We were forbidden to say “Merry Christmas”……

……within earshot of “Doc”, our evil, wheelchair-bound maths teacher. He was the strictest, cruellest member of staff in a school where there was some pretty tough competition. Doc was a religious zealot whose beliefs, as is always the case, brought him neither comfort nor joy. Every Christmas, he would deliver a bitter and morbid lecture about the brutal nature of the nativity – a woman shunned by society, forced to give birth in a stable. To him, “Merry” was a disgusting word redolent of eating and drinking too much which, to most people, is what Christmas is all about. So all these years later, in joyous revenge, I still like to sing this at the top of my voice. Because we merry souls are right. And Doc was very, very wrong.