Less of that!
by The Emigre
🎄December 2025🎄
Emigre writers tell us about the gifts they wish would just stop giving.
*UPDATED DAILY FROM DECEMBER 1 THROUGH TO DECEMBER 24*
While Christmas is traditionally a time for over-eating and -drinking, present-giving, and largesse of every other conceivable kind, this December we asked contributors and friends what they would like to see a little (or much) less of in the coming year.
And, because it's said you can have too much of a good thing — even in the festive season — we asked them to restrict their animadversions to just three.
— The Editors
December 10
1. Fewer church meetings. The Christian faith cannot be shaped by committee. I have, for my manifold sins and wickedness, served a three-year term on the Governing Body of the Church in Wales, and hated almost every grey, soggy, hand-wringing, insipid, back-stabbing, bureaucratic moment of it. The chaps in central office seem to live in a dream world where our churches are full of bright young activists with pots of cash to chuck at heat pumps. It reminded me of that meme of Hitler in his bunker, planning counter-attacks with non-existent battalions. The only good Governing Body took place in the charming seaside resort of Llandudno. This was nice because when the chat turned to Carbon Footprint Calculations I could nip out the back and go for a stroll down the pier.
2. Less Ozempic. It's good that some people have been given the boost they need to get in shape. Good luck to their skinny selves. But one of my pleasures in life is sitting with a cigar in Cafe Franco's on Jermyn Street, and watching the gammons shuffling off to their clubs. There is something reassuring about a hefty chap in late middle age, filling his capacious red cords, off for his quart of claret and a go at the beefsteak and stilton. What will become of our pubs and clubs if more and more people turn into health nuts? It means that those of us left who are not "on the pen" have to eat and drink twice as hard. Some are born great, others have to eat their way to greatness.
3. Less couscous. What's the point of it? And why is it named twice??
— The Reverend Sam Aldred is Vicar of St Gabriel’s and St Barnabas, Swansea, and author of Clubland’s Hidden Treasures.
December 9
1. What I would like less of in the brand new 2026 year? This question totally defies the theory of “positive thinking”. You know, all those magical thinking ideas that claim you can attract great things into your life by sheer force of wishing. The sort of thing a Russian hooker lectures you about on Instagram, sitting on a rented Dubai terrace while sipping champagne and actively clanking her Cartier bracelets. And that is, by the way, what I would like to have less of. The cheap, unscientific ideas and bad quality media, I mean, not the Russian hookers. I don’t have many hookers in my life. I do have a lot of Russians though, and they’re very good company... But I’m not collecting them either.
In fact, I don’t mind any group of people, provided they don’t yap at me from every screen about how I should live. And the problem is not only the fake gurus of magical thinking. It’s the whole tendency; the very fact that a dubious socialite from Dubai is celebrated only because she has that grim determination to be so. It’s the triumph of the self-proclaimed success — performative and somewhat delusional. And the only reason it’s become possible to write one song, sing it in your undies and be invited onto Jimmy Fallon, is that we live in the world of relentless marketing and algorithms. And the Matthew’s effect.
Have you heard of it? Apparently, it’s what makes a completely undistinguished person have unwarranted success and relentless coverage, all thanks to the initial — completely random — success and exposure. And now, on top of that randomness (that didn’t exactly make things “fair”), we have negative selection, where being flamboyantly foolish is financially rewarded, all thanks to social media.
And while I admit, social media did democratise art, cutting the agent, the middleman, the publisher, and, curiously, the pimp, while giving platforms to artists, writers, OnlyFans-earners and the aforementioned luxury-loving lady, it has also made it “OK” to do some really gaudy things, revelling in one’s questionable success, acting like you can afford to not only hold your head high, but even dish out advice and sell dubious courses. Bring back the good old censure, I say. Let’s give less voice to people with dumb thoughts.
(I know, I know, live and let live, the invisible hand, the free market, yada yada. But tell me this: if being unapologetically cringe pays more than acquiring a professional degree, who exactly will be working in hospitals when the next plague hits?)
