#CGACC2024
The Bitch Is Back
Phew! That year off really did some good. This CGACC©️ felt like a real return to form. I came back fresh and ready to throw myself into it again. In all honestly - there comes a point in every CGACC©️ where it starts to feel like a chore, but this year that happened very late in the process. I was churning out posts quite easily until about door 20 where I started to flag a little bit.
Also, the response was really touching. I was really worried that after a year of not doing it, the audience will have drifted off, but a lot of people seemed really pleased that it was back. I even got stopped in the street a couple of times with cries of "hey! it's the advent calendar man!". Which is, I suppose, what I have become.
So, yeah, if you're working your way through this and felt that 2022 was a little off don't worry about it.
Also, this is the first year where I felt comfotable asking for donations after beimg gently encouraged by one of my writer friends to do so, and it's a real lesson that people are actually really keen to pay for something they enjoy
Greetings and welcome, my dear friends, past cohorts, casual acquaintances, family members, people I met while I was drunk 15 years ago, work colleagues, enemies, frienemies, networking opportunists, and hot singles in my area, to the end of the year.
Things always seem a little bleak as November runs through its last day; Autumn has put on its show but now the theatre is closed. All that began as red and gold now rots to compost on the bitter earth. Winter haunts the air and the sun, much like Western democracy in the fight against fascism, is barely even trying anymore.
This is the night season.
But within it, in the distance but drawing nearer, is the glimmering jewel of Christmas.
This time, this approach, means a lot of different things to a lot of people. To my fellow secularists it means, perhaps, a spot of light alcoholism and a sudden desire for mince pies, to a lot of others it means, without going into to much detail, some stuff about a baby who may or may not have been either God or, like, one of the X-Men or something, and I suppose to our disaster capitalist overlords it means MORE!! I NEEEEED MOOOORE!! THE WORLD IS A GLITTERING SEWER OF RICHES LET ME CONSUME IT HOW I CRAVE TO POSSESS AND BE POSSESSED GIVE ME YOUR MONEY AND YOUR BLOOD AHAAHAHAHA, and good luck to them. Girl’s gotta eat.
But to some of you, it means the return of the CGACC©
Now, it’s been a minute, so even if some dim corner of your mind can recall that there once was a thing called the CGACC©, you might not remember what the actual quivering fuck it was all about.
Most of you, I’m guessing, have not the slightest clue what I’m taking about and oh, my sweet summer child, you’re already in way over your head. No no, it’s too late to run. Just let it happen.
The CGACC© or Chris Gates Advent Calendar Campaign* is when every day of Advent I, Chris Gates (CG) open my advent calendar (AC) then, and prepare yourself for the end of this sentence because you’re going to read it and think “there should be more sentence after this because surely this isn’t worth all the fanfare, but no, there in fact is the full stop and oh dear God what is wrong with him and, moreover, the world?”, I describe what’s behind the door.
This, and I can’t emphasise this enough, is some people’s favourite part of December
Why, you ask? Ummmm…pass. But I’ve been doing this for over 10 years and people seem to like it so I’m kind of duty bound at this point.
Usual rules apply: join in or don’t, enjoy it or don’t, but whatever you do, don’t be a cunt about it
Holidays are coming, ya’ll
*i’m just now realising how much better the word Crusade would have been than Campaign, It captures the vibe so much better. Ah well, canon is canon.
Comments:
Amber: already hooked (lacking candy cane emoji)
Lake: This is a *very* strong start indeed. I wish I was exaggerating when I say this is actually the best thing about December. But here we are.
Philippa: Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh .......
Dan : And he's back. Oh yes. Advent me Chris. Advent away .
Mark: Yippee Kay Yule, Merryfumblers! CGACC is off to an absolute flyer!
Advent Calendar Door 1: It’s a letter to Santa Claus!
Fucking YES! An EXCELLENT beginning, I think you’ll agree, in fact I insist that you do because we, as a society, need to start listening to experts again. I’d go so far as to say this is the best opening to any advent calendar we’ve seen in the CGACC©️*
It’s in a purplish envelope with a Christmas tree stamp and a tiny candy cane affixed to one corner. Addressed to Santa at his North Pole address (not to his beach house in the Cayman Islands) and there’s also a sprig of holly on the table by the letter.
Much festive. Very Christmas. Although could that candy cane be construed as a bribe, do you think? Someone trying to get their name bumped onto the nice list by slipping St Nick a sweet little somethin somethin? Even ignoring the moral implications this is a pretty piss poor choice of bribe, like, Father Christmas probably already has pretty good candy cane access n’est ce pas? If you’re gonna butter him up, give him something he needs, like rechargeable hand warmers or heart medication.
But yes, this is a VERY good ADVP** and no matter what happens next let us always remember that this CGACC©️ started on a high.
Welcome back everyone
#CGACC2024
*holy fucking shit there’s a copyright symbol emoji!! No longer will I have to google ‘copyright symbol’ and copy and paste it every time I want to write CGACC©️
Do you REALISE how much time this is going to save me? Seconds, possibly even a minute in aggregate. I’ve rarely been more exited.
**Advent Calendar Door Picture, do try to keep up
Comments:
Amber: already hooked (lacking candy cane emoji)
Lake: This is a *very* strong start indeed. I wish I was exaggerating when I say this is actually the best thing about December. But here we are.
Phillipa: Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh .......
Dan: And he's back. Oh yes. Advent me Chris. Advent away .
Mark: Yippee Kay Yule, Merryfumblers! CGACC is off to an absolute flyer!
Miles: Fuck. Yes.
Jonny: "....what critics are calling an incredible comeback and amazing return to form"
Rob: Finally the world can get back on track. Welcome back
Chris Gates: One thing at a time, but fingers crossed
Amelia: Festive AF thank you door number one
Lyn: I’m sticking candy canes on all correspondence from now on!
Kez: IT’S BACK!!!!!!! No word of a lie - I was thinking about CGACC the other day and how sad I was last year without it. It officially feels like Christmas now. Thank you for bringing back my Christmas spirit.
Chris Gates: CGACC©️, and you’re welcome
Lex: CGACC©️ thank you for once again making December tolerable
Chris Gates: We try xx
Andy: CGACC©️ is back. Christmas is back. I am worried about that first door though. Previous strong starts have gone very wrong.
Chris Gates: Yes, you’re right to be worried. You’re always right to be worried, that’s the unofficial slogan of the CGACC©️
Sophie: And so it begins
Justin: Wonder if the letter was scented?
Advent Calendar Door 2: It’s baubles!
A classic of the Advent Calendar genre, some may call them cliché or passé or even jejune (the French language, unsurprisingly, seems to have been built for the sole purpose of finding fault with art) but Christmas is, after all, a ritual, and therefore must have its traditions.
Baubles, or “Bulbs” or “Christmas Bubbles” if you want to be insufferable or “Wessel Cups” if you’re from a very specific part of Yorkshire, are firmly part of the Christmas canon and a welcome sight in the CGACC©️
There are five (5) of them to be precise, each a different design. One (1) in the form of a Christmas pudding topped with icing and a sprig of holly, one (1) painted red and decorated in gold and green swirls and stripes, and the other three (3) in winter colours of icy blue and white with various snow flake designs.
Gosh, it’s been a while since we’ve had two valid ACDPs* in a row right out of the gate. If this is your first CGACC©️ you’ve yet to learn that there are valid and invalid ACDPs and the balance between valid and invalid pictures overall determines the worth of an advent calendar, which in turn determines how much I’m going to suffer during advent, which in turn determines how much YOU’RE going to suffer during advent, so this is something in which you need to be invested.
I have to confess I’m getting my hopes at a bit too much** and starting to feel like this time, perhaps, the ACA*** knows what they’re doing. I’m going to get my heart broken again I just know it.
Pray for me, friends. Pray for all of us.
