Last year at a Christmas gathering, a merry soul grabbed this guest’s arm and wondered why the media are such unmerciful joy killers. Just as he was doing a practice run with the new cocktail blender that day, he protested, he was suddenly confronted with scenes of slaughter in Ukraine or Gaza or Sudan.

Instead of excitement about finding the Triple Sec at the back of a cupboard or dicing Brussels sprouts into an unrecognisable mound of butter, bacon and green bits, the mean old media bristles with warnings about financial, psychological, addiction and gastrointestinal meltdowns. Articles about grasping consumerism, domestic violence and bacteria-ridden turkeys sit alongside advice on how to handle your Christmas-wrecking granny.

What happened to, like, joy to the world, he wailed? I pointed him to pictures of the moving crib in Parnell Square and to angelic little ones singing “Away in a Manger” and suggested he focus on the immediate joys of a lovely clove-scented hot whiskey and ham to dull the pain. But maybe the true answer to the dearth of unbridled joy was too bleak for a Christmas gathering. Maybe it’s just that we know too much.

A kind of innocence vanished a week before Christmas two years ago........

© The Irish Times