Christmas.

So that’s me, at the top of the page, looking suitably festive.

It’s not exactly how I am feeling, however. Christmas has come at a particularly hard time for me this year, me being a freelance writer, and freelance writing being a notoriously uncertain trade.

I’m broke.

I’m so broke, in fact, that when a couple of cheques arrived for me this week - enough to cover my rent, never mind about Christmas - I kissed them.

That’s right folks, I have a heart-felt romantic relationship with money.

Well I could moan on about Christmas, and the difficulties it presents to someone in my position. But I won’t. Instead I’ll remind you of the historical origins of the festival.

You think it’s about the birth of Christ? Think again.

In Roman times it was known as the Saturnalia, and was a celebration dedicated to the god Saturn, usually accompanied by massive indulgence. Excess food, excess drink, excess everything. That much hasn’t changed.

Amongst the Celts it was the day-out-of-time in their thirteen moon calendar. The Celts held to a 28 day month, thirteen in the year, with one left day over. That day was the 25th December.

It was Pope Gregory who introduced Christianity to the English, some time in the late 6th Century, through his missionary Augustine. Augustine wrote to Gregory to complain that, even after conversion, the English still clung stubbornly to their traditional customs. Gregory's response was typically astute. Let the English keep their customs, he said, but re-consecrate them to the new faith. "If the people are allowed some worldly pleasures in this way," he wrote, "they will more readily come to desire the joys of the spirit."

The letter was signed and dated "the seventeenth of June, in the nineteenth year of the reign of our most pious Lord and Emperor Maurice Tiberius Augustus."

Thus the traditional English mid-winter pagan festival lived on, albeit in a Christianised form.

But the greatest threat to Christmas came in the reign of James I in the 17th century. Britain was going through a period of instability. Social and economic forces were combining to create a climate of cultural change. Puritan thinkers were challenging not only the primacy of the throne, but also the institution of Christmas. They argued that Christmas was pagan and popish in origin, and should be abolished. The King (as canny as Pope Gregory before him) tied his own fortunes to those of the traditional sports and pastimes of the English people. "And as for Our Good People's lawful Recreation," he wrote, "Our pleasure likewise is."

He referred to this as the "Paradox of State", the allowance of a period of lawlessness as a buttress to the authority of the State.

Later, in the reign of Charles I, the Puritans won the argument, not to say, the war. Charles was beheaded, and Christmas was abolished. Christmas cake was declared illegal. This is true, and an historically verifiable fact. Christmas cake was once considered as heinous a substance as hashish is today. Which only goes to show, once more, how dumb some laws are.

In fact, Christmas has always constantly reinvented itself. In medieval times it was governed over by the Lord of Misrule, who, for the twelve days of the Christmas period (no more, no less) presided over a state of lawlessness, a “World Turned Upside Down”, in which the common people had rights of redress over their masters.

In Scotland the Lord of Misrule was known as the Abbot of Unreason.

These days, of course, it’s a festival of consumerist excess, the main imperative being - apparently - to spend as much money as possible.

So I’m with those people who bemoan the loss of our traditional Christmas, and its replacement with crass commercialism.

Bring back the Lords of Misrule, that’s what I say. Let’s turn the world upside down again.