*Advent Calendar Door Pictures, the plural form of the initialism we learned yesterday. Don’t expect me to hold your hand through stuff like this every time, I do in fact have better things to do
**by which I mean even the tiniest little bit. Something the CGACC©️ will teach you is that hope is a poison. Merry Christmas.
***Advent Calendar Artist, for fuck’s sake what did I JUST tell you?
Comments:
Jonny: This is such a strong start from this calendar. As a seasoned follower I'm feeling that sweet poisonous hope flood through me.
I'm going to read the paper as an antidote.
Dan: "the French language, unsurprisingly, seems to have been built for the sole purpose of finding fault with art"
That's the best sentence I have read in some time.
Chris Gates: One tries one's best.
Philippa: I am chuffed, I tell you. Chuffed.
Lyn:And I thought Christmas bubbles were what you produce in the bath on Boxing Day after all those sprouts! Who knew?
Mill: Look, i'm not saying i live for your suffering, but if we keep getting all these valid ACDPs, this is going to be a very dull December.
Lake: This feels like a trap. I am not even embarrassed to say that I gave a small inward "yessss" to see another valid ACDP. And baubles, no less. A classic!
I have dared to hope before and a bunch of Victorian kids doing nothing remotely christmassy came and shat on my hopes and dreams so forgive me if look at this AC with suspicious half closed eyes and the hint of a sneer.
Amelia: Ooohoo I have been lulled into an obviously false sense of security
Chris Gates: You poor fool.
Kez: Oh god. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I remember all too well (because I reread it yesterday) how quickly your Christmas bauble of hope was shattered many moons ago after two successful ACDPs.
Chris Gates: This early days are always the most tense. Be strong, Kez.
Advent Calendar Door 3: It’s a reindeer!
Hmmm, well, I assume a reindeer is what the artist intended to draw here, but this is unmistakably a regular ass deer. I wondered if this might just be a reindeer who has not yet reached maturity, but any attempt to google variations of ‘young reindeer’ results in nothing but pages relating that show about the comedian who…well, let’s just say what happened to him wasn’t very Christmassy.
But yes, the more I look at this the more certain I am; the fur is too light, the hooves are too small, and there are white spots on its back and you don’t have to be a cervidologist (deer nerd) in order to know the difference between the most majestic of the circumpolar beasts and say, the European fallow deer. And you certainly don’t have to be cervidologist (still deer nerd) to google “what does a reindeer look like?” or even, for example “what are some terms about deer I can slip into a facebook post to make myself sound smart*?”
I am, at this stage, disappointed at this lack of rigour by the artist, but not yet angry (a few of you, I’m aware, are ghoulishly hoping I’m going to lose my temper for your own sick amusement, and shame on you if you are) because while the artist has failed in the task of drawing a reindeer they have succeeded in drawing a valid ACDP**
You see, the deer is holding a Christmas present in his mouth, and while that might make him a thief*** it also makes him a Christmassy deer. I sense some of the old CGACC©️ veterans nodding along here, because they know Chris Gates’s Second Law of Advent Calender Dynamics: A valid advent calendar picture MUST be either an inherently Christmassy object or scene (such as a Christmas tree or Father Christmas delivering gifts) or else MUST be a Christmassy variation of a non Christmassy object or scene (such as an AK47 wrapped holly or the firemen who were on the scene of the Chernobyl disaster dying of radiation sickness in a soviet hospital but they’re dressed like elves****.)
So, this picture is valid BUT the artist no longer has my confidence. They can still get back on my good side, but it’s going to be a long road and no artist has yet managed it after their first mistake.
This is not yet Christmas, the time of forgiveness and good will, this is Advent motherfucker, and it’s a cold, cold world out there.
*This is not actually reflective of my googling style, by the way, it’s just for the purposes of the joke, I won’t have you thinking I search full sentences like your nan in the early 00s
**we’ve been through this already. Start taking notes, for the love of god.
***Oh what, you think someone just GAVE this deer a wrapped Christmas present do you? How’s he meant to open that exactly? Use your head.
****The First Law being “Chocolate advent calendars are stupid and you’re stupid for liking them you big stupid”.
Comments:
Marion: You're saving my life. I was about to post something really political and I saw this, and I went: nah. Perspective. There will always be your calendar.
Chris Gates: All part of the service, ma'am
Lake: I bloody KNEW IT. Look, I don't want to sound cynical, but we've all been here before with the murder calendar (A lot of us still aren't over it. I run a support group). Oh sure, it's got a present in its mouth but we all know this slippery slope. Next it's a duck in some snow, then a vole eating a red berry that may or may not be a holly berry, then it's just a pine martin, then a dead squirrel. And so in and so forth. This artist had BETTER do better tomorrow.
Rachel: I would argue that, glowing festively, as I assume they did, the Chernobyl firemen are inherently Christmassy… also, they both are, and cause others to be, warm inside. Christmassy af.
Rachel: Also: re ***: I think the deer is bringing someone a present, which he procured and wrapped through Christmassy magic. Tis the season.
Lake: Opposable Magical Christmas Thumbs is now the name of my (as yet not formed) electropop band
Advent Calendar Door 4*: It’s a Christmas Robin!
Excellent, we’re back on track here with one of the official members of the Christmas menagerie, the robin. This particular one is complete with a festive Santa hat as well as a wee green scarf, to underline its already impeccable Christmassy credentials. The artist here is employing a belt and braces approach, to the extent that I’m starting to think they may have heard of the CGACC©️ and are wisely hoping to escape my wrath.
During the CGACC©️ of 2021, you’ll recall that the Advent Calendar Mafia had finally tracked me down and were trying to intimidate me with murder nooses, rocking horse heads and all kinds of non-Christmassy nonsense, so there is certainly precedent for someone in the advent calendar world taking notice of the CGACC©️.
So maybe this artist is some kind of fan? I mean, I have been doing this for a while and all the previous CGACC’s are on a website** so it’s entirely possible that some burgeoning advent calendar artist, in their training and research, came across or was presented with my work, and is now trying to make the perfect calendar.
Heavens, what if they’ve succeeded? What if they have made 24 legitimately Christmassy ACDPs? That, after all, has been the mission of the Campaign all these years: to speak truth to power and get justice (in the form of Christmassy ACDPs) for all of us. And if that’s finally happened then, well…I’ll have to retire.
Dear and constant reader, this might be the final CGACC©️
*this door was placed on the main advent calendar picture, accidentally I’m sure, directly over Father Christmas’s dick and balls. Seriously, go to my cover photo and, if you can steel yourself enough to do so, pinch zoom onto Santa’s crotch. You can imagine my trepidation in opening this door, and my relieve on there not being, say, a big red candle. For all their faults, no artist yet has ever presented us with a dick pic, or at least a dick pick has never made it off the editor’s desk. You can never be sure though.
** https://chrisgatescreative.wixsite.com/mysite
Comments:
Philippa: wreath wrath
Amelia: Murder nooses are my least favourite type of noose
Mark: Having been an avid fan of CGACC©️ for some years, I am looking forward to the moment when this precocious new kid on the block screws up. Until now, there’s been a surprising (if rightly cautious) optimism When that is cruelly snatched from us all, I can’t wait for when the unsuspecting perp gets what’s coming! Twisted? Yes. But like the rest of us, the thought this could be the final one is unbearable!
Lake: It's all going a bit too well, isn't it?
I'd be delighted to get a full house of Christmassy images, but I'm concerned that there are now 2 whole animals. Is this going to be a theme?
Also, I wish you hadn't reminded us that door 4 was on Santa's lad because then the whole "cock robin" poem springs to mind and I've already got confusing feelings about Father Christmas since David Harbour played him in Violent Night.
Advent Calendar Door 5: It’s an angel!
