Viva Foreboder: How the end of the world continually fails to spoil Christmas

I, like many of you, was bitterly disappointed that the world didn’t end on 21st December 2012 as the Mayans would have had us believe. I was mostly disappointed because it meant now I still have to go through Christmas. I’m not a big Christmas person. Three things I hate very much in this world are shopping; songs that are relentlessly happy; and anything that twinkles. Christmas is clearly not for me.

Mayan calendar taken with an Aztec camera

But we’re not out of the woods yet, in terms of world destruction. Because not only did the Mayan calendar run out this week, but my Spice Girls calendar runs out on 31st December 2012. One of these has to be correct. They can’t both be wrong. So if it is not the mighty wisdom of the Mayans that prevails here, it must fall to the collective acumen of the Spice Girls to predict the end of the world. After all, does not the Bible refer to the great prophecy of the “five girls of spice?” (Quick check. No, it doesn’t seem to. Maybe it was the King James edition.)

I love that whenever it’s the end of the world, people always stock up on two things: Food and ammunition. Neither of which is going to be any use. It’s the end of the world! You’re not going to be saved from the total destruction of everything just because you have 20 extra tins of oxtail soup in the cupboard.

The Four Horsemen as prophesised in The Brick Bible
(thebrickbible.com)

And you can’t shoot the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They’re powerful, skeletal and mythological. Believe me, if there is a quartet you don’t want to piss off, it’s the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They are called Famine, War, Death and Pestilence. They ain’t going to take being shot at too lightly. Famine, War, Death and Pestilence. Four powerful, spectral figures whose sole purpose is to lay waste the land astride their mighty steeds, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen. (I might be mixing my myths a little here.)

As for me and Christmas, with the help of e-commerce, an ipod and special polarised glasses that reduce twinkles to a slow pulsating, I am ready to face it. And once that’s done, I can prepare myself for the next end of the world. So for all of you out there, have a bearable Christmas and, if the Spice Girls turn out to be as reliable as the Mayans, Nostradamus, Harold Camping, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sun Myung Moon, Pat Robertson, Pope Sylvester II, William Miller, Sabbatai Zevi, Yearolopolies 2K and all the others who have disappointed me, I wish you a wonderful 2013.