When you are sitting around the table, watching mum and dad bicker over the turkey and fighting with your darling brother over the contents of a cracker, it's hard to believe that Christmas is a gay time of the year. But, my friends, you are wrong! Christmas is the campest and corniest holiday of the year - after all it is all about giving and receiving and a man coming down your chimney with a bright red sac! So read on to find out why Christmas is sooo gay.

We worship a tree with a fairy on top of it
Those who forgo the fairy usually have a glittery star instead. And you're telling me that this isn't gay?

Santa wouldn't look out of place down at the bear club
He's big, beardy, jolly and likes it when you sit on his knee. He also lives in a rugged log cabin with an army of elves. Gay, baby, the word is gay.

The holiday period is an excuse to get wasted on dodgy booze and throw a tantrum
It's one of the few times of the year that straight people like to behave like us queers. Fancy another Bailey's?

You can spend all day watching old Judy Garland films on terrestrial telly
Enough said.

Christmas legitimises the Gay National Sport of shopping
What's not to love about the pre-Christmas period of frenzied spending?

The full-on horror of the heterosexual nuclear family
It's hard to escape it, but there's nothing more likely to turn someone gay than the enforced heterosexuality of a cosy family get-together.

Christmas allows you to be as schmaltzy as you like and no one thinks you're being over the top
Donate your presents to charity, give Christmas cards to everyone you hate, sing carols until your throat bleeds, and do it all with a sickeningly syrupy and sanctimonious smile.

It's pantomime season
Dames, thigh-slapping, women dressed as men, musical theatre and high camp. Gay gay gay gay gay.

It's also the season of glitter, tinsel and cheap tat
Just a few of our cultural obsessions.

It's okay to sip a nice sweet sherry
Get your schooners out, it's the gayest drink of them all.

Buy The Santaland Diaries, by David Sedaris, online and save yourself some money while enjoyoing the perfect anti-Christmas present from one of America’s most prickly, and most delicious gay comic talents. Alternatively, if you missed it again, get The Wizard of Oz on DVD.