Hell is a Christmas market

It’s that time of year. The sound of a Silesian Bratwurst connecting with cold lips. A security guard getting aggy with the actor playing ‘the elf’. Ketchup spraying into the air like celebratory champagne. Spilled mulled wine inebriating the local rat population. Overpriced tat sold in gift box form to drooling tourists. 

It’s Christmas market season. A confusing month of crowded streets and impulsive shoppers. But Christmas markets have nothing to do with Christmas. They did once. They do in Germany. But these markets, the central city cesspits, are nothing more than shoddy farmers’ markets in tinsel. 

There is an idea of a Christmas market – something that is almost holy. Quaint wooden stalls and twinkling lights. A rotund German man who looks like Brian Blessed and laughs like the father you never had. The slow, enjoyable passing of time. Father Christmas played by someone who isn’t a whisky away from a community protection notice. Presents that don’t make your parents say, ‘Ah, gee… thanks. I’ve always wanted a bar of soap that’s been touched by hundreds of strangers.’ 

These Christmas markets don’t exist. At least not in London. They only exist in the fever dreams of Richard Curtis’s agent and the minds of Coca-Cola marketing executives. Last week I took myself up to central London to see if I was wrong about these markets. I wanted to shake my Cromwellian disposition. It was either that or drowning myself in a bath of Sainsbury’s eggnog – and Sainsbury’s was out of eggnog. 

First up was Leicester Square. Leicester Square has a market. Well, it’s not really a market. It’s more of a space. Think of purgatory or a GP’s waiting room. An empty place to contemplate where you went wrong in life. I walked past an elderly couple. The man had his mouth around a cone of mayonnaise splattered fries. The woman stared into the rain – her white puffer jacket billowing in the wind like the flag of a surrendering army. She gripped a small trinket. Her eyes were grey, overcast. It was clear they’d been there for some time. 

Before I could figure out what she was clutching, her husband turned to her and said, ‘Have you seen the size of those chocolates?’ I followed the point of his finger. Next to the Pravha-sponsored bar – which consisted of an assortment of lonely men sitting around upturned barrels drinking flat, expensive beer – was a chocolate stand. Identical, additive-riddled chocolate domes were arranged in a pyramid the size of a small horse. A sad-looking man peered through the cracks and coughed whenever a passer-by spared a glance. 

I looked at my girlfriend. ‘Is this all there is?’ ‘There has to be more,’ I said. We followed the conga line of depressed faces and found ourselves standing in front of a sausage stand. The sausages had been tossed onto a semi-warm rotating metal disk. The seller, an amoral harbinger of food poisoning, retrieved the sausages with a pole straight from a hook-a-duck fairground stand. 

‘Sausage?’ he asked. I looked behind me, but there was no one there. He was talking to me. I didn’t trust this man. His lips were chapped. And the way he flung himself at the sausages made his body look amorphous. Though his face was tired, there was a certain glee in his eyes. ‘No, thank you. Merry Christmas.’ We walked away. 

Trafalgar Square’s market is much the same. In fact, it’s the exact same. I think they’re owned by the same people. Carbon copy stalls. The same chocolates. The same pallid sausages. The same knickknacks that have nothing to do with Christmas. They’re markets designed for people coming to London for the day: a bit of Christmas market shopping, dinner at The Ivy Victoria Brasserie, and tickets to see Kinky Boots.  

And then there are the ‘foodie’ markets. These are the ones recommended on Instagram reels and defunct blogging websites. The food is often good at these markets. I mean good in the sense that they don’t sell raw sausages drowning in spicy ketchup. But is good worth the price? Not really. One diabetes-inducing portion of Dutch pancakes can set you back £13 – and that’s if they don’t clog your throat before you can pay. The food markets are strange. The sellers seem to be competing with each other, which I suppose they are. Two mulled wine stands. One 30p cheaper than the other. Both are run by angry old men with red noses and bum bags around their waists. Who will win? You decide. The problem with food markets is that there’s nothing to them. Sure, it’s nice to get an organic duck burger for £16, but once you’ve gobbled it up, you’re out of options.  

Let us not forget the other markets. The bespoke, pretentious, ‘artisan’ ones. Take the Spitalfields Christmas market. What is that? Nothing about it suggests Christmas. A stand selling used razors from the 1950s and watch straps. Endless labyrinthian lines of Afghan coats and hats just like the one Kiera Knightly wore as she gurned her way through Love Actually. A shop selling candles with smells that would make Gwyneth Paltrow retch.  

When you’re done shopping, you can buy an overboiled cup of mulled wine. It’s only £10. Singe your tongue as each stall plays its own Christmas setlist. Hear Paul McCartney and José Feliciano vie for attention as you try to figure out where the exit is. Catch the Overground home one hundred pounds poorer in a newly bought second-hand coat that’s been cleaned with Cillit Bang and is missing the buttons. 

At this point, I’d rather take the limbo that is Leicester Square than put up with Spitalfields’s collection of scratched Patek Philippe watches. I’m not trying to sound Scroogie. I love Christmas markets. I just don’t love the ones we have here. I love the idea of them. But our Christmas markets are lazy and demanding at the same time. They are as Christmassy as a John Lewis advert – they reoccur every year as a way to get us to spend our hard-earned cash on rubbish.  

Remember, ‘Christmas time’ is an idea, a concept. Choose to spend it however you please. If buying spinning carboard stars and tatty jumpers for three times the price is your thing, go ahead. I just know that next year I’ll try my hardest not to whittle away my precious hours staring at worn-out furniture in a market in Zone 1. Maybe I’ll book a flight to Germany so I can see the Christkindlesmarkt in Nuremberg. I hear the handmade Christmas decorations are actually Christmas-themed there.