2. Speaking of plagues… No, I’m not about to say that I want less of them. And I don’t mean I’d love another plague, please. But… if I’m honest, I enjoyed the hell out of the last plague.
Hell, plague, famine, war and death. Let’s defy the bonkers out of positive thinking. Sure, I have some serious objections to the lot of them. I don’t cheer for plague. Or any of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, for that matter. (I’ve nothing against horsemen, per se. That’s actually the sexiest a man can look, even if he’s a food merchant in weird rags carrying scales…) Only… the thing is, during the Apocalypse of 2020, it dawned on me that I’d rarely been as careless and safe, as utterly liberated from anxiety as I was while waiting out a mysterious and deadly disease in my 18-square-meter Parisian studio. The last time I felt that unburdened and enthused was at the start of summer break 1998, or when one of the wars broke out back in Chechnya and I didn’t have to do my homework anymore. Again, don’t get me wrong: I don’t mean I want more wars. I just want that thing The Beatles sang about: “Oh that magic feeling… nowhere to go!” And that’s what I want less of: less places to go, less things to accomplish, less things on which you are madly behind, less disappointment for your family, less years in your passport to testify against you, less time slipping through your fingers. In fact, I want time to be paused for everyone, as if it were a quarantine. Seriously, let’s give ourselves a break.
3. Speaking of breaks. Timothée Chalamet. Let the kid take one. Grow a moustache. Swallow the necessary vitamins. Finish puberty. Please, world, give Timothée a sabbatical in 2026.
— Madina Chingarieva is a concept architect based in Paris.
December 8
When I was asked what it was of which I would want to see less in 2026, I immediately (and, in fairness, irrationally) thought that I would like to hear less of Nathan Evans.
I'm sure he is a very nice man and I did not begrudge him 15 minutes of fame ... or what appears to have been a product placement deal with the Aberfeldy Tourist Board.
It may just be that no prophet ever has honour with his own countrymen — but he has delighted me long enough.
I'd also like to see less of my time being wasted on social media. When I fell out of love with the platform formerly known as Twitter, I rather assumed and hoped that this would lead me to a wholesome online celibacy.
On the contrary, it seems to have led me into a sort of digital promiscuity, as I end up posting the same thought on Bluesky, Threads, etc. to chase a scattered audience (though I suppose it's still better than installing a Juliet balcony and acquiring a megaphone!).
I'd also like to see less shrinkflation: I'd prefer candidly admitted inflation.
Tubs of butter or spread are a little more tapered. Chocolate bars have rounded corners, missing triangles or artistic 3D designs.
There used to be rules requiring packaged products to be sold in set quantities. This was to prevent sharp practice and, as Bernard Woolley didn't quite say, red tape really was what held things together.
P.S. To comply with the Thumper principle, I will say that the songs of Nathan Evans are at least of a convenient length for radio presenters who can't count or who talk too much. I'd like to see more 2 minute songs!
— Ronnie MacLennan Baird is, among other things, a radio presenter who can't count and who talks too much.
December 7
Ooh — I know!
Littering. Because it's bad for the environment and it's killing our world. Some even goes into outer space!
Number two is chopping trees down. Because then we wouldn't be able to breathe. Trees produce oxygen.
And being mean. It hurts my ears, when people shout at each other. But also it's just not nice.
— Freya Molligoda Smyth is 8 years old.
December 6
Once the archetype of festive hideousness, it seems that the Christmas jumper has, in recent years, been reclaimed by the masses in a heaving surge of collective faux-irony. In an act of festive conformity akin to cultural vomiting, the sheer compulsion to participate appears to override every logical or cerebral effort to resist. In the strangest and cruellest twist of seasonal evolution, the revival has managed to produce garments even more grotesque than the originals of the 1980s.
