I think I may have missed my true calling in life (other than being left alone to eat biscuits, my one desire). I just know I would have done really well as a fire-and-brimstone-type man of religion, preaching to my congregation about the evils of yoga or tampons or Harry Potter books or women wearing pants.
As a perpetually put-upon person, it would be quite easy to get myself worked up about whatever trend annoyed me that week, enough to blame it for the decline of society as we know it. I already do this to my long-suffering friends via a series of voice notes. Every week they get to tune in to my WhatsApp sermons on the latest ills befalling humankind. Like people bringing speakers to the beach. Or bringing speakers anywhere that isn’t a concert where they are the contracted sound technicians. Or the removal of the Boots outlet after security at Dublin Airport’s Terminal 1, which left the unorganised among us without the opportunity to buy last-minute razors, and ready to scandalise foreign nations with our free-flowing underarm hair.
But first and foremost on that list of causes we should rally the masses and take up arms against is the scourge of matching Christmas pyjamas. I have seen (through TikTok videos) what it does to those of usually sound mind, defiling a space sacred to many of us: the big Penneys in Blanchardstown. People turning on each other, grabbing fistfuls of sweaty polyester faster than workers can put them on the shelves. And for what? So they can have the whole family in the viral pair of pink jammies with the bow print on them? Is this what we’re fighting over now? Nonbreathable fabric?
What happened to the matching Christmas PJs we bought last year? And the year before that? Who are these people with infinite pyjama drawers? And the time to spend hanging out at Penneys on a weekday when the new stock drops?
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Some comments suggest it is the work of resellers snapping up hard-to-find sizes, turning our sick need for matching plaid PJs into cold hard profit. Sure enough, over on Ebay, the viral bow sets are being advertised by the same seller from sizes XS-XL. I don’t know which is the bigger sign that something is wrong: the people hoarding sizes to sell or those willing enough to pay the mark-up (they’re roughly €40, nearly double their original RRP). Either way, this is the type of greed they speak of in the Bible. People are acting like the Grinch will steal their sleeping children from their beds if the family isn’t in the same jimjams when the sun rises on December 25th.
I’m not trying to suck the joy out of Christmas, or anyone’s attempt to make magic spending the little money they have on what should be an affordable item. But as one astute commenter writes, “Everyone and their nanny all over Facebook in front of their Christmas tree in them, no thank you.” If people couldn’t post a photo of their offspring and semi-enthusiastic spouse in matching fake tartan sleepwear in front of the tree on Christmas morning, then the demand for special Christmas PJs wouldn’t exist.
I am convinced if we banned social media, we would do away with a lot of things we would be better without, such as gender reveals. Would people go to the head-melting effort of coloured smoke and balloons and skywriting if they couldn’t try to make their old schoolfriends jealous with the spectacle of finding out whether their sprog is a boy or girl? No, they wouldn’t. They’d find out at the scan or the birth and just shut up about it.
[ People who get up early in the morning for no reason are a menace to societyOpens in new window ]
If people couldn’t post about it on Instagram, they would stop running marathons. If I was a betting woman I would say entries would halve instantly. Gyms would close down. We could all stop pretending that matcha doesn’t taste like dirt. If people couldn’t put up their wedding photos, fewer people would get married. It would do wonders for the environment if we could stop the purchasing of crinkled fake satin robes with “Bride” and “Bridesmaid” written on the back to wear for 10 minutes to take the “getting-ready photo”.
We’ve lost ourselves. We’ve forgotten what is actually fun and what is performed just for social media. We need to get back to our roots – like kids wearing oversized shirts their parents got for free from work as PJs, without the need for the Penneys fisticuffs. That ends today’s sermon. Go in peace.
