Contents
Jingle Bells
Christmas Trees
Sneaky chic reindeer?
As ever, it’s reindeer all the way at this time of year. But actually, perhaps not. Looking through this month’s Bugle, compared to previous Christmas editions we have produced, there seem to be remarkably few reindeer gadding about on these pages - though we will see if we can sneak in a few somewhere along the way. Not to worry, we’re getting into the spirit of things, which is more than can be said for some people. This month’s ‘killjoy’ award goes to Poole Borough council in Dorset, UK. According to the BBC, the Borough of Poole have ’axed’ (just love the pun) their traditional town centre real fir tree and have replaced it with a £14,000 fake tree (what’s £14,000 in euros? Well, not as much as it was a few years ago, but still quite a lot of money). Anyway, the fake tree is supposed to be safer and cheaper than a traditional Norwegian fir tree in the long run. Health and Safety rules (wouldn’t you just know it?!) mean that town centre Christmas trees have to be properly secured, and, according to the council local residents have complained in the past about the unsightly guy ropes and hoardings needed to support the real tree. So what’s so special about this artificial tree? Well, it is made secure by two tones of ballast, and has speakers hidden inside that play ’traditional’ Christmas carols. It is illuminated by thousands of LED lights that apparently make it look ‘very special‘ after dark. As you might imagine, not everyone is enchanted by the replacement. Shoppers interviewed by the BBC described the tree as looking more like a ‘giant traffic cone’ or a ‘witch’s hat’. Peter Scott, chief executive of Dorset Chamber of Commerce and Industry used the credit crunch to justify the change saying that in these challenging economic times ’profligate expenditure is frowned upon’. Here at the Bugle, we say ’Bah humbug’.
Relative Solutions and Sulky Santa
Christmas is supposedly the season of goodwill and family harmony. But as we all know, despite the best of intentions it doesn’t always work out that way, and sometimes after too much sherry, tempers begin to fray and the mince pies start flying. This year, a hotel chain in the UK has come up with a novel way to try and reduce the stress experienced by some families during the holiday period by introducing a special ‘mother-in-law’ rate. This is designed to help people who wish to ‘offload’ certain relatives this Christmas. A 25% discount will be offered between December 23rd and December 29th for mothers-in-law staying at any of the Holiday Inn Hotels. Now, we understand the reasoning behind this but we don’t think that the idea has been thought through as well as it might have been. The offence caused by publicly ‘dumping’ the mother-in-law might actually lead to far more aggravation than the traditional dispute about the best way to cook the Brussels sprouts on Christmas Day. And it does seem rather mean spirited, too (not very Mediterranean in our view)!
Apologies for the picture by the way — some of our best friends are mothers-in-law, and very nice ones too. But we just couldn’t resist the image!
So clearly it’s not all ‘ho, ho, ho’ in some parts of the world right now — and as you might have gathered by now, when trawling through the press releases, the UK didn’t seem to come out terribly well in the “Deck the halls with boughs of holly, tra la la la la la la la la” stakes. Hopefully we’ll be able to give you something more uplifting by the end of the page (and with any luck we’ll be able to find something amusing about reindeer, too. We need more reindeer in this edition! However, the deadline is getting nail-bitingly near).
Aha! We’ve now just found something about reindeer! Forget the sulky Santa story! Thanks to the Mirror online (www.mirror.co.uk) for helping us out with this one in their piece ‘The World’s Worst Father Christmases’ (credit where credit is due). In 2005, botanist Dr Ian Darwin Edwards explained that the myth of Santa’s flying sleigh first began when the Sami people of Lapland started to drink the hallucinogenic urine from reindeer that had been eating magic mushrooms. OK….but why would this help the reindeer to fly and to pull the sleigh and to make sure that everyone got their presents? And we all know that Santa really does exist.
Christmas Raffle with a Difference
And finally….It is hard to know quite what to make of this item that has recently been reported, but it certainly raised a few eyebrows round our way. HMP Kirkham, an open prison in Lancashire in the UK may hardly be Alcatraz, but it is still a penal institution. So the prize ‘of a day out in town’ originally offered in the prison’s Christmas raffle seems somewhat unusual to say the least. Inmates could buy raffle tickets on the condition that they agreed to help make Christmas lunch for the elderly at a local day centre. Initially the Prison Service announced that the winner of the raffle was going to be allowed a ‘single town visit’. However, some changes have now been made after it was revealed that the governor of the prison had no idea that this was the prize being offered. The governor is now going to consider a more ’appropriate prize’ (a Christmas cake concealing a file and a hacksaw perhaps?). Nobody from the prison service was prepared to say who had dreamt this one up, but they did say that it was designed to encourage good behaviour. Hmm, if the person responsible in the prison service won’t own up to the mistake that was made, we’re not sure that’s a great way to lead by example….