I am, regrettably, old enough to remember the first trip around this particular yuletide mulberry bush. The jumper arrived, invariably from a relative whose name no one could quite recall, wrapped in crinkled paper that smelled faintly of Boots Lilly-of-the-Valley. You would be forced into it by a mother determined to maintain family harmony, even if that entailed sacrificing your juvenile social standing. Off you went to some distant cousin’s Christmas gathering where a slice of melon or a glass of orange juice (never both) constituted an elegant starter. There you stood, cheeks ablaze with humiliation, as the luckier children with more indulgent parents arrived in gleaming, neon shell suits, blissfully free of reindeer-shaped bobbles stitched across their clavicles.
From that opening misstep of a few decades ago, the wider festive descent has felt almost inevitable. Every year, on the cusp of November, the world tips into a gaudy avalanche of Christmas tat. Shops detonate into glitter. Front lawns teem with battery-powered animatronic reindeer. Perfectly rational people conspire to drape themselves in polyester sentiments mass-produced by someone else. It’s the annual collision of goodwill and dropshipping whimsy, where sentiment is printed in factories and worn like a compulsory badge of belonging.
There has always been a commercial edge to Christmas, of course. Spearheaded by the Coca-Cola company’s jolly bearded man in a red velvet suit, the 21st century has heralded a modern deluge of themed clutter that feels particularly hollow in the era of one-click ordering. "28 day returns": a neatly secular reinvention of the religious countdown, a kind of consumerist month of absolution. Not quite the solemnity of the 14 Stations of the Cross, nor the gentle endurance of the 12 days of Christmas, just a grace period in which to repent for buying something pointless, regrettable, and faintly luminescent.
These objects exist solely to be purchased, displayed briefly, and then quietly discarded or exiled to landfill (usually in a third country where the irony of dealing with the overabundance of Christian charity can be overlooked). We are encouraged to celebrate a season rooted in warmth and connection by drowning beneath plastic baubles and synthetic snowflakes. Goodwill, it seems, has been outsourced.
Above all else, jumpers have perhaps become the most tragic example. What began as the misguided but well-meant handiwork of a spinster relative has now become the uniform of imposed cheer. _Christmas Jumper Day_ appears on the workplace notice board, and beleagured employees scrabble to acquire fast-fashion creations that survive one wash and offer little more than a stitched-on punchline. Wearing them feels less like embracing a tradition, and more like participating in a seasonal flash-mob of forced merriment, each slogan louder and more desperate than the last.
The most striking part is how readily we accept it, and how easily we let every surface and social feed be smothered in industrialised festivity. Maybe it’s because genuine acts of goodwill require effort, attention, and sincerity, whereas tat offers an instant, if empty, simulation of the Christmas spirit. Like an enticing Christmas-Eve macaroon that looks luscious on the plate, only to dissolve into a nothingness that leaves a sickly, cloying taste in the mouth.
If your decorations make you happy, enjoy them. But perhaps we can collectively take our foot off the tinsel-coated sartorial accelerator. The world doesn’t need more disposable cheer destined for landfill. What it does need is connection crafted between people. After all, goodwill should not require a slogan, and certainly not one printed across your chest in neon-green thread, ready to shock you into a festive expletive every time you brush against a metal surface.
— Laura Sinclair-Willis is the Chief Executive Officer of the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
December 5
1. Now, ask almost anyone and they will tell you that I’m no enthusiast of excessively large portraits of supreme leaders, but this year, what I’d like less of is CHOICE.
It is a curse of the internet age that we have almost unlimited choice. From architrave moulding profiles to assisted dying facilities, the options are myriad, and I do not care for them.
It’s not that I resent, in principle, the bewildering range of festive possibilities on behalf of those I know and love — indeed, there’s very probably something to be said for being able to select the perfect Christmas gift from the Bezos cornucopia or Dignitas franchisees.
I, sadly, wouldn’t know.
In the face of such multiplicity the anxiety is real. And it’s consequential. Ask my wife about the many dreadful presents I have given her at this otherwise special time of year: for instance, the lipstick pink wellies (and two sizes too small) or the (I kid you not) men’s leather driving gloves (and two sizes too big). I simply should not be given any gift-getting latitude in these things.
