h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah, Christmas. It's a funny old game.

These days, I find there's a part of me that's all old and cynical and wants to forget the whole thing. That's the part that feels a sinking feeling at the sight of Christmas lights, that has learned to dread the ear-shattering, distorted wail of the stereo system on the local Rotary Club Santa float that comes round each year to scrounge for money for whatever Rotarians do with the money they collect. It probably goes to a good cause, but this part of me doesn't really care about that.

This is the part I tend to outwardly foster at this time of year. The Ebenezer Scrooge side of me, if rather less extreme. I've yet to describe Christmas as a humbug, even if I may think it sometimes.

Then there's the other side. The mildly embarrassing, deeply uncool side that wants to sing Christmas Carols and dance to - God help me - Slade and Wizzard tracks of yesteryear. The sentimental, feelgood side.

My point being, that even this second side of me, the one that buys into the whole Christmas thing, can't _stand_ modern Christmas music, and feels a cold and destructive fury at the thought of those appalling lights they strung out in London last year: Plain orange (a horrible colour), spelling out 'tis the season to be Tango'd.

Ye Gods, but if that isn't a damning endictment of the capitalist subversion of the much-vaunted 'Christmas Spirit', I don't know what is.

Perhaps the really worrying thing is that I'm getting nostalgic for a kind of glam-rock Christmas that dates practically to the time of my birth, rather than my childhood. Has Christmas really gone downhill ever since I was born? Or was it always appallingly commercial and I just wasn't around to notice?

So my Christmas wishes for this year?

Well I wish they'd let the shops do their own lights again in London this year - I know the smaller shops think it's unfair, but between that and 'It's only Christmas if you drink at least a gallon of Coke', I'm prepared to put my democratic sensibilities on hold. Some of those shop displays used to be beautiful, and this in a Britain where Christmas light displays are increasingly heavyweight and vulgar.

I wish the Christmas number one could be something cheerful, celebratory and up tempo, without being the Tellytubbies, or the Tweenies, or Bob the Builder or Dave the Dope-Peddler or - God love 'em, because surely no-one else does - the bleeding Pokemon. Something in the vein of Slade, or Wizzard, but maybe a little less glam. Or maybe not. It won't be; it'll be Westlife or S Club 7 or Bob the Builder or something like that, because people of taste and sophistication don't buy singles anymore, especially not at Christmas, but I can wish.

I think peace on earth and goodwill to all men is probably a bit of a long shot, but I'd like to pitch for a more feelgood midwinter festival. A modern - or even post-modern - interpretation, fostering a spirit of unity, in place of the monotheistic totalitarianism of Christianity, the well-meaning but inaccesible - and frankly fabricated - world of neo-pagan solstice rights, and most especially in place of the rank commercialism which gives us a Christmas sponsored and co-opted by soft drinks.

In the absence of something better: Happy Agnostica! (