A very Christmassy angel because (and it took me a while to process this) she’s wearing a Christmas jumper. As though she’s on the way to Heaven’s Christmas office party, which they deliberately have early in December before, as Jesus puts it, “things get a bit mental”, where God, not normally a drinker, has a wee bit too much wine* and starts chasing Mary Magdalene around with a spring of mistletoe while saying “oh, you love it you little tart” and then the next day HR (Heavenly Resources) have to get involved.
An angel on its own would not have been acceptable, a quick gander back through the CGACC©️ archives will show that only a few angels have passed muster, and they have been Herald Angels, or angels holding Holly, those which have not include one who turned out to literally be Satan, so my gatekeeping in this area is pretty necessary.
So yes, this angel is fairly unique; for one, she’s older, with wrinkles and long, grey hair, which you don’t get a lot with representations of angels, particularly modern depictions where angels are young, fit and for some reason highly sexualised. Seriously, do an image search on ‘angel’ and play a quick round of ‘smash or pass’ (if male-presenting angels are more your cup of tea you WILL have to google ‘male angel’).
This angel has a halo, of course, and four (4) wings, which is less common among angels than, say, dragonflies. She has her eyes closed and smiling as though she’s thinking of something pleasant. I strongly get the feeling that this is the artist drawing their deceased nana as an angel as a tribute and, well, even the CGACC©️ is not immune from sentiment.
Folks, we are five for five here, something which hasn’t happened since 2017 where we had a 13 day Christmassy streak which was famously broken by that fucking swan #neverforget. A reminder that even a very strong early game can end in disaster, for those rubber neckers among you who are waiting for all this to blow up in my face.
We’re just over a 5th of the way through, so don’t worry, there’s plenty of opportunities for my heart to get broken.
*canonically His son’s blood, so that’s kinda creepy in and of itself
Comments:
Lake: I may have spat my coffee out at "smash or pass" on Christmas angels.
Jonny: Oh man. The Swan! Those were dark, dark times.
Surely an Angel with 4 wings is a fairy?
Chris Gates: Yes, but a fairy with a halo is an angel. I think a four winged angel is possible, but a fairy with a halo is not.
Jonny: I wouldn't dream of arguing with the expert, sir. Angel it is.
Philippa: Did she buy it in Prime Ark?
Chris Gates: AllSaints
Advent Calendar Door 6: It’s stockings!
By which I mean Christmas stockings, just to clarify, not sexy underwear stockings. This is not a Victoria’s Secret advent calendar which I’m not even going to google to check if it exists because of course it fucking does. I realise that I’ve yet to state the CGACC©️’s official position on product based advent calendars, which did not exist back in 2011 when this all began, and until the last few years have seemed like a mere novelty and therefore beneath my attention.
I feel about them the way I feel about all non-pictorial advent calendars, that they are bourgeois consumerist nonsense and a stain on the festive tradition. I have heard tell of people opening all their doors at once and scarfing down all the chocolate, or drinking all the little wines, or, I dunno, using all 24 bottles of lube in one sitting. And if that disgusts you, which it rightly should, then you get my point. Experiences are more valuable to the soul than possessions, and that’s what a pictorial advent calendar provides. 24 little experiences to make of what you wish.
Today’s door, for example, was an utter surprise to me. It was in fact two doors covering a long, thin strip, and when I first bought the calendar I thought “well, that’s going to be a cracker”, and I’ve thought that each day when I’ve seen this door. To the extent to which when I opened it this morning I said, out loud, with my usual swagger “well, this is an obviously a cracker” only to be confronted with six beautifully designed Christmas stockings all in a line.
“Well,” I said, again out loud, “shut my mouth.”
To which my partner, who had observed the whole thing play out, said, with HER usual swagger “Yeah, shut your damn whore mouth”.
You just can’t put a price on that.
Comments
Jonny: A lube calendar. This just made me choke on my tea. Oh my goodness! A different lube every day, until Xmas. This is utter genius.
Kez: Oooh, live audience participation is the missing element we didn’t know we needed at CGACC. Outstanding
Rachel: I’m in this picture and I don’t like it.
Advent Calendar Door 7: It’s Santa’s Sleigh!
Man, this calendar is just note for note perfect so far. The artist, or “the student” as we must surely start to call them, for clearly they have studied my teachings in order to better themselves, is really playing a great first half. They have learned well. And if them being called the student means I should be called “the master” then, well, that is also entirely correct. I literally have a Master of Arts in creative writing after all, (achieved with a Distinction, but hey who’s keeping score?) so yeah…looking pretty mastery over here.
It’s red, the sleigh, as you might expect, with bright brass runners, and it’s loaded up with presents. Well, not loaded up to the degree you’d hope, there are about half a dozen (6) presents, boxed and wrapped, in view, maybe a total of sixteen (16) presents in total. We’d have to be talking about a pretty exclusive list of people on the nice list here. Perhaps, and bear with me here*, perhaps Santa DOES exist but really he has only ever had the capacity to visit a handful of people each year, so really getting a present from Father Christmas is akin to receiving the Nobel prize, but for niceness?
Perhaps, and this is a different idea so please desist your previous bearing and start a new bearing batch so as to prevent cross contamination, what if Santa used to deliver gifts to all the good children, but was bought off by the emergent billionaire class and now you only get a Santa-gift if Bezos or Musk is your dad? In the case of the latter this includes a significant percentage of the population, but nowhere near all.
Anyway, this sleigh, bijou though it may be, is also in a golden cloud of magic, so maybe all these speculations don’t matter.
Look I understand that for some of you this is a little dull. Me just enjoying my advent calendar day after day, some of you have said that you hope my calendar “fucks me over”, and that you yearn for the return of the swan. But a) do you know who’s having a really good time? Me that’s who and, moreover b) honey this ain’t about you.
*he says to the people who do nothing but bear with him for 24 days
Comments:
Kez: In my 7 years of following this nonsense - that is by far my all time favourite footnote. Bravo.
Lake: I should be happy/impressed that this is a solid 7/7. I'm beginning to get nervous about the possibility of the artist/student fucking up and making swan-like error. I don't think I could face it. I'm too invested now, and so long to go. I'm going to start drinking
Chris Gates: As if you weren’t already
Advent Calendar Door 8: It’s a cup of hot chocolate!
Opening this door was one of those stomach drop moments that happens in the world of advent calendars, like when you see a performer wobbling on a tightrope or America teetering on the brink of civil war, but the stakes are so much higher.
Let me tell you a story, and you might call this the origin story of the CGACC©️ so get out the scrapbook where you keep a record of CGACC©️ lore and smooth out a new page. When
Chris Gates was a boy and referred to himself in the third person, he had an advent calendar. The run up to Christmas felt more like a crawl, or the kind of slow motion walk that strikes you in a nightmare when you’re being chased, where no matter how much you strain you can barely even lift your foot to take a step. The space of a day was vast and seemingly insurmountable, but each day he was able (to use a more modern analogy) to micro-dose a bit of Christmas by seeing what was behind that day’s advent calendar door.
Thus he sustained himself while Christmas crept ever closer.
But one morning, so early that it was still night, Chris couldn’t sleep for excitement of the approaching festive day, and so quietly made his way downstairs in his dark house to where his advent calendar was kept and so find some small relief. But when he opened that day’s door what was behind it? A Christmas wreath or perhaps some candy canes? No. It was a dog. Not a Christmas dog. Just a dog. A dog doing nothing for no one. And the day became a chasm into which Chris tumbled, a void absent of Christmas.
That’s what’s on the line here: In many ways, you see, I am still in that chasm with that dog, and each advent i try to find my way out.
So when I see a cup of hot chocolate, something which is, at best, seasonal and not festive, I start to feel as though I will never escape.
HOWEVER, this particular hot chocolate is in a red and white mug AND there is a sprig of holly next to it, and so this is, in fact, a Christmassy cup of hot chocolate, and so the tightrope walker remains in the air, and America, um, somehow starts producing better assassins.
