“We no longer sing and dance. We don't know how to. Instead, we watch other people sing and dance on the television screen. Christmas, which was once a festival of active enjoyment, has turned into a binge of purely passive pleasures.”

British writer and editor

Tom Hodgkinson is a British writer and editor, best known as the founder and editor of The Idler magazine. He established it in 1993 with his friend Gavin Pretor-Pinney. His writing and editing promote a relaxed way of living, with an emphasis on enjoying life as it comes rather than laboring for a better future that may never arrive. The magazine’s name comes from the essays Samuel Johnson wrote between 1758 and 1760 under the title The Idler.