The Annual Christmas Build Up

The main thing to realise about a Traditional Christmas is that it is really a month long saga but the lead in to the big day seems to have very little variation each year.
The shopping usually starts once shops start displaying Christmas decorations amidst people moaning about it happening too early and someone at work is belatedly appointed to sort out this years Office Christmas Party.
In mid December the hastily arranged party is held, usually in a Harvester or Wetherspoon and you spend an evening sat next to people you have spent the last 12 months trying to avoid eye contact with. In the time-honoured tradition at least one person will drink too much and either try and snog a colleague or will be sick down themselves and have to be put in a taxi as they are too inebriated to work their own phone. Everyone spends the evening moaning about the venue then gets completely pickled and ends up missing the last bus or train anyway.
Approximately two weekends before Christmas the first of the annual Christmas family rows occur over where the Christmas Tree should go and who packed the lights away so carelessly last year that it takes the best part of an afternoon to untangle them.
Businesses start to wind down as staff abandon all pretence of work to focus on dicking about even more than usual by putting tinsel around monitors, doing online shopping and trying to avoid that guy from IT you snogged at the Christmas Party.
Around the 22nd December women finish wrapping their presents and place them under the tree, the following day men begin their Christmas shopping.
Christmas Eve is in theory a full day of work but in practise this involves most office workers showing their face in work early, making sure they are seen by the boss at some point and then not coming back after lunch.
Christmas Day starts with the woman getting up early to put the turkey in the oven and then do the whole present thing before returning to the kitchen clad in a gaudy Christmas jumper or other recently unwrapped festive apparel while trying to avoid sipping from the cooking sherry.
The afternoon becomes a blur of semi-cooked and burnt food due to being unable to avoid sipping from the cooking sherry followed by washing up to the soundtrack of husband/children looking for batteries.   
Evening brings wine, pudding, port, ice cream, vodka, Christmas Cake, turkey sandwiches and trifle and opening the top button of your jeans and falling asleep in front of the Harry Potter movie.
Boxing Day, the day after Christmas Day, is a Bank Holiday and in the morning most people make an effort to get some exercise to walk off all the previous days indulgences and usually takes the form of shouting at the football on the TV for the men and and cleaning up the kitchen for the women.
Between the 27th-31st December, these days are theoretically work days, but in these days approximately 30 mins of work is done in total before it's New Years and resolutions are made to stop smoking and drinking which last until 10am and the rest of the Bank Holiday is spent watching Bond movies through a haze of cigarette smoke and a sixth bottle of Bacardi Breezer and the realisation
that it is only 10 and a half months until we start it all over again.