But more importantly, we take one collective step out of the dark towards Christmas.
Comments:
Lake: Fuuuuuuuuuuuck, that was close. You just pushed us to the edge of despair only to yank us all back at the last minute. Consider my emotions toyed with as I huffily sweep out of the virtual room to deal with my metaphorical whiplash.
Andy: The tension! Fuck Stephen King, this is what keeps me on the edge of my seat
Mill: The twist in this story was incredible! I was hooked, and the flashback sequence/origin story explained so much, and then BAM!
Chris Gates: I know what I’m about
Mill: I don't...
Annie Phew!
Nerys: I feel this would make an excellent children's book: an evil magician using advent calendars to trap children in a Christmasless chasm...
Advent Calendar Door 9: It’s ice skates!
No.
Nu-uh.
Sorry, but no, this is not happening. It’s actually not so if it looks like it is then I’m sorry but
that’s just how it looks and not, you know, how it actually is.
Um.
So, yeah, ice skates are worn on your feet and, much like stockings…um…these ice skates have a golden blow floating above them, and so, you know, they’re maybe a present and, well, people get presents at Christmas so…um…..uh….aahhhhhhhhhhhhmotherFUCKER
Goddamn it, SERIOUSLY? How is this happening? Literally, like, what kind of student is this artist anyway? Was I not PERFECTLY FUCKING CLEAR about what DOES and what DOES NOT constitute a Christmassy picture? I mean, yeah, fine, draw ice skates if that’s what your heart tells to you to draw but please remember that YOUR HEART IS A FUCKING IDIOT! That’s why we have the failsafes of adding bits of holly, or tinsel or, if you are able to muster the intelligence to add a gift-bow THEN MAKE IT A GREEN AND RED ONE YOU SHITTING NOVICE.
So…this doesn’t count, right? Can we all agree that this doesn’t count? Just skip this one entirely? What if you all set up your own ko-fi accounts* and I pay YOU to just forget this happened and we just start fresh tomorrow and we can all pretend this was a Christmassy pair of ice-skates? No, you’re right, the integrity of the CGACC©️ is too important for that.
Ugh. I’m never escaping from this chasm, am I? The world will never stop needing me and I am doomed to describe adventure calendar door pictures every December until I die. The death rate around this time of year is at its highest, this may eventually be the last thing I ever do. In 50 years (if the world doesn’t end in the next four) I might be halfway through telling however many of you are left about a wreath which is for some reason blue and covered in pumpkins or whatever the fuck, and then suddenly I’ll just drop dead of apoplexy.
I mean, actually, not a bad death as deaths go. At least then people could say of me that “he died doing what he loved…describing adventure calendar door pictures” and the confusion that will cause will very nearly be worth it.
Ah well, we’re not going to get the perfect calendar we so richly deserve this year. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop holding this artist to the rigorously high standards of the
CGACC©️, just that a small part of me has died forever. So, just another advent then.
Comments:
*thanks, by the way, for those who have already made payment, although no one has yet gone for the £5000 option and, you know, while that’s “fine” and I’m “grateful” for any contributions at all, I don’t know how you people expect to hit the £43,500 goal if you all only pay me a tenner. Like, it’s pretty basic maths: here’s the link again https://ko-fi.com/chrisgates
Kez : It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.
Mill: ahhh, order is restored! (also, and i may be going out on a limb here... i think there's a *small* possibility that in any other year where many disappointing pictures of shoes or birds or whatever had already made any appearance, that this particular picture would be considered amongst the *most* festive symbology that year... and i think gold is a festive colour too anyway - and, for the sake of riling you further, i'd even go so far as to say that at least one of the three wise men agrees with me)
Chris Gates: To your first point:
Yeah, and if my auntie had wheels she’d be a bike. In 2018, I was more generous with my assessment of ACDPs as a matter of necessity. The artist had no conception of what constituted a Christmassy picture and it was harming the community so I took action by putting a positive spin on the non Christmassy pictures. Was that best practice? That’s up for debate, but this year’s calendar is an entirely different situation. I cannot and will not and would not excuse an unforced error made by someone who otherwise knows what they’re doing.
To your second:
Gold is not JUST a Christmasy colour, or even mostly a Christmassy colour, it is an occasional Christmas colour and rarely in isolation. Normally it’s used in support of the traditional Christmas colours of red and green.
Furthermore the colour gold and the substance gold are entirely different things and, further furthermore, the substance of gold and the gold given to Jesus by Melchior are not synonymous.
If I were to accept the colour gold or the substance of gold as being valid ACDPs they would have to be in their Christmassy contexts. In the case of the colour, either in support of green and red OR in the form of a Christmassy object such as a Christmas tree star topper. A bow is not inherently Christmassy and neither is the colour gold, and two negatives don’t make a positive.
If I were to accept the substance of gold, it would either have to be in the form Melchior’s gift to the Christ child OR have been used to fashion a Christmassy object, like a golden statue of one of Santa’s reindeer.
In summary, get back in your box.
Mill: This is the kind of discourse i live for
Lake: You know when you watch the England men's team in the football world cup and they get knocked out even though you secretly knew they would? This is worse.
Chris Gates: Preach
Advent Calendar Door 10: It’s a snowman!
Phew! Well, thank goodness for that. I don’t think any of us could have handled another non-Christmassy picture after yesterday. I cycled through the five stages of grief in a very short space of time, as one has to with any sudden tragedy, such as watching in silence as you receive a disappointing haircut, or the England men’s team losing at penalties, or 80% of elections post 2010.
Snowmen, however, or snow-people if you insist, or persons of snow if you want to make a whole thing about it, tend to get a free pass in the CGACC©️ and I always wonder whether they should. They are, after all, not inherently Christmassy. Sure, there’s The Snowman which enjoys a pantheonic status in the Christmas canon, but this is not that specific snowman. Ordinary snowmen, surely, are seasonal and not festive, and should therefore have to have some Christmassy accoutrement in order to earn their spot in the CGACC©️
Fortunately, this snowman has a robin perched upon one of its branchy arms, and therefore qualifies as a valid ACDP. The robin, though, why are robins Christmassy?
Sorry, I suppose I’m just in a questioning mood, I’m still a bit raw after yesterday and feeling a bit of hyper-vigilance, a need to protect the CGACC©️ community from festive interlopers. Festerlopers.
Victorian postmen, it turns out, are the reason we think of robins as Christmassy. They wore red. People called them robins. They delivered Christmas cards. That’s kind of it. There began to appear Christmas cards with pictures of postmen delivering Christmas cards, which is the kind of meta shenanigans we take for granted these days but was damn near revolutionary back then, and then the pictures of postmen turned into pictures of robins, and thus robins are now Christmassy.
There’s a whole other rabbit hole you can go down if you start looking into it, some stuff about a robin’s red breast coming from a drop of Christ’s blood, and/or a robin’s breast being burnt red because it was protecting baby Jesus from a fire, which are both delightfully batshit, but it’s clearly the postman thing.
So you see, the artist is actually quite adept when they put their mind to it, which makes it even more disappointing that they fumbled the ball yesterday.
Still, we’re in double digits now yay!
Amelia: Please proffer an equally batshit biblical-ish theory for people of snow being of Christmas canon and not just seasonal childrens’ nonsense
Thank you
Chris Gates: My dear woman, it may have escaped your notice but I am an academic, not a fantasist. My purpose is to study and research the Christmas canon and, within reasonable limitations, speculate on its nature and implications. It is also within my purview to interpret its meaning and it is my duty to explain it to the less educated (you).
That being said, it is reasonable to say that the building of snowmen was practiced in Judea, and it is conceivable that they Mary and Joseph built a snowman decoy of the Christ child to fool Herod’s men who were abroad at the time carrying out the Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2:16-18) and therefore it might be that we build them today in remembrance of the snow-Jesus caper of Bethlehem.
