Anyone who’s done time in - I’m sorry, I mean “been actively and enthusiastically involved in” - church choirs over the last 30 years will probably have come across the heartwarming Christmas carol ”Why Not Buy An Extra Present?” with music by Mike Sammes and words by Peter Westmore.
This isn’t it. However, completely coincidentally of course, and with huge apologies to Mr Westmore in particular, it can be sung to the same tune. But it works on its own, without music, as a piece of verse. Well, kind of.
Why not buy an extra turkey
When you’re planning dinner?
Lob it through your neighbours’ window
So they get no thinner.
Be a lovely person -
Help old ladies cross the street,
Tip your local dustmen,
Give young children lots of sweets.
Why not be incredibly pleasant
To everybody?
Why not welcome carol singers
When they serenade you,
Even though their tuneless wailing’s
Totally dismayed you?
Be a lovely person -
Clear your path of snow and ice,
Smile at sales assistants,
Buy their trash at any price.
Why not be incredibly pleasant
To everybody?
Why not greet your long lost cousins
With a glad expression?
Don’t admit their conversation
Leaves you with depression!
Be a lovely person -
Say their ugly child is cute,
Let them smash your teacups,
Join in Trivial Pursuit.
Why not be incredibly pleasant
To everybody?
Why not be a Secret Santa
At the office party?
Give a box of Belgian chocolates,
Get a tube of Smarties.
Be a lovely person -
Send a card to Uncle Fred,
Swear this year you’ll visit,
Quite forgetting that he’s dead.
Why not be obsessively pleasant
To everybody?
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