Ten Times When It's Okay to Say "Merry Christmas"

1. On December 25th.

2. As you're leaving a Christmas Eve party.

3. The week before Christmas, as you part company with someone you probably won't see in the next week.

4. Weeks before Christmas, as you spot someone putting up Christmas decorations.

5. In November, to a senile person whose delusion you don't feel like challenging.

6. On Halloween, if your costume is Santa Claus in a hilarious joke that only you'll find funny - but that makes it funnier to you.

7. In the sweltering mid-weeks of August, when pursued by a shadow that is not your own, which can only be banished back to its infernal prison by a touched individual uttering the two-word invocation that saints once emblazoned upon its soul.

8. As an in-joke among friends. Irony is "in" with some people.

9. As your safe word, when feeling uncomfortable during BDSM.

10. On December 26th, when you're so hung over that your loved ones pity your lack of chronal awareness, and it's frankly a miracle you can say words at all.