But this, and I cannot stress this enough, is a line of research which has NOT been peer reviewed, so please do not quote me in any essays you may be writing.
Amelia : Blessed be the advent calendar academics, you individually shall inherit the earth
Chris Gates: Too fucking right x
Dan : Double like for "Festerlopers".
Roz : I wonder if that’s where the Christmas round-robin letters come from too?
Advent Calendar Door 11: It’s a nutcracker!
By which I mean one of the terrifying soldier dolls with an unhinged jaw which are mainly ornamental and can’t crack nuts as apposed to, you know, a nutcracker.
We don’t know much about the first person who carved a nutcracker, only that they were alive hundreds of years ago and were definitely a little bit extra. A lot of covert looks being exchanged between guests during visits to this person’s hut when snacks were being served, looks which said “don’t say anything now, but we’re going to talk about this SO HARD on the cart ride home”.
This, however, is not a nightmare fuel doll but an actual* solider, but dressed like a nutcracker, which is to say like a 17th century German soldier, which is to say like a 21st century American high school marching band leader.
Having never seen Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker I can only assume (read: rigorously confirm my supposition through verified sources. The CGACC©️ never assumes) that it’s about a nutcracker which comes to life, and so this must be that, and in support of this idea is a cloud of magical stars surrounding this festive chap, this absolute Christmassy unit.
It’s a relief because for a moment I was worried that, as with the reindeer/deer situation from door 3, the artist had messed up** but no, my own cultural ignorance was the issue. I have no problem with admitting my flaws, if only because I have so few.
#CGACC2024
*to clarify: I mean a drawing of an actual solider, not an actual actual solider. I won’t have you thinking my calendar is a portal to some kind of war dimension. I simply won’t.
**nutcracker = Christmassy.
17th century German solider = not Christmassy
Nutcracker brought to life = Christmassy
Comments
Philippa: Gaaaah I can't be doing with those toothy articles. They infest Hallmark Christmas movies.
Lake: I was taken to see the Nutcracker performed by the Royal Academy Ballet religiously every year as a child. Just me, not my siblings. To this day I can't tell you A) if it was supposed to be some sort of a treat, punishment or life lesson
B) what actually happens in The Nutcracker.
I can, however, confirm that there was a lot of dancing, and it was definitely Christmassy.
Advent Calendar Door 12: It’s mittens!
Let me tell you something: (by which I mean “keep reading”, because I’ve already written all of this and it’s only by you voluntarily focusing your attention on these words that you are able to be “told” anything. But “Keep reading” doesn’t really capture the same informal spirit as the more colloquial “let me tell you something”, and you NEVER want to appear overly formal or didactic as this tends to alienate the reader, which is why I chose the beginning I chose) sometimes even I am uncertain about whether something qualifies as being Christmassy.
And as I sit here, in my bed beneath this fleece lined blanket that gets put out this time of year, with its pattern of reindeer and snowflakes and stars, and as I sip tea from this festive mug which as well as being pattered with sprigs of holly has the words “have a holly jolly Christmas” inscribed on the inside rim, I think it’s safe to say I take Christmassy things fairly seriously. I mean, that was never really in doubt given what’s brought us all two paragraphs down on a Thursday morning, mainly I just wanted to give you all a behind the scenes peak of “my process”. You’re welcome.
These mittens, though, I must have peered down at these mittens for a good twenty (20) seconds before I decided that these are in fact Christmassy mittens. They have a Nordic pattern with a subtle traces of red and green, so subtle that I had to squint to see them, along with white snowflakes, which is the best colour for snowflakes in my opinion. And so, yes, this is a pass, but just barely, this is like the C-* of Christmassyness
And I feel like at this stage of things, where we’re at the halfway point of advent, that we should be leaning hard into Christmas, so really this is the last I expect to see of this borderline crap. Give me wreaths. Give me presents. Give me mistletoe.
Once the Baileys has been opened there is no call for half measures.
#CGACC2024
*god, they don’t do letter grades anymore do they? Makes me feel old, the way people talked about o levels seemed to me when I was at school. The march is relentless and nothing g is certain but the grave.
Comments
Lake: Oof. This was a close one. If this had been gloves as opposed to mittens, well, I wouldn't have been happy.
Emily: “Once the baileys has been opened there is no call for half measures!” I’m going to use this on my work Xmas lunch tomorrow
Roz: They don’t do letter grades anymore???!!! The fact I have to pick up my first pair of varifocals this week is entirely coincidental
Advent Calendar Door 13: It’s a gingerbread house!
Ahh, the gingerbread house, used primarily for the celebration of Christmas and the housing of witches and not much else in between.
Well, for the housing of one particular witch at any rate, and actually the gingerbread house’s main purpose was the luring of small children, the residential nature of the building was more incidental. Like, the hassle of living in a gingerbread house (having to bake a new roof every time it rains, animals gnawing through load bearing walls, type 2 diabetes) is only worth putting up with if from time to time you get to feast of the flesh of a lost child. Or at least that’s what makes sense to me; not easily can a man fathom the mind of a witch.
This house however is the one example of a Christmassy variant of a thing being more understated than its non Christmassy variant. The witch’s gingerbread house has all kind of nonsense going on with it, but this one has roof modestly decorated with royal icing with a few red and green sweets adorning the walls. There’s presumably a tipping point when decorating Christmassy gingerbread houses where people are like ‘woah! What are you trying to do here? Celebrate the festive season or eat a German child? Dial it back a bit or people will start to talk’.
Well, we are now well over half way now and after that brief wobble a few days ago
I am certain that this artist, my student and protege (we can only assume) is starting to claw their way back into my good books, which they will only managed of they play a perfect game for the next 11 doors. I don’t have much hope, but I DO have hope because I am full of the spirit of Christmas (read: has started drinking in the day)
#CGACC2024
Comments:
Mill: Have we ever had a gingerbread house in the CGACC©️ before..? I don't recall it, and it seems so obvious
Chris Gates: Only once: CGACC©️ 2017, Door 10.
Dan: Is that purely from memory, or is... is there a CGACC©️ database and/or spreadsheet somewhere? A CGACCDB.
Chris Gates: Well, I have it all committed to memory, obviously, but there’s an archive here: https://chrisgatescreative.wixsite.com/mysite
But also, doing a search on Facebook for “Chris Gates Gingerbread” will take you to all my mentions of Gingerbread houses and, indeed, men.
Lake: Sorry, but if you had spent more than five (5) minutes trying to make and decorate a gingerbread house with a child, you would also consider eating the child rather than continue with the whole horrific process
Advent Calendar Door 14: It’s a Christmas present!
Just gotta say, I love giving gifts but I fucking hate wrapping them. It combines all of my least favourite things: being neat, spending my free time doing admin, and not being good at something. You know how when you’re bad at something part of the pain of that is that you have to watch yourself be bad at something? Like, I am both the audience and the participant and I have to watch as time after time, year after year, as I fail to do a thing in exactly the same ways.
And I know what you’re thinking (that’s my curse) “Chris, why don’t you just watch a tutorial online and get some tips?” and look a) if you’re going to sit there and suggest sensible, practical and actionable solutions to an easily solvable problem then I’m afraid we can’t be friends, and b) that’s how they get you. I already have to take hours out of my life to do this chore, and you want me to spend MORE time getting good at it?
Also, what if I end up getting good at it, ever think about that? What if I end up ENJOYING it? Doing extra little flourishes like ribbons and bows. What then? More of my hard earned cash going to Big Wrapping Paper that’s what.
This present has red wrapping paper with white spots, and is wrapped in a golden bow. It’s been wrapped with above average skill, although it IS a box and square things tend to be the easiest wrap; there was a glorious age where I used to buy everyone DVDs and CDs (remember those?) so all I ever had to wrap where squares and rectangles. Halcyon days.
