Yo Ho Ho etc.

I was going to write a much longer piece about Christmas. The theme would be The Irrational Yet Immutable Rituals And How They Make Christmas A Vibrant And Thoroughly Modern Festival. The title needed some work. And now I realise that I can't be bothered to finish any of it. There's presents to wrap, bells to ring etc. So instead, here's three aspects which to me epitomise the true spirit of the holiday.

1. Mashed Potatoes Nobody ever wants to eat the things. We've got turkey, sausages and stuffing on our plate (or in my case, a rather wonderful nutloaf). We've got sprouts and roast potatoes too, we've got figgy pudding to come and we've been gorging on chocolates all day. To a very full stomach, a white and largely tasteless lump doesn't really have much appeal. We take a tiny spoonful each and the vast majority gets thrown away. But if you leave out the mashed potatoes, everyone would complain. They are part of The Meal, they must be there. And I would complain as loud as anybody.

2. Santa Claus. Santa Claus is a god, let's make no mistake about that. He flies across the sky, he has supernatural powers, he enters our homes, he even has his own mantras. Most importantly, he makes moral judgements and rewards or punishes accordingly. Yet, though Bart Simpson said Christmas "celebrates the birth of Santa," he was generated by the festival not vice versa. He only became a central component after it was relatively mature. And after his one night of power he sinks back into the Arctic ice for another year. His jurisdiction is also limited to the very young. We are expected to believe in him absolutely for our first few years and then reject him as an essential part of maturing. And his sanctions only take the form of presents or the lack thereof; Black Peter and his club were given the boot a long time ago. Compartmentalised, materialistic, even partly designed by a fizzy drink corporation – if you ever wondered what sort of deity modern society would create, look no further than Santa Claus.

3. The Media Build-Up Some rituals shift over the years, others stay the same. A while ago the favourite was Santas Behaving Badly. Jolly men in red suits would have a few bevvies and start fights, or urinate in the street, or enter a stranger's house to take away rather more than a glass of sherry and a mince pie. Nowadays we hear a lot about councils in Tamworth or St Albans refusing to put up Christmas lights lest it offends the three Buddhist families in their ward. Nobody really cares, even the people in the affected towns. But they're always seized on by national papers on permanent PC Watch as symbols of our national decline. Other stories have an eternal appeal. Babies abandoned; old people abandoned; holidaymakers stranded in airports. "It shouldn't happen over Christmas" the writers wail, apparently believing that natural laws decree everyone should be happy and loved for one particular day a year. These tales always play well, tapping into the Victorian sentimentality which is still vital in shaping the festival. But they forget that the most striking image of Christmas is still one of absolute poverty: a stranded mother giving birth in a stable.

A Million To One, They Said

Greeted last week's news that there may be running water on Mars with a blend of excitement and frustration. Excitement because water is a basic prerequisite of life. And if some is still flowing on Mars' surface, rather than being locked up in permafrost around the poles, then living organisms could be existing around it. They won't be much, of course, just some rubbish form of algae. But life on another planet is still a major discovery; and life on Mars, because of H G Wells and David Bowie, especially evocative.

Frustration because nobody's actually sure about the water yet. They've just studied patterns of rock falls and concluded they were most likely caused by a stream which quickly evaporated. Then again, maybe they weren't. They could also have been made by rocks just, you know, falling. The only way to be certain, it seems to me, is to actually put somebody on the surface and ask them if anything's bubbling out of the ground. Instead NASA continues to rely on vague, blurry snapshots taken by unmanned probes. Logical deduction based on partial evidence is sometimes a necessary part of science. But there really is no substitute to actually being there. After all, in 1492 a Genoan set off westwards from Portugal with all existing knowledge telling him that he wouldn't hit land before India.

And the chances of the life on Mars being human seem remote right now. It hasn't gone well in recent decades, our great conquest of space. We got to the nearest possible destination and then just stopped. All recent shuttle voyages have been devoted to repairing the International Space Station. The ones which go ahead, that is, because the shuttles seem to be falling apart even quicker than the ISS itself. The ISS is a promising development, and a great name, but I'm not certain what actually happens there. Probably more pictures taken of distant galaxies from which scientists can make remarkably dubious deductions.

I know space travel costs a lot. And the American government needs their funds to meet their core aims: making billionaires even richer and knocking the Middle East to pieces. But mankind, we're always told, is supposed to be an explorer. Not just a peerer and a guesser. I'm also worried that if we ever do make contact with intelligent life from the stars, the prediction closest to the truth will be Douglas Adams'. Where we're irritably told by the aliens that their plans for demolishing Earth have been on public display at Alpha Centauri "only four light years away… If you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your lookout."

Tolerance, British Style

Tony Blair's latest contribution to the multi-culturalism debate could have been worst. The language was less than diplomatic – essentially "Respect our values of tolerance or piss off home, you dirty wogs." But there's nothing wrong with his central message, that Britain shouldn't welcome people who then go on to actively hate Britain.

What puzzled me is how he segued into the issue of wearing veils in public. There may be an automatic link between women covering their faces and men planting bombs on public transport. I've never seen it, though it seems obvious to Blair. Also a matter of "plain common sense" for him is that Kirklees Council was correct to fire a teaching assistant for refusing to remove her veil in the classroom. Being able to see somebody's face, he implied, is essential to the pedagogic process. Now it's been a long time since I was a pupil, but I don't recall the details of a teacher's face being very important. Unless they were especially unusual, of course, in which case you got to make fun of them. The correct posture in the classroom was to gaze apathetically at your desk. You tried not to look at the teacher at all. That only encouraged them to ask you questions and nobody wants that.

Women wearing veils should only be a concern when they are forced to do so against their wishes. Many aren't. And even when they are, these sweeping bans punish them rather than those bullying them. Being denied access to Jack Straw's constituency offices, which Blair also defended, is one thing and rather a blessing in disguise. But being fired for wearing an item of clothing central to your culture? It's not really British tolerance at its most impressive.

Time To Roll The Credits Please

We've all seen Hollywood blockbusters like this. They start well enough; taut atmosphere, sinister bad guys, menacing soundtrack. Then they just seem to lose it. Everyone's killing everyone and a plot to blow up a small municipal bookstore somehow becomes something threatening the whole galaxy. There's nothing to do but wait for the villain to die his third and final death so the credits can arrive.

So it is with the Alexander Litvinenko story. For a while it was possible to ignore the human tragedies or broader political implications and just enjoy it as a rollicking good yarn. The beginning was intriguing enough: a former KGB agent poisoned in London, most likely by the modern equivalent of the KGB. For days one astounding revelation followed another. They culminated in the news that Litvinenko had polonium-210 slipped into his sushi and the maginifcent Guardian headline 'The Radioactive Spy.' But once again, things have gotten out of hand. The so-called radiation 'trails' appear to have ended up covering most of Europe. Now Litvinenko's associate, Mario Scaramella, seems to have been poisoned too and you wonder where things are going to end. It's no longer possible to willingly suspend disbelief; or indeed the question "why didn't they just shoot him for Christ's sake?"

It began as a John le Carre and has turned into a James Bond. And anyone who's seen Casino Royale, or indeed any Bond film made in the last twenty five years, will know that's not a compliment. At this rate matters will culminate in Big Ben exploding while the hero (John Reid played by Sean Connery, possibly) rescues the woman in the nick of time. We needed a break from David Cameron, Pete Docherty's 47th drug bust and the Iraqi 'Not A Civil War, Not On Your Life' insurgency, but this is a bit much.