When I told friends that I would be spending Christmas Day helping the homeless at a Crisis at Christmas centre in north London, they all congratulated me for doing something good for someone else. And then they congratulated themselves for having already done Crisis at Christmas years ago. Volunteering at a Crisis at Christmas centre is, I discovered, the Glastonbury of good causes.
Crisis veterans all told me about what a ‘rewarding experience’ it had been for them; some claimed it had been their ‘best Christmas ever’. Some take their teenage children along and they, I’m assured, love it too. And now when they ask me, ‘How was it?’ and I say, ‘It was OK’, they’re disappointed in me.
When it comes to Christmas charity work, OK is not OK. It has to be ‘-amazing’ and ‘life-affirming’. You’re expected to come back from the experience glowing with goodness and excited to share touching tales of how you put a smile on the face of an old toothless lady and gave hope to the pongy guy on crutches — while everyone else in Britain was indulging in an orgy of mindless, self-indulgent consumerism before the telly.
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