It's a strange time of year when peace and goodwill are supposed to reign over the world while in many parts of the same world people are kicking seven shades of merry hell out of each other.

In the countries with a Christian tradition, we commemorate the birth of the Son of God by making homage to Mammon, with everyone and his brother grabbing the opportunity to get closer to everyone and her sister (and vice versa and every combination in between) sometimes with thoughts of purity and good intention, oft time with thoughts of, well, let's leave that to your imagination.

The holiday season starts early around here, since we are blessed with two extra public holidays on the 8th and the 13th, to say nothing of the fact that the anniversary of my coming among you falls on the 12th. There's also the annual celebration held by the Great and the Good, celebrating the anachronism embodied by St Ivo.

For the uninitiated, this gent was a lawyer who, according to those who know about these things, went to Heaven and was canonised in due course. For some reason known only to them, the people who decide these things seem to have come to the conclusion that the actual date when Sant'Ivo should be exalted falls some time in May, which is darn inconvenient when the party is supposed to mark the end of court work for the Christmas recess - you can't actually celebrate the start of said recess in May.

Being staunch supporters of the notion of a strongly independent profession dedicated to the rule of law(yers) the Vatican's edict has been, with all due respect (as they say), given the respect it deserves in the context.

But that little detour is not quite the point of this week's piece. For reasons entirely unconnected with anything to do with this column, I've been involved with a couple of charitable organisations over the last couple of weeks and it was brought home to me how these outfits are all competing for the same bucks. There's a limit to the amount of time people can dig into their pockets and this is the time of the year when you might expect that appeals for folk to do this would be more likely to render benefits.

Which is precisely why, with a touch of cynicism that is pretty breath-taking, when you think about it, the political parties get their fund-raising machines into full swing: now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party, and that's not simply a typing exercise, folks.

Now far be it from me to venture the thought that, say, Dar tal-Providenza, Eden Foundation, Razzett tal-Ħbiberija and Dar il-Kaptan, in absolutely no order of priority, are more important in the greater scheme of things than the Partit Nazzjonalista and the Partit Laburista, formerly known as the Malta Labour Party, again in no particular order of importance.

After all, the charities take care of the people who need it while the parties are doing their level best to get themselves into a position to order our lives all the time, whether we like it or not or need it or not.

Obviously, it's more important to give your hard-earned dosh to the political parties.

Of course, to make up for elbowing their way to the front of the queue, the parties then tell us that they're going to call a halt to political activity for the Christmas period, which takes on aspects of cynicism which almost, though not quite, match up to when they try to mug us all right at the start of the Christmas season. Since most people in the real world are pretty much bored rigid with politics (politics the way the parties play it, of course - the way the rest of us do it still remains fun) and since the House rises for the well-earned rest of the Honourable Ones, no one is about to take much notice of the parties anyway, so they make a virtue of necessity and shut the heck up.

So there you have it, 'tis the season to be jolly... jolly well hungover, mostly. Have a good Christmas and a great start to the New Year, why don't you, and try not to listen to the doomsayers who are going around worrying that the sky is falling and the world ending. It probably won't be such a brilliant year but you've always got Saturdays to look forward to, as well as my blog.

Which reminds me, I haven't updated it for almost a week now and if you're still seeing the December 11 one, then it means I've been even less inspired than I thought it was.

Put it down to overindulgence.

imbocca@gmail.com, www.timesofmalta.com/blogs