But yeah, you see this? This is exactly what I expect to see behind doors in the second half of an advent calendar. Even inspire of their mistakes this artist is playing a blinder.
#CGACC2024
Comments:
Andy: Big Wrapping Paper
Mill: I don't enjoy shopping for gifts as I never know what to get anyone and it stresses me out, but i do enjoy wrapping them! The last couple of years I've been exploring wrapping with only ribbon and no sellotape, and this year I learned a trick about wrapping things diagonally if your bit of paper isn't quite big enough to wrap orthogonally. Once I also learned how to make a cardboard box longer/thinner, which was like actual magic. I find the whole experience very satisfying and soothing!
Chris Gates: If you weren’t all the way up in Scotland I might suggest an errand swap, you give me money to buy gifts on your behalf, I give you all the gifts to wrap. It could have been the perfect system.
Advent Calendar Door 15: It’s a car loaded up with presents!
See this? (Well, no, obviously you DON’T see this. I see this. You will never see this unless you are my partner who I live and I’m afraid that position has been filled, which sucks for the rest of you but you’ve only got yourselves to blame; I was single for many many MANY years and if you had only raised your game a bit sooner then you wouldn’t be in the position you are now, but anyway, you don’t have to see this because I’m about to paint it in words for you which in some ways is better. My use of “See this?”in this case is entirely rhetorical.)
This is how you do advent calendars. Note the narrative flow of there being a freshly wrapped present yesterday, and today there is a car carrying wrapped presents. It’s just *chef kiss*
It’s a red car with a rounded top and protruding wheel arches, like a VW Beatle. We’re seeing the car from the back and there’s a wreath hung below the rear window and the presents, wrapped in various coloured paper, red, blue and green, balanced on the top.
Bit of a concern, that. Not a luggage strap in sight, so wherever this person is going these presents are not going to survive the journey. Lots of disappointed people where this person is heading. And by the way it’s snowing in this picture so even if any presents do manage to stay on top of the card they are going to be SODDEN. A reminder to everyone when it comes to the buying and ferrying of gifts: yes, it IS the thought that counts, but maybe don’t leave it at just the one thought. You’ve gotta have a bunch of follow up thoughts too in order to ensure the gifts make it to where they’re going.
#CGACC2024
Advent Calendar Door 16: It’s a rocking horse!
I’ve always been on the fence about rocking horses, I’m famous for it. You ask anyone about me and it’s the first thing they’ll tell you; Chris “Rocking Horse Ambivalence” Gates is how I’m known around town.
The “fact” that rocking horses are Christmassy seems like an illusory truth effect; enough people over time have said that rocking horses are Christmassy, and so whether or not they actually are it certainly seems as though they are.
Like, for me, outside of the rocking horse shaped baubles you sometime see, or, indeed, rocking horses in advent calendars, a rocking horse is something that’s in an upper class Victorian family’s nursery, and that’s kind of it. A child’s toy, certainly, but not a specifically Christmassy one.
Turns out, as with much of the Christmassy traditions we have in this country like Christmas Trees, mulled wine, terrifying nutcrackers and advent calendars, the rocking horse was part of the German Christmas tradition introduced by Prince Albert to the royal family, and it kind of trickled down into the populace from there because at that time we were all bootlicking serfs. And it kind of means that I have to accept it, in the same way I’d accept a Christmas tree.
Still, there is also a pile of presents and a little Christmas tree beneath the horse, so clearly the artist shares my ambivalence and felt the need to beef up the Christmassy vibes here.
Thankfully, we are (generally) no longer so cringingly in awe of the royals that we copy them, but it brings comfort to imagine that modern monarchist sycophants like, say, Nigel
Farage might be reluctantly getting pegged right now following those Prince William rumours.
#CGACC2024
Comments:
Lake: Jesus Christ, that took an unexpected turn at the end.
Advent Calendar Door 17: It’s a dove!
Ah yes, the dove
.
Now, CGACC©️ scholars among you, will know that we have had three (3) doves in previous CGACC©️s*. You will also know that I have accepted each and every one of them.
Some have been carrying olive branches, and so have been entirely not Christmas specific-doves (being rather doves from the story of Noah’s ark, which predates the nativity by a fairly large margin) and doves that look more like fat pigeons. It doesn’t matter. They are acceptable ACDPs.
Why? Well, for one reason, doves symbolise the Holy Spirit and even though I myself am not religious I think it’s kinda cringe to be disparaging about other people’s faith, which is why I never use religious calendars for the CGACC©️. It’s like “well done Ricky Gervais, you’ve found some logical inconsistencies in the bible, you have achieved the same level of critical thinking as a 16 year old well done have a biscuit”
For another, doves symbolise peace and that is, ideally, what Christmas is about; aside from all the decadence, the waste and the consumerist fuckery, the meaning of Christmas we can all get behind is peace.
But mainly it’s for the same reason everything happens in the CGACC©️: because I say so. The fourth law of advent calendar dynamics is: the ultimate authority to designate an advent calendar door picture as Christmassy rests solely with Chris Gates.
Besides which, this particular dove is carrying a sprig of holly so fuck you.
#CGACC2024
*2014, Door 17
2016, Door 23
2017, Door 24
Advent Calendar Door 18: IT’S SANTA!!!
Woah! Wow okay, can definitely confirm that Santa is Christmassy. Here he is looking all Santa-y, I feel it would be redundant to describe him other than to say this iteration is fairly cartoonish and has little glasses, he somehow gives the impression of being small, although there’s nothing next to him for scale. I suppose it would make sense that Santa is a short king, one thinks of other diminutive CEOs such as Bezos and Zuckerberg who, perhaps, felt they had something to prove, but also for more practical stealth and acrobatic reasons - a low centre of gravity would help when he’s clambering on a rooftop.
A weird detail is that the artist has seen fit to write the word “Ho” six (6) times around this little Santa. I don’t know why that bothers me so much but it does, it means either he’s saying his famous “Ho ho ho” two (2) times, which seems needy, or saying “ho” six (6) times which seems unhinged.
It kind of feels like this is someone pretending to be Santa who hasn’t done their research. Like, it wouldn’t surprise me if this Santa was an undercover cop, although what would actually be the point of that given that Santa is already a such a fucking narc. Literally, this guy is keeping tabs of all of us all year long and then signals who the ‘naughty’ ones are by giving them coal in their stocking. What a rat.
Anyway, if I were to offer the teensiest criticism, and I really hate to, it’s that even door 18 is a smidge too early to be seeing Father Christmas; Ideally the earliest you see him is door 23 before the big finale, when said finale is not Santa. However, in previous years we’ve had Santa as early as door 6 and that has been an actual travesty.
Still though: where do you go from Santa? The artist isn’t leaving themselves room to build. How are we all going to feel tomorrow when it’s, like, mince pies or a bit of mistletoe? Dead inside, that’s how.
#CGACC2024
Comments:
Tamsin: Definitely peaking too soon!
Mill: Another great reason for Santa to be small - he has to fit down chimneys. And don't come at me with your 'he uses magic for that' because if Santa has that technology, why hasn't he given it to anyone for Christmas from him yet? Has no one thought to ask for it? It's basically teleportation! You'd think at least one of the other short tech CEOs would have sidled up to him at the Christmas party for short CEOs and tried to get in on that.
Chris Gates: I DID think of the whole chimney thing, but also that’s more an issue of girth than length, and if that was a going concern than really Santa would lay off the mince pies. One
Mill: Or hibernation - maybe he eats and drinks his entire year's worth of food and drink in one night and then hibernates for the rest of the year whilst the elves get on with the work.
Bottom of Form
Jonny: This is likely a mall Santa. But who the fuck is going to be behind 24? Jesus?
