7 Reasons

Tag: Eve

  • 7 Reasons That 24th December Should Be Known As The Day of the Sausage

    7 Reasons That 24th December Should Be Known As The Day of the Sausage

    Hi there, it’s the day before Christmas and at other humour websites, you could probably expect to find some sort of Christmas Eve themed piece today, cynically concocted to gain the maximum amount of traffic by exploiting the festive mood.  But not here.  Because at 7 Reasons(.org) we have had a great and noble idea.  We’ve come to realise that Christmas Eve is just a little too Christmassy.  Similarly, it’s also occurred to us that it’s just not sausagey enough.  When was the last time that your thoughts turned to sausages on Christmas Eve?  But we think that’s wrong, and we want to change it.  So we see this piece as a clarion call, a rallying cry, because we firmly believe that Christmas Eve should be known as The Day of the Sausage, and here are seven reasons why.

    Churchill was never without a sausage.

    1.  Rennie. You might think that The Day of the Sausage falling on Christmas Eve is a tremendous coincidence. It isn’t. In fact it has been meticulously planned. At Christmas, you can’t move for two things. People and indigestion tablets. The world is full of them. It is full of indigestion tablets because the day that follows The Day of the Sausage is Christmas Day. A day when, regardless of your religious views, you eat a lot. It’s like a rule. When better therefore to hold The Day of the Sausage? You can spend all of 24th December eating sausages knowing that you will have both enough days and enough tablets to recover.

    2.  Vegetarians. Quite how vegetarians survive without meat is probably the one thing I wouldn’t want to be asked when faced with the One Million Pound question by Chris Tarrant. But that’s okay, because I am never going to be asked. I can live content in the knowledge that there are meat substitute products our there for the herbivores among us and no more prominent are they than during the Christmas period. In amongst the people and the indigestion tablets are vegetarian sausages and vegetarian sausages on cocktail sticks and vegetarian sausages wrapped in something that should really be bacon. They have already been catered for! If The Day of the Sausage fell on June 30th, shops would have to fill their shelves with vegetarian sausages twice a year, but with it falling on 24th December they only need to do it once. Which means they can sell proper food in June to go on my barbecue. Never let it be said that we don’t consider the economic elements when we write.

    3.  Maths.  Christmas Eve falls on the 24th of December, and you can make that number out of sausages.  You’re probably looking at the numbers 2 and 4 right now thinking, oh no you can’t.  But you’re wrong.  Because sausages come in many forms, but the two most common types of sausage are the straight sausage and the circular sausage (which is essentially a longer version of the straight sausage that can go round corners).  And you can make the number 24 from them.  Here it is.  In binary.

    11000 (24) displayed in sausage
    Coincidentally, this is just the right amount of sausages for two average sausage consumers to share.

    4.  Clarification. If you Google the words ‘Sausage Day’ you will be both disappointed and confused. (Unless you’re a pervert). There is no such thing as an International Sausage Day. Nor a National Sausage Day. Nor just a Sausage Day. There are however various Sausage Weeks. Yes, that’s right. Various Sausage Weeks. More than one. That’s not right! In 2010, British Sausage Week ran from 1st-7th November. However, the Egerton Arms in Knutsford, Cheshire, ran their Sausage Week from 3rd-12th November! Which raises another issue. Do they have 10-day weeks in Knutsford? But that is an issue for another day. Back to the sausages. And to the Cumberland Sausage Day. That falls on 5th July. Yes, it’s a Sausage Day, but a Sausage Day for just one kind of sausage. That is sausagist in anyone’s language. Except French. Where is would be saucissonist. The Day of the Sausage would eliminate such exclusivity and allow the whole world to know exactly when to celebrate their sausage. And that has to be a good thing.

    5.  Harmony.  The Day of the Sausage and Christmas Eve won’t conflict with each other.  In fact, to borrow a phrase from George W. Bush, they should be able to co-exist peacefully.  You can even make the traditional Christmas Eve nativity scene using them, as this heartwarming depiction of the birth of the baby Jesusage shows.

    it's a nativity scene constructed from meat.
    We assume that Americans did this.

    6.  Shopping. In something of an exclusive to our 7 Reasons readers, we can reveal that The Day of the Sausage has a sub-agenda. Let us ask you a question. What will you be doing on The Day of the Sausage? The correct answer is eating sausages, celebrating sausages and having your photo taken while hovering your sausage over your top lip so it looks like a moustache. What won’t you be doing? Last-minute Christmas shopping. That’s right, everyone will have forgotten about Christmas. The shops will be empty. So while everyone is celebrating bangers, we will be in Halfords deciding whether our respective partners would prefer the de-icer or some reflectors for their bikes. And because we are kind, both of our readers can join us too.

    7.  Santa.  On Christmas Eve Santa comes to visit you, and how do you reward him while he’s emptying his sack into your stockings?  You give him a glass of whisky (he likes a 12 year old Highland Park by the way, don’t ask how we know this) and a mince pie.  But a mince pie is essentially a dessert.  A teeny-tiny dessert.  But look at Santa.  He’s a big, fat, ruddy faced man engaged in a hard job of work on his busiest day of the year.  And you want to give him a pastry confection!   That’s hardly adequate sustenance.  What Santa needs is something more nutritious and something more filling to keep him going.  He needs sausages.  And double the quantity of whisky while you’re at it.*

    *The 7 Reasons team would like to wish you a very merry Sausage Day, and a happy Christmas.

