Having survived 5th week Blues (didn’t hear any Louis Armstrong), students can now look toward the end of Michaelmas. The days get shorter, the weather gets colder, and the quality of our work degrades precipitously. It’s when the coughs and sneezes return; the glorious and heady period of decipherable lectures ends. Students desperately need something to keep the flame of academic interest alive in the bitter winter weeks. Oxmas is the beacon of light for students in these dark days, offering joviality and early Christmas cheer when clocking in library hours is particularly unappealing.
Some say that it is an assertion of Oxford’s history as a Christian institution, or an unnecessary burden. Oxford should promote diversity: every step the colleges and central body make towards a pluralist body in all characteristics should be lauded. But in an era when Christmas is characterised by eating, drinking, and gift-giving in pleasurable excess, fears that Oxmas enforces Christian morals don’t carry weight. One term’s debauchery alone should be enough to get your average humanities student excommunicated.
To those who say it’s a burden, I quote Dicken’s’ seminal work, The Muppet Christmas Carol: “Your chains are forged by what you say and do.” Have fun. Uni’s short, and Oxmas is part of the absurdist experience that is Oxford social life.
Mulled wine, knitted jumpers, roast dinners, brawls over formal halls – could anything encapsulate the alcoholism, poor fashion sense, gluttony, and self-aggrandisement that every Oxford student regularly and proudly displays?
Enjoy Oxmas. Don’t let yourself be harangued by latter-day Scrooges into curling up into a ball and letting seasonal depression ruin what should be a wonderful time.
In short, drink, and be merry.
