33:64 presents “Ebeneezer Scrooge.”

I’m presently in Southwold and there was here, as there is in many UK coastal towns, the annual Christmas Day swim for charity. Indeed, calling it a ‘swim’ is the most charitable thing about it. Most of the ‘swimmers’ certainly look the part. The women wearing dry robes, the men pretending that they have no need for such frivolities as warmth. The teenage boys styling it out for the benefit of teenage girls, as teenage boys have always done and will always do. Even if their bravado doesn’t quite fill out their budgie smugglers. And the teenage girls will pretend not to notice this, just as teenage girls have always done and will always do.

They’ll all make a great show of running down to the waters edge, giving every indication that they’ll plunge headfirst into the freezing water and do some swimming. But these are the last few days of Britain 2025, where the giving the indication that you might do something is far more important than actually doing it. As far as I can tell, and there’s an abundant amount of evidence on YouTube to support this, most of the ‘swimmers’ never go much further than waist height. More intermediate paddling than swimming.

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And along with the swim that never is, there’s the ‘this old thing?, that never is.  Yes, the Christmas Day catwalk, where people wear they’ve presents they’ve just opened, parading their finery for all to see. But all the while, maintaining the air of someone who got dressed in a hurry, pulled on the first thing that came to hand, and didn’t even have time to stop and look in the mirror before they dashed out of the door.

The irony is that because it is Christmas Day and all the shops are closed, there’s not enough  people on the streets to behold the full extent of their bounty. So for now at least, its only coats and jackets, hats or scarves. 

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Now its Boxing Day and it’s like the age old question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”, has been updated. Given not so much a festive makeover, but capitalism disguised as a welcome opportunity to do the Christmas catwalk properly.  Coffee shops are a good example of this. 

Firstly, are they open because there are people about, or are there people about because the shops are open? Secondly, it gives people the opportunity to take off the new cats, jackets, hats and scarves they got yesterday, and reveal just how much a walking advert they are. And to prove how the people that they know are  the sort of people willing and able to pay full price. 

Because the Boxing Day sales have always baffled me. Back in the olden days, long before the internet and bubble tea, one of the staples of Christmas TV news programmes was to interview people in the queue for the Harrods Boxing Day sales. There were always loads of them. Some would’ve been there since Christmas Eve to be first through the doors when it opened. It always seemed to be fur coats they were after. Olden times indeed.

The thing that struck me then was that Boxing Day sales were the very antithesis of the Christmas spirit. The very fact of makes a mockery of the notion of goodwill to all men; that in order to achieve a happy Christmas, one also needed to ruin it for other people. That’s what the Boxing Day sales are.  Or indeed any shop that’s is open on Boxing Day. Think about it, think of the staff who have to work in them. No eating, drinking or making merry for them on Christmas Day. They can’t get drunk, wake up late the next day and start caning it anew. No, they’ve got be up and early because people haven’t figured out what online shopping is.