That seems like a long time to me, but then I will be working over Christmas, I finish up on Christmas eve and am back in on the 28^th December. In my case I’m not too unhappy with that because basically I would get bored I was having to sit around the house with that much free time on my hands, but that’s just me.

Families who are used to seeing each in small doses each day all of a sudden are thrown together for longer then ever in the calendar year. This can cause a lot of frustration and tension and can reveal a lot about the relationships that we have with our loved ones.

Which brings me onto political correctness and all the madness about the Christmas advertisement by Meteor in which a “grandmother” is denied entry to her family’s Christmas celebration because of the gift she brings with her.

Now firstly, what I cannot believe is the fact people are taking this so seriously. It is an advertisement for a phone company. The ad never that this is the way to treat our elderly relations, it never demands to us to ban our grandmothers, great grandmothers and great Aunts from family parties. It is a television ad, a quite amusing one at that in my opinion. What worries me is that we are becoming too politically correct, that we fear saying the wrong thing so much that we take it to the other extreme.

All this was tongue in cheek and much like any television programme, film, music CD that a person does not want, there is a simple solution; do not watch it, do not listen to it, change the channel, read a book, take the dog for a walk etc.

But please, please don’t try and suck the fun out of something that is not meant to be taken seriously. There are too many things in this world that should be taken seriously. To take us away from those things there are the likes of the Meteor advertisement.

It amazes me the trivial things that we complain about, while so many other important things slide. There are some strange morals in Ireland.