Chris Gates: Could be a surprise Jesus, yeah. Like I say, I tend to buy secular calendars, so Jesus isn’t normally on the menu, so to speak. I’m guessing a Christmas tree infront of a roaring fireplace, really that’s the ultimate door 24 as far as I’m concerned
Jonny: I, of course, bow to your expertise.
Be amazing if it was a real wildcard, though, eh? Like the King, or Stalin.
Emily: When this first popped up on my screen I read it as ‘IT’S SATAN!!!” and I thought ‘whoa this has escalated!’
Rachel: Today, I had the privilege of sharing The Snowman with a Polish colleague for the very first time. Afterwards, she had… *feelings* about the ending, and I tired to explain the cultural importance of The Snowman, and the quintessential Britishness of its message: ‘Merry Christmas! Death is coming for us all.’
Point being: when tomorrow’s inevitably disappointing door leaves us all feeling dead inside, it will, in fact, be Christmassy af.*
Rachel: *just like the Christmas quiz I just be did with colleagues at the end of year do in the school canteen, which included a ‘guess the Christmas tune’ kazoo round.
Advent Calendar Door 19: It’s a Christmas cracker!
And this is a REALLY good Christmas cracker too, made with a deep forest green paper with gold piping and on its handles, its middle section, or “payload bay” to give its correct name, is decorated with a candy cane with a backdrop of light snow. Really quite exquisite. And for all my worry that today’s picture would seem like a massive step down after yesterday’s appearance of Santa, the quality of this drawing is seriously so much better that it actually seems like the calendar’s ramping up.
It’s almost as if my feelings about yesterday’s “Santa” were correct, that he was some kind of pretender, a festerloper* if you will, either a mall Santa or a guy in fancy dress. If so, that MIGHT mean that we are yet to see the real Mr Claus.
Real talk though, what’s your position on Christmas cracker crowns? Mine is that once one is received it should be worn for the rest of the day or as long as it holds structural integrity. This is purely a Christmas Day rule, not to be applied to any cracker crowns which may or not appear over Twixmas. This is just a personal style choice I make and I mention it purely in passing, and if you have the desire to imitate me on Christmas Day (as a tribute and a sign of your loyalty to the CGACC©️) then that is ENTIRELY up to you.
So far I think this is one of the most if not THE most successful calendars we have ever seen on the CGACC©️, I’m going to have to go off and run the numbers at some point when I’m a bit less busy despite appearances I actually DO have a job.
#CGACC2024
*festive interloper, remember?
Comments:
Lake: This has been a harder journey than the murder calendar. Such a strong Christmas game with only one (1) fuck up.
As a long time follower of the CGACC©️, this might be the best one yet. I'm VERY worried and far too invested in the next 5 days.
But on a less serious, but still quite serious note, I don't trust people who don't wear Christmas cracker hats until the bitter end on Christmas day. Similarly I don't trust people who actively choose to wear their Christmas cracker hats until the bitter end of the office Christmas party.
Miles: I am a firm believer in "that crown goes on until its structural integrity fails". Sadly for someone with my barnet girth that is sometimes only several seconds.
Chris Gates: Make your own crown, king
Advent Calendar Door 20: It’s a snowglobe!
This snowglobe has a silvery metal name plate which reads “Winter Wonderland”, and in contains a scene with reindeer wondering through a snow covered field between two fir trees, above them is a clear midnight blue sky with a new moon and a field of glimmering stars.
Let me just take a minute to tell you all the ways in which this is bullshit. But before I do, let me also tell you that I do this out of integrity, my own personal integrity and the integrity of the CGACC©️ because I could have just waved this through and we all could have got on with our days with a smile on our face and a song in our heart, but no: not on my watch. I owe it to you, to myself and, goddamn it, I owe it to Christmas: standards must be maintained, or all becomes chaos.
Do me favour, point out the Christmassy elements of this picture.
The reindeer? Well, reindeers exist outside of Christmas don’t they? It’s only Santa’s nine (9) reindeer who count as Christmassy. These are not explicitly those reindeer, and therefore not Christmassy.
The fir trees? Yes, fir trees are used as Christmas trees, but a wild, undecorated fir tree is just a fir tree and therefore not Christmassy.
The snow? Seasonal, not festive and therefore not Christmassy.
The name “winter wonderland”? The name of a song which has been co-opted by Christmas, sure, but not a song about Christmas in any way and therefore not Christmassy.
We’re at door 20 here, on the home stretch, and there should be nothing behind these doors but the most Christmassy things a person can think of, and yet we’re confronted with this monument to winter.
And fuck winter.
No seriously, real talk: Fuck. Winter. THAT is the true purpose of Christmas isn’t it? It’s the antithesis of, and antidote to, winter; light in the darkness, warmth in the cold, life in the midst of death. Winter and, moreover, this snowglobe, can get in the fucking sea.
This is a huge stumble just before the finish line. Can the artist recover in time for the big finish? The next few days are going to be TENSE.
#CGACC2024
Comments:
Lake: Oh this can just fuck right off.
Kez: This did not go the way I expected when I read “It’s a snow globe”
Sam: I think you really needed that
Chris Gates: I think we all needed this
Roz: My nerves cannot take it.
Rachel: …And yet doves get a pass?? You claim integrity, Gates, but based on this judgement, it’s apparent that you are drunk with power.
Chris Gates: I can be both, shut up.
Advent Calendar Door 21: It’s a Christmas pudding!
I can’t precisely say I like Christmas pudding, I tolerate it more than anything else. Like cake, I don’t like cake, I tolerate cake, but I love frosting. The truth is with Christmas pudding that’s it’s fairly terrible as a pudding, kind of bitter and stodgy, BUT it is an EXCELLENT vehicle for brandy butter and double cream, which are the real stars of the show.
This iteration of the noble pud is much the same as the half dozen or so others we’ve seen on the CGACC; vast in a way that is nothing short of unreasonable, dark as well filled soil, draped in a snow white sheet of icing and topped with a single sprig of holly.
What is that icing, by the way? Like, I have only ever seen this represented pictorially. Are they meant to be iced? When did we, as a society, stop icing Christmas puddings? Maybe that’s what’s wrong with this country because it needs icing, something saccharine and bright to cut through all that stodge. Or if we’re not icing them, let’s stop drawing them with icing. Maybe it’s about time we moved on from this nostalgic idea of ourselves and faced reality. We no longer have an empire, we no longer boil our puddings in a cloth, stick a six pence in and ice them. Draw me a pudding that has been microwaved and mashed up in a bowl with dairy and booze until it’s a lumpy mess. THAT’S the Britain I know.
#CGACC2024
Comments:
Tamsin: Isn’t it just cream dripping over the top?
Chris Gates: It's possible I suppose, but what kind of psychopath would pour cream over an entire Christmas pudding before it's even sliced into? Surely cream is poured onto an individual portion of pudding?
Laura: If it was cream though it would all just roll off the pudding. In the pictures it looks very much like icing because it stays put and looks a lot thicker than cream
Tamsin: artistic license…
Laura : Also I agree with Chris... you add your choice of cream or brandy butter (or both!) when it's served up
Lake: Fuuuuck. I was today years old when I realised that the icing was not icing but cream.
Jonny: Me too!
Lake Everything is different now
Chris: I don’t think it IS cream though. Who creams the whole pudding? (Not a festive euphemism)
Suzanne: can’t be cream. Cream would sink in in seconds.
Lake: but no one, NO ONE ices a Christmas pudding. No. One.
So it must be cream or ice cream or, god forbid, albino custard.
I think artists are depicting the split second that the cream is poured before it sinks into the stodgy pudding.
Look, I'm not happy about it either but there it is.
Roz: Isn’t it meant to be brandy butter?
Lake: It's possible, the point is that it is certainly not icing and I feel like this should have come up before now.
Chris Gates: My limited research leads me to believe it’s marzipan
Lake: Oh fuck off, Chris. That's even more stupid than custard.
