Sorry, but you might have to prepare yourself for a dairy-free Christmas

As soon as you’re over the age of about 13, you start to realise that Christmas isn’t all that exciting. You have to sit around for days on end doing nothing, the TV schedule is mostly shit and you have to spend all your time in one room with your family. The only genuinely good thing about Christmas – unless you’re really spoilt and get loads of outrageous and expensive presents – you soon come to understand, is the food. The delicious, disgusting, artery-clogging food. 

Unfortunately you are not allowed good things because the world is a cruel, hard mistress, and it turns out that many of your favourite Christmas foods could be hard to come by this year – and it’s all because of a nationwide shortage of milk. 

Peder Tuborgh, CEO of farming company Arla, told the BBC this morning that we’re hurtling towards a “butter and cream shortage this Christmas. The first sign we will see of it, is that the price of butter rises very sharply.

"At the moment, we are trying to get as much butter and cream out of our producers," he said, kiiind of weirdly and euphemistically. 

Simon Clapp, a dairy farmer for M&S, Waitrose and Aldi, also told the BBC that there is a “shortage of fats across Europe, and we’re part of that.”

“Since Brexit, the pound has weakened, so it's made products here more attractive, so cream is going abroad. We're seeing historic prices even above historic prices we've seen in the past – we've never been in this territory.

“This time last year, we'd spend 80p for cream to go into butter - now it's up to £2.50, £2.60."

Don’t worry too much, though – the National Farmers Union say that despite the dairy price-hike we’re recently seen, Tuborgh’s comments are simply “scaremongering” and that it only “served to concern consumers”, so hopefully you can still smother your boredom and self-hatred with as much brandy butter as you can fit in your mouth this Christmas! Great news!