For some people, 'tis not the season to be jolly, and for this collection ofYuletide malcontents Christmas is pure torture, writes Róisín Ingle

Artist Graham Knuttel hates this time of year and he doesn't care who knows it. His list detailing elements of Christmas that make him as prickly as a holly bush is as long as Santa's.

"I hate Rudolph, I hate elves, tinsel, bells a ringin', turkeys, ham, wise men, tin men, Bing Crosby, hens a layin', partridges in, or out, of pear trees, Christmas trees, the whole sorry mess," he says. Sorry we asked.

The spirit of Bah and Humbug is alive and well exactly 160 years after Charles Dickens introduced us to a Yule-hating miser named Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol; you just have to know where to look for it. When asked what his best memory of Christmas is, Knuttel declares "discovering that it was all a big lie . . . I have been cynical about adults ever since".

"It is not the season of goodwill," he insists. "Far from it. Kids suffer, wives get beaten, the lonely get lonelier, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. These are certainties."

Other certainties he lists are the fact that he will receive, as gifts, numerous wine racks, state-of-the-art corkscrews that don't work, praline chocolates that he hates, assorted chutneys and inedible smoked salmon. In this he is echoing a sentiment expressed by George Bernard Shaw, who once described Christmas as "an atrocious institution".

Shaw continued: "We must be gluttonous because it is Christmas. We must be drunken because it is Christmas. We must be insincerely generous; we must buy things that nobody wants, and give them to people we don't like."

Christmas for Knuttel means not getting a table for one in restaurants, or a taxi when he needs one, or a seat at a bar. He hates the fact that for three days there will be no newspapers and that he will meet people on the street he has been avoiding for 30 years. "It will be an endless mindless flow of men in Burberry scarves and sheepskin and women in hand-me-down fur coats," he says.

He is not alone. While the anti-Christmas brigade are mostly forced for the good of their health to remain silent in the face of relentless good cheer, they are as much a part of Christmas as the mistletoe and wine.

What do you mean you don't like Christmas, is the shocked question put to these grumpy types after frank admissions about their ambivalence. This is why many of them won't even be in the country to read this article, having escaped to places where they are unlikely to be bothered by the rest of us.

Dubliner Colman Browne will be in Asia this Christmas. His heartily-felt loathing of the season has seen him flee, seeking Christmas asylum to, among others, Burma, Uzbekistan, India and Thailand over the last 10 years.

Growing up with his four brothers, he remembers as a teenager making "present treaties" with his siblings. "We always had a fairly cynical view of the whole thing. We never gave each other presents and used to wrap up things like potatoes or recycle other presents just so our parents would see them under the tree and think we were doing the right thing," he says.

He left the country last Thursday and won't return until the middle of February. He detests what he calls the "dead zone" between Christmas and New Year.

"Ireland is a terribly depressing place at this time of year. A lot of my single male friends do the same thing as me, there is a quite a tribe of us. You save money by being away; €1,000 in rip-off Ireland amounts to €3,000 in south-east Asia so that's another reason to get the hell out of here."

Christmas parties give Browne the jitters. While he is no Scrooge, always giving staff at his timber factory in Ashford, Co Wicklow, Christmas bonuses, he rarely attends the bash he throws for them. "It interferes with my holidays," he explains.

While respecting the traditional Christmas celebrated by most people in Ireland, others prefer to observe a different, more ancient, festival at this time of year. For Al Cowan and other members of the vibrant pagan community in Ireland, the winter solstice, which falls this year on December 22nd, is the time to celebrate the Festival of Yule.

"It's the longest night of the year, from that point on the days got longer and the Festival of Yule was seen as a return of the light, a rebirth of the Sun," he says. Paganism, he continues, is not anti-Christian, merely another spiritual path with festivals marking the seasons throughout the year. On the night of the winter solstice, Cowan will celebrate with friends in the country with a Yule ceremony to give thanks for all the gifts from the gods of the Earth and Sun.

While he will join with family and friends who celebrate the traditional way on December 25th, his own view of Christmas has been tarnished.

"To be honest, I think the true spirit of Christmas has been forgotten, it's a purely commercial time when every shop keeper is rubbing their hands thinking of how much money they are going to make," he says. "People seem more concerned about the clothes they are wearing and the parties they are going to than celebrating the birth of their saviour. I think it's a shame."

In Belfast, an anti-panto called There Aint No Sanity Claus at the Old Museum Arts Centre has just completed a successful run, proving that there is a market for a more cynical take on Christmas. Co-writer Stephen Beggs says it explored every negative aspect of the festive season, from the arguments to the dodgy presents and the over-consumption of alcohol that seems necessary to get people through the day.

"I don't mind the day itself, it's the interminable build-up to it that I find nauseating," he says. "It's no longer dark on my street at any time, what with all the lights and flashing Santas on the houses. You can't escape the horrible Christmas music in the shops and the whole thing is just thrust down your throat."

Meanwhile, Dublin's answer to the Grinch, Graham Knuttel, has been busy ignoring what's going on all around him.

"I will pretend it's not happening until Christmas Eve when I will go out, full of Lemsip and buy praline chocolates and wine racks for my friends. Then I will go home and light a big fire and keep it burning all night. That should keep the bugger out."