Kez: I don’t want to be that person but my mother has boiled her Christmas puddings in a cloth every year since before I was born. She did used to put a coin in it too before her children started reproducing and it was deemed “a choking hazard” and “not festive” to “go to A&E on bloody Christmas Day”.
But Christmas puddings are rank anyway.
Advent Calendar Door 22: It’s mince pies!
Clearly the artist has food on the brain.
Following yesterday’s Christmas pudding. I mean, who doesn’t have food on the brain at this point right? I’ve got my big Christmas shop arriving today. It’s mainly cheese. I’ve entered that pre-Christmas stage of excess which in my youth (five years ago) was characterised by staying out until two or three in the morning and staggering home drunk, and is now about having a massive baileys before going to bed at 10:30 (which is past my bed time). The march of time is relentless.
There are three (3) mince pies in this picture with the classic star shaped top and a little sprig of holly on the plate next to them. It’s a fairly bold move on behalf of the artist not to have included a stand alone holly-picture behind any of these doors, nor mistletoe nor a wreath: to have eschewed entirely all Christmassy foliage is to say “no thanks, I’ve got my own ideas”, and I’d respect that far more if those ideas hadn’t let to the failures we’ve seen behind previous doors. Hubris will ever be the herald of defeat.
#CGACC2024
Advent Calendar Door 23: It’s Christmas cookies!
They’re in a glass jar, these cookies, a jar which has been placed not in the foreground but rather the middle distance of the picture, so that we have to lean in and peer at the image in order to decipher it. Inside we can descry gingerbread men and assorted cookies, not so much stacked or arranged as… floating. Suspended. Adrift. Like the frozen corpses of astronauts abandoned to the endless void of space. This atrocity is labelled “Christmas cookies” in order, I suppose, to alleviate any doubt, but it only serves to give the imagery a dark irony; the cracker joke of a malevolent god.
Very Christmassy, but very grim.
Now, while I am pleased that this is technically a valid ACDP I’m kind of annoyed by the fact that this is our third food item in a row. This isn’t so much a carefully curated advent journey as it is the artist hitting shuffle. Where’s the variety here?You can’t put three tracks by the same artist back-to-back on a compilation album— it’s fine for super fans but you’re going to lose the casual listener.
That said, I’m choosing optimism (and I’m famous for my optimism, I am. Chris “Optimism” Gates they call me around town. Those that don’t call me Chris “Rocking Horse Ambivalence” Gates. I’m famous for a lot of things). This mundanity has lowered our expectations and set the stage for us to be blown away by whatever is behind Door 24.
The artist had better deliver
#CGACC2024
Comments:
Miles: I've never had the patience for "Rocking Horse Ambivalence" so I've always just called you Chris RHA Gates, which just provokes mild confusion.
Advent Calendar Door 24: It’s a CHRISTMASSY snow globe!
Okay, before I talk about how furious I am about this let me just get this described real quick because it’s delightfully batshit.
There are two characters in this globe, one is Santa Claus and the other is a cat who, and I can’t stress this enough, is dressed like Rudolph. It’s wearing fake antlers and a red nose.
This is what I assume is going on at any rate, who knows what kind of shady genetic experiments Father Christmas is carrying out all the way up in the North Pole, in international waters so to speak. This may well be an ungodly cat/reindeer hybrid creature, and for all we know he’s been breeding them for centuries and is waiting to unleash them upon the earth, on Christmas Day when a lot of us have our guard down.
Either way, this Rudolph-cat is up a ladder and it appears to be placing the star topper on a fully decorated tree, which, in my experience, is the opposite of how cats and christmas trees interact, but blah blah blah magic of Christmas and all that. Santa is watching this Christmas miracle take place and is doing a merry little jig, possibly this is a trick he’s been trying to get this beast to perform since its creation and Santa is revelling in evil triumph.
And that’s fine, you have to let people get their kicks.
What’s making me incandescent with rage, however, is that WE’VE ALREADY HAD A SNOWGLOBE.
You cannot - can NOT- repeat images in an advent calendar and to do so with door 24 is, well, not technically a crime (much like breaking International law seems to be for some reason. Like, the ICJ could issue an arrest warrant against the artist but really it’s barely even a slap on the wrist, more like someone describing how a slap on the wrist might feel) it’s certainly artistically lazy.
Can you IMAGINE the emotional impact this merry insanity would have had if we had been able to come to it fresh? Unfettered by memories of that nonsense behind door 20? We could have all slipped into the festive season with a satisfied sense of closure, but no.
We’ve been robbed.
Ah well, better luck next year.
Phew! Well, that’s that done for another year. Thanks for bearing with me. Sadly we have yet to hit our £43,500 donation goal yet, but I imagine a lot of you are waiting for you December pay check to hit your accounts so that’s understandable if not exactly forgivable (here’s the link if you’ve misplaced it, maybe bookmark it for future reference: https://ko-fi.com/chrisgates)
Hope you all have the kind of Christmas which pleases you best, or if not that at least it will be over quickly.
Peace and Goodwill
Chris x
#CGACC2024
Comments:
Jonny: Damn. So not Stalin, then? Wasted opportunity.
Thank you Chris. Once again, stirling work. Once again, my favourite part of Xmas.
A very happy Xmas to you! Xx
Rachel: I feel this calendar is nefarious and lulled us into a false sense of security with a near faultless game, purely so this final door would be the bitterest of all bitter disappointments. I feel like the boy kneeling in the snow at the end of The Snowman.
Kez: I’ve got loads of words on my CGAAC©️ Official Bingo Card that were not crossed off.
Festooned. A whole year without festooned.
Kez: Merry Christmas, Christmas Gates. Congratulations on another sparkling year at CGAAC©️ HQ.
Next year, I’m making t-shirts.
Lake: I've got feelings about this. They run deep. However, unlike other years, I'm inclined to think kindly of this artist. I think the pressure got too much and they just cracked at the end. I'm reminded of the Richard Maddoc storyline from the Sandman graphic novels.
I think at the end there, they were just a gibbering wreck, incoherently rattling off messed up Christmas tropes. It's sad, but that's the risk you take when you hit the big time.
Maybe you could put some of your £43000 to setting up some sort of care home for fallen advent calendar artists.
Thank you, once again, for your noble work taking us through the dark days of December.
A very merry Christmas to you and yours.
Sarah: Happy Christmas! Door 24.... from disappointed of Peacehaven xxx
Andy: Thanks for all your hard work Chris Gates. Without your work with CGACC©️ who knows where the world would be.
I think we were all a bit too lenient with this artist and this has led to this travesty. A snow globe cannot be considered Christmassy under any circumstances and here we have encouraged this artist to use TWO!Next year...we must resolve to be tougher!
Tamsin: Duplications of items cannot be accepted under any circumstances. Let the artist get away with it this time and they might try it on with two rocking horses next time. God forbid!
Lake: oh my god. The horror. The horror.
Mark: As we all settle down for the inevitable, we can all do so in the knowledge that somewhere in the Brighton area is a man who has slumped in his armchair, cup of tea in his patented CGAACmug and a contented sense of a job well-done on his face. A loyal army of followers having been taken on your festive gambol through the snow covered meadow of Advent, and come out the other side with the affirmation that a snow globe is an abhorrent abomination that nobody either wants or needs - especially in a calendar. We salute you, sir, and wish you a Happy Christmas, one that doesn’t involve cosplaying cats with ideas way above their stations. Here’s to next year x
Mill: Despite the obviously weird and repetitive ending to this calendar, I think we should take a minute to consider that there's only been one or two invalid pictures this year, and that's got to be some kind of record?! Also the utterly batshit nature of this final image brings me an odd kind of joy, and that's what the season is all about anyway. Merry Christmas good sir, and I thank you once again for the important service you provide at this time of year.