  • 7 Reasons Not to Leave Wrapping Your Presents Until Christmas Eve

    7 Reasons Not to Leave Wrapping Your Presents Until Christmas Eve

    Leaving your gift-wrapping until the last-minute is never a good idea.  Here are seven reasons why.

    A stack of Christmas presents all wrapped up with a bow.
    Jonathan always uses paper bearing the traditional Christmas gift horse.

    1.  Reminders. The last thing you want to be doing is sitting in the study wrapping – while rapping along to Wham! – when your loved one knocks on the door and laughs, ‘I hope you haven’t bought me that handbag!’ You look down to see a pair of thick, woolen Rudolph socks. Oh no! She (or he) wanted that handbag. You look at your watch. It’s 5pm. There is no way you can make it to John Lewis now. If only you’d started wrapping on Tuesday. She (or he) could have reminded you then and you could have rectified the situation. Now you’re are going to have to steal one of her (or his) handbags and wrap that up. With the socks inside. Then you’re going to have to get her (or him) really, quite drunk.

    2.  Paper. However much wrapping paper you buy, it is never enough. It doesn’t matter if you raid your local WHSmith and buy every single roll going, it will never be enough. It’s one of those stupid Christmas rules. Come 11pm on Christmas Eve you have two presents left and no paper. Which is why come Christmas Day many are presented with a gift wrapped in a House Of Fraser bag. Or some printer paper. Or the Daily Telegraph. Though in that particular case I suppose the present was a copy of The Daily Telegraph. Some people like sudukos. The solution is simple*, wrap your presents before Christmas Eve, then when you run out you can go and buy another roll. It works. Though given you wrapped up days in advance you’ll probably have bought six rolls too many. Still, that’s Christmas for you.

    3.  Sellotape.  Because you have no idea where the Sellotape is kept, and you’ll have to ask your partner where it is.  And they’ll know that you’ve left wrapping their present until the last minute.  And you’ll know that they know.  And they’ll know that you know that they know.  And you’ll know that they know that you know that they know that you know that they…no, I’ve forgotten.  It definitely involved guilt, stationery and repercussions though.

    4.  Celebration.  Christmas Eve is a festival in and of itself.  And, having celebrated copiously and extravagantly, the last thing you want to be doing is staggering home in the snow to wrap your presents as, by this point, you may well have imbibed more mulled wine and port than…well…anyone else. Ever. Essentially wrapping presents in this state is a tiresome chore which soon degenerates into screwing large sheets of paper round random objects, with only one eye open and your tongue poking out with concentration while you lie on your side on the dining room floor. It also leads to…

    5.  Breakages. And you don’t want to break things on Christmas Eve. You don’t want to break yourself because it’s busy at the hospital and having to drive you there is annoying to your friends and family. And you certainly don’t want to break the expensive and fragile blue glass vase that constitutes your then-girlfriend’s main present at 11:30pm on Christmas Eve because it’s too late to replace it. So you’re left with a choice: You either wrap up the remains anyway and express shock and surprise that it’s broken when she opens it the following day, or you explain to her that you broke it while you were wrapping it because you blacked out for a moment while looking at a mince pie and fell off the chair. I chose the former option, naturally.

    6.  Garages. Despite what people may believe, a garage is not a limitless Santa’s grotto. The flowers are usually gone by lunchtime on Christmas Eve, the Chocolate Oranges by 4pm and the CDs of Cliff Richard’s Greatest Hits by 6pm. So what are you going to do when at 9pm you begin to wrap up your lover’s presents only to realise that he/she has bought you double the number? You can’t get a box of fire-lighters. They still have some left from last year. A free car-wash seems futile given that the car will get dirty again driving back. A new can of petrol is a fire hazard under the tree. A pint of skimmed milk lacks the festive spirit. You’re going to be screwed. So don’t do it. Don’t wrap on Christmas Eve.

    7.  Americans.  For some reason best known to themselves, many Americans open their presents (which they insist upon calling gifts) on Christmas Eve.  But what if you have an American coming over?  Because if you haven’t wrapped your presents by Christmas Eve, muddleheaded ex-colonial types will want to open them before you’ve done so.  And you know what will happen if they do that?  They’ll just be removing stuff from boxes.  All of the boxes.  Because they won’t know which boxes are for them because they won’t have labels on because you won’t have done the labels because, let’s face it, if you haven’t done your wrapping by Christmas Eve you’re hardly likely to have made gift labels, are you?  So your house will just be full of Americans removing all of your boxed-possessions and taking them.   It would be like being burgled, except you’d have to give the burglars your mulled wine and make small talk with them while they burgled you, spelled things badly and insisted that science isn’t a real thing.  And if that image hasn’t motivated you to wrap your presents right now, nothing will.

    *Not the solution to the sudoku.  Those bloody things are impenetrable.