"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know." Will be echoing in the homes of every Ukip supporter over the festive period. I awake from the nightmare screaming, "Please don't repatriate me back to Bedfordshire; I'm not sure Net-A-Porter do same day delivery there."
As I reflect on 2014 it breaks my heart that people are stumbling blindly into the Ukip white hole full of racist rhetoric... well, let's face it, they wouldn't like a black hole.
Throughout the year racist and homophobic comments that previously would have been stigmatized are now being legitimized and the party's lionized advocates are given disturbingly large amounts of airtime. Nigel Farage is thrust forth as a 'figure of fun' TV personality and ratings driver which allows him to spew his diatribe of fearmongering and raw prejudices to the masses. As the country backslides into the intolerant bigoted days of the 1960's, it's hard to stay positive and not expect flaming crosses to appear on my lawn.
I hope people just think that Ukip are 'silly' and their increasing bundle of blunders will result in their downfall. But I genuinely fear that this is just the tip of the iceberg, we are on the verge of a major race, class and culture clash. The party continues to gain inexplicable popularity despite blaming gay people for crappy weather and bringing forth the 'end of days'. The only thing we have to thank them for is giving their bigoted kin in the Conservative Party the courage to take a further step to the right and nail their swastikas to the mast.
In the face of this it's the job of the rest of us to promote understanding and acceptance and shout, "Ukip, your hatred isn't welcome here. Now jog on."
Despite all this, I take solace in the fact that Christmas is approaching, which is my favourite time of year because I get to see a vast amount of my multicultural and mostly beige family together. Like walking into a Gap store during its khaki revival, they come in different shapes and sizes, but the majority are roughly the same hue.
Loud ethnic minority, immigrant chaos is what greets you when you meet my family, who truly embrace multiculturalism to such an extent they went as far as having children with as many different races as possible. As a result at this time of year I look forward to a 'Pastaferian Christmas' (a term coined by my Aunt Fiona) with Jamaican traditions upheld by my Nan and Mum, intertwined with Italian, English, German, Danish, Australian, Indian etc. Our family pictures are reminiscent of an 80's United Colours of Benetton ad and we could successfully record our own version the 80's Coca-Cola ad where we sing in unison, "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony."
Our multi-cultural Christmas is loud, fun, harmonious (until the board games come out), colourful, delicious, hilarious and it's what happens when you bring people together from different backgrounds who love and accept one another.
In the spirit of goodwill to all men (and women), I'd happily invite Nigel and his multicultural family to join us, because I think they'd have a great time.
All together now:
"I'm dreaming of a beige Christmas,
With every Christmas card I write,
May your days be merry and bright,
And may all your Christmases be white, or beige, or in glorious Technicolour, or whatever you want them to be."
Just have good one.