As a man of riper years, I unashamedly enjoy my state-mandated scotch and socks, and honestly, comrades, I don’t think it’s too much to ask to keep things simple.
2. In that same vein, I could also stand to lose a few LISTS this year.
I know it’s a subject dear to the editorial team’s hearts, and, for school-age children, practically obligatory at this time of year. Nevertheless, I just don’t think that my life is enriched by countdowns of the top twenty Hornsea pottery motifs, the all-time greatest viola concertos, or the five most surprising ways with kumquats.
Whilst I’m always available as a talking head for a bit of Channel 5 filler on any of the above, I blench at consuming lists — particularly the kind of ragebait that involves Christmas pop music or Jamie Oliver.
3. But if choice and lists are the two pimply cheeks of the same Yuletide arse, then surely the threadbare kecks holding both together is ASPIRATIONAL FOOD MAGAZINES.
If we were meant to try anything new for Christmas, we would have done it already. Or, at least it would have been perfected by the 1950s. There can be no credible reason for pan-frying a Brussels sprout, gratinating a parsnip, or doing anything surprising with a kumquat.
Defying such culinary nonsense, the Simms household will be feasting on an authentic mid-20th-Century sausagemeat loaf for Christmas Day, washed down with an unspecified Hock, and followed by a pudding endorsed by (and comprising largely of) Atora suet.
I shall be swerving any glossy brochures at the checkout telling me I should do otherwise, and I encourage you to do the same. There is enough to fret about on the big day without worrying if your hot-honey turkey feet are sufficiently “swicy”.
— Duncan Simms is the Clerk to the Worshipful Company of Entrepreneurs and a noted free-market capitalist.
December 4
I would like to see less — even fewer — of the Marvel Movies. I hate superheroes. Apart from Iron Man and The Hulk, I have always found them incomprehensible. Superman, Spiderman and all the rest are such incorrigible goody-goodies. And as for that sick fuck The Joker — well, no thanks is what I say, if that’s the alternative!
Next, I would like to encounter fewer fancy ready meals in supermarkets and more real food such as liver, kidneys and even heart. Like Leopold Bloom I enjoy the inner organs of beasts and fowl, rather than that heatproof plastic bowl you give to chef Mike (Rowave).
Finally, I would like there to be fewer BIG CARS with BLACKED-OUT windows illegally parked all over London. Cheery cockney drivers notwithstanding, these wheels are obviously owned by oligarchs’ wives, doing their Harrods shopping. One rule for the rich, etc. NOT ON MY WATCH!
— Robert Twigger is working on a book about polymathy.
December 3
This is a stupid assignment, isn’t it? What should there be less of, in the season of giving, the time of excess and generosity — what sort of person asks that? Clearly the Emigre editors are nihilistic psychopaths who deserve coal in their threadbare stockings.
With that established, it’s also important to know that I live in the Falkland Islands, 8000 miles from most of my favourite people and nearly all of my favourite things. Don’t cry for me, I chose to do this, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt sometimes. I have gotten used to having less of the things that formerly signified life’s rhythms and rituals, simply because where I live is tiny and remote, so more is rarely an option, unless it’s fresh air or penguins you’re after.
One of the losses of less is the structure of Christmas. I am a church-girl, by both upbringing and ongoing decision. For ten years I was privileged to support cathedrals and churches in keeping their buildings running and accessible and beautiful. Mostly they didn’t fall down and therefore I stayed on the invite list for Advent and Christmas services. Advent — where we are now — is my favourite season, a time to prepare and look forward from darkness into light. It is profound to me in the same way certain spaces are numinous; impossible to describe, only to be experienced. I will say that the local cathedral does an extremely good job of keeping liturgy alive, so I have had options even in my new location. But the first year I wasn’t in Southwark Cathedral as the choir sang ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’ from the retrochoir, pure voices echoing around a darkened building full of the hopeful, waiting to light our candles from the flame passed neighbour to neighbour — that was a real moment of ‘less’.
