Christmas sounds a clanging chime of doom | Stewart Lee

As the arctic ice melts, smartphones eat our brains and the ghost of Brexit future stalks the land, it's getting harder and harder to believe in Santa

There is much we can learn from the ancient traditions of Winterval, each culture's festive myths and rituals being equally valid, and equally instructive, irrespective of their veracity or worth.

Upon the solstice night in Latveria, for example, Pappy Puffklap leaves a dried clump of donkey excrement on the breakfast table of each home. Is this so very different from the wise kings bringing the infant Christ sealed flagons of foul-smelling gas, the divine in harmony with the physical at its most pungent?

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