By the time Christmas Day dawned, the kettle was already boiling in Darren’s kitchen — not for guests, mind you, but because he enjoys the ritual of angrily making tea while muttering about immigrants he has never met and regulations he doesn’t understand.
Darren, a self-described “straight-talking patriot” and Reform UK voter, spent Christmas alone this year after friends, family and one increasingly traumatised Labrador decided they had better places to be. This, according to everyone who knows him, is not a tragic accident of circumstance but the inevitable consequence of being, to use the medical term, a massive knobhead.
Formerly invited to Christmas dinners, Darren is now politely “busy”ed out of social life altogether. His sister says the final straw came last year when he attempted to turn grace into a rant about “woke Brussels bureaucrats” while carving a turkey he had already described as “basically halal now”.
“He just won’t shut up,” she said. “You can’t ask him to pass the potatoes without him explaining how the potatoes would be bigger if it wasn’t for migrants and the BBC.”
Central to Darren’s festive alienation is his passionate belief that hunting animals for sport is not only morally defensible but the cornerstone of British civilisation. While most people associate Christmas with goodwill, Darren associates it with the injustice of not being allowed to watch foxes torn apart by dogs.
“Hunting is tradition,” he announced on Facebook at 7:14am on Christmas morning, sharing a meme featuring Winston Churchill, a fox, and a quote Churchill never said. “If foxes didn’t want to be hunted, they wouldn’t exist.”
When previously challenged that setting packs of dogs on terrified animals might not be the most festive outlook, Darren accused his uncle of being part of “the metropolitan elite”, despite the fact his uncle lives above a vape shop in Swindon.
Like many Reform UK supporters, Darren prides himself on “doing his own research”, which mainly involves scrolling through social media accounts with eagles in their profile pictures. His Christmas news diet consisted entirely of claims that the King has been replaced by a lizard, the NHS is run by Marxists, and snow no longer exists because of net zero.
At one point, alone at his table, Darren toasted himself with supermarket lager and declared aloud that Christmas was “basically cancelled anyway” because he had seen a video saying it was now illegal to say “Merry Christmas”. He did not notice that he was, in fact, saying it repeatedly.
His phone remained silent all day, apart from notifications confirming that yet another post about “globalist propaganda” had been liked by a man called “TruthSocial_1776” from Washington, DC.
Despite claiming to despise “the establishment”, Darren remains deeply devoted to multimillionaires who assure him, from private jets, that they are just like him. He speaks with genuine awe about wealthy donors, hedge funders and media barons, insisting they are “outsiders” bravely standing up for the little man.
Asked once why he trusts men worth hundreds of millions to fight elitism, Darren replied: “Because they earned it. Unlike everyone else.”
This devotion extends to Christmas shopping, where Darren refused to buy presents from “woke companies” and instead treated himself to merchandise sold by influencers who definitely, absolutely, are not cashing in on grievance for profit.
As evening fell, Darren sat in front of the television, furious that Christmas programming featured too many women, too many ethnic minorities, and not enough bloodsports. He posted one final message declaring that he was “better off alone anyway” and that Christmas was “overrated”, before sharing a photo of a roast dinner for one captioned: “Just me and my values.”
Experts say Darren’s Christmas experience is likely to repeat next year unless he develops empathy, critical thinking skills, or the ability to go five minutes without defending fox hunting. Sadly, none of these are currently part of the Reform UK policy platform.
As for Darren, he remains defiant.
“Everyone else is the problem,” he said, raising his glass to an empty room. “And I’d rather be right than liked.”
And with that, a British ‘patriot’ tucked into his turkey, scrolled his phone, and wondered, without a hint of irony, why nobody with an IQ in double figures or above ever invites him anywhere anymore.
