How to destroy your Christmas: a handy manual.

1. Make sure that Father Christmas is properly stuck inside your fireplace. Tease him with stale mince pies; put your bottle of brandy away in order to piss him off even more.

2. Fill your Christmas stockings with leaflets featuring the longest quotes from Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger: may your relatives join you in embracing an existential dread and filling the void with phenomenology.

3. Shoo away Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: it’s not your place to meddle with the eco-system in a weird way.

4. Listen to Schoenberg and Penderecki throughout Christmas Eve until your neighbours start begging for mercy. Be strong: smile at them with delicate sorrow.

5. Decorate your Christmas Tree with paper rejections: put atop a rejection letter from Elsevier.

6. Enjoy.