I'm SO pleased i don't live anywhere near Mr Rowlands!
But, being a curmudgeonly Brit, I love the American approach to Christmas. I remember flying into Chicago on Christmas Eve a few years back and looking down to see all the rooftops covered with illuminated reindeer and sleighs, and real snow everywhere, and thinking: "That's the problem with the English commercialising Christmas - they just don't do it properly."
On the ground the magic continued; everyone was just so damned nice to everyone else and even the drunks were pleasant.
It was all so infectious that it was impossible not to love it. And what do we get in the UK? The same sodding Slade song blaring out of every shop, a thousand tearful Tracys packing the tube home every night for two weeks with smudged mascara and tinsel trailing everywhere after having too much to drink at tacky office parties, pavement pizzas everywhere to remind you of those parties come the dawn and then, to crown it all, the bloody Queen's Speech on Christmas Day.
Bollocks to that - give me an American Christmas any day! Failing that, give me a bottle of sloe gin and I'll make my own pizza...