Is This A Parody? It Must Be A Parody, Surely...

Because if it's not, then 2017 is the day the 'Indy' finally jumped the shark....

I’ll probably be called a snowflake for writing this, but all this “dreaming of a white Christmas” leaves me feeling very low every December. As a queer Iraqi immigrant in Britain, Christmas is the time I most hotly feel my displacement.

 Hmmm, wait, I've got something for that here....

That's the ticket!

The Christmas season is polluted with national notions of “home”. Every November and December, my social media channels are assaulted by Christmas promotions, such as a video with Owen Wilson for sofa company Sofolofy which boasted the caption: “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, coming home is the best feeling ever. #whenhomereallymatters.”A cisgender white man reclining on an expensive sofa to tell me that going “home” is an irrefutable joy? Hardly a comfort.

 Yeah, we all get fed up with sales adverts, sand holiday adverts too, at this time of year. So what>

Ostensibly – as many intersectional queer identities will tell you – I have no fixed notion of what home is. Due to my sexuality and drag career, it would be unsafe to spend Christmas there.

Boo hoo! So why aren't you happy about being safe?

Yet London feels an equally inhospitable place during the holidays.

Wait, what? As inhospitable as the places that'd cut your head off or hang you from a crane? Are you sure you know what that word actually means?

Aside from the fact that Oxford Street looks like a Christmas Cracker on psychedelics during the festive season, our city becomes saturated with images of nuclear families, with brands coyly reminding us to shower our relatives with love (where love equals moderately-priced fragrances). For the queer people who have endured traumatic rejections from their families and communities, the Christmas barrage only aggravates our feeling unwanted.

So what do you want the world to do, stop celebrating so you can feel better about yourself?

These experiences at Christmas are only symptomatic of broader social issues in the UK. The past two years in politics have seen an acute scapegoating of immigrants for Britain’s problems, and being a nomadic identity is feeling increasingly unsafe here.

Well, nothing keeping you here, is there? If you can't go home, and you can't stay here, might I suggest you find an atlas & start looking for another country to whinge and sulk in?

If Christmas really is about love and generosity, try to spend the holidays thinking about how you might better respect and incorporate migrant and queer identities feeling displaced around the country. Perhaps then we might have a happier New Year.

Yeah, I thought briefly about doing this and then I decided to spend Christmas as I always do - enjoying good food and good company, relaxing with family and friends, and ignoring the bitter complaints of people who are unhappy with their lot and this that that's something everyone else should fix for them.

Newsflash, chum - the power to change is in your own hands, no-one else's.