: “Let me leave it alone then.”

Bah! Humbug!