And then I, as my Northern Irish friends would say, had a word with myself. Nothing had been lost here. The celebration carried on, a global phenomenon, and one I was still extremely well-placed to take part in. I wasn’t persecuted or cut-off, not grieving or facing loss of faith or hope. I was, in fact, just somewhere else, somewhere I chose to go, knowing — actually relying on the fact — it would be different. So I joined the local church celebrations, even playing flute in a very cold outdoor carol service, alongside a euphonium and four recorders and the Military Wives Choir Stealth Attack Troop (seriously, we had no idea they were there until the descants started). And I organised a Christmas Day barbeque, with everyone bringing their favourite foods, a global feast in the South Atlantic, and threw the invite open to anybody who didn’t have plans. And it stopped feeling like less.
So, this Advent (NOT CHRISTMAS YET BOYO) Season, my less is less of this sort of self-pitying nonsense. Less of the resentment that Aunt Margaret will bring that stuffing nobody likes to Christmas dinner. Less of the comparison with others that is the ultimate thief of joy. Less of the grumbling about busy roads to get you home for the holidays. Less of the worry about being seen as rude or invasive if you invite someone to dinner, or church, or out for a drink. Less doomscrolling. Less pressure on yourself or others to make everything perfect. Less of the assumption that you are the centre of the universe, and that universe should be ordered to suit you. Make yourself less this December — you might just find so much more.
— Becky Clark is a writer and former policy officer for English Heritage.
December 2
1. Instagram influencers encouraging foreigners to come live in Buenos Aires. I’m a foreigner, living in Buenos Aires, and I love and enjoy this bonkers city almost as much as I love and enjoy Argentina as a whole. But — and I cannot emphasise this enough — that doesn’t mean you have to. Stay away. Buenos Aires is not for you. It’s for me — and I wish to keep it that way. The last thing I want is to be surrounded by people like me. I live in Argentina to be surrounded by Argentines, who are, for the most part, splendid people. You’re not splendid. You’re like me, probably. So keep out.
2. Films over three hours long. The majority of today’s masturbatory ‘epics’ are both indulgent and unnecessary. By contrast, the 1987 sex comedy Meatballs III: Summer Job had a running time of just 96 minutes, proving beyond any doubt that if Hollywood wishes to produce utter pigswill that inexcusably wastes our precious time, it is perfectly capable of doing so in a little over one hour and a half.
3. Novak Djokovic.
— Dominic Hilton is a British writer based in Buenos Aires.
December 1
1. Actually 'fewer'. Fewer great books being published, relentlessly, every damn week. I don't know when I passed the point in life where I couldn't possibly read all the books I already own... but that ship's long since sailed, been caught by a typhoon in the Malacca Strait, and sunk with all hands. So what am I supposed to do, here? Not take an interest in War with the Newts, Voroshilovgrad, or The Lost History of Liberalism — all of which, plus at least a dozen other titles, I've just this week added to my shopping basket?? It’s that, or hire a slave to do my reading for me.
2. KPop Demon Hunters. Or Wicked (first, or sequel). Or any of the Descendants movies. Parents of pre-teen girls (and maybe only they) will understand the totally insane extent to which one has to live, quite helplessly, day in day out, through every craze which sweeps the world with each new ghastly Netflix musical. And that's before we even get into the 'plots'. Seriously: Hemingway didn't have to put up with this shit!
3. Certainty — and most particularly when in the minds of stupid people. We all remember laughing at "we've had enough of experts." But from the White House to the village bulletin board, the patently uncredentialled really do now need to shut the fuck up for a year or two, please. I've just read an incredible (and incredibly long) piece on Tom Stoppard, from back when the New Yorker was a world-class magazine. It's crux was how the late great playwright's entire oeuvre refused to express certainty on almost any issue. In 2026, may we all be more like Tom Stoppard. Only less dead.
— ASH Smyth, co-editor of The Emigre.
