And so farewell then mistletoe, ta-ta the Christmas kiss, it's been fun, but the joyless new Puritans of woke have decreed you are a sexist, misogynist, throwback and must be cancelled forthwith.

We live in a world of course which allows full and unhindered access to scenes of gang-rape at the click of an internet button, but a cheeky peck on the cheek under the mistletoe is the unacceptable face of the tyrannical male hegemony and must be eradicated.

“Mr Mistletoe” Nick Champion, who has held Britain's pre-Christmas mistletoe auctions for almost 50 years, said sales of the Xmas staple had collapsed because the younger generations would consider a Christmas kiss tantamount to sexual abuse.

Not, of course, the actual sexual abuse that goes on daily thanks to so-called “dating” apps (you know who you are...) which no-one seems to care a fig about, but that posturing level of not-really-abuse-at-all which allows the perennially woke and indeed their representatives in HR to posture and preach and virtue signal.

Think wolf-whistling. Crass yes. Dated, certainly. But abuse? Not really.

(My partner is brave enough to admit she actually likes it.)

So the Christmas kiss is added to the naughty list, along with, y'know, the “Christ” bit of Winterval.

And as each year passes we move further away from the actual Christian festival celebrating good will to all men and closer to a godless meaningless, supermarket-sponsored, highly stressful orgy of spending, waste and hypocrisy.

Black Friday with more tinsel.

Christmas, trust me kids, just ain't what it used to be.

We have allowed ourselves to become a country where tradition is to be loathed, where history is to be re-written, where the Christian religion above all others is allowed to be ridiculed, mocked and hated with absolute impunity (anyone fancy telling the nation's Imams that Eid is henceforth to be known as “Springval”? Thought not.)

Christmas has simply lost its sparkle and its magic.

In our woke-obsessed world everything will be cancelled or re-purposed: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen will become God Rest Ye Merry CIS-gendered males, Frosty will be renamed “Frosty the climate denying snowman” as the poor sod plainly has two eyes made out of fossil fuels, Mary Had a Baby sure, but not without adding (but Joseph could have had one too you bigoted TERF!)

As for Santa – an old man breaking and entering and sneaking into children's bedrooms in the middle of the night... seriously?

I went to Midnight Mass in a north London church last year because, nostalgic old fool that I am, I quite like singing Christmas carols and I wanted to rekindle that warm sense of belonging, shared experience and community I enjoyed as a kid.

There were 18 of us.

I counted.

I assume everyone else was using the last dying minutes to spend even more money they could not afford, or perhaps getting off their collective faces, celebrating for reasons they no-longer understand.

And that, sadly my friends, is the true spirit of Christmas 2024.