A very festive festival to you all

Hey, it's End of the Financial Year, everyone! (Or at least it was a few days ago, which is as close to timely as you're likely to get on this blog.) End of Financial Year is basically one of the most important dates in the year, a time of joy and happiness and love and Powerpoint presentations. It's like Christmas, except with less present-giving and being with families, and more taxes and tax penalties for people who don't pay up.

Everyone celebrates the End of the Financial Year in their own special way, of course, but all over the country, the grand event will be marked with parties, celebratory dinners (without food, of course), and boardroom meetings in which everyone looks at a pie chart for an hour and makes incomprehensible noises at one another. You may or may not be familiar with this old End of Financial Year carol:

(To the tune of Good King Wenceslas)
Dividends, E-O-F-Y,
Targets, growth, EBITDA!
Fiscal outlook for next year
Looking good, blah-blah-blah!
Charts equations Powerpoint,
Bar graphs excel spreadsheets
Something something something something
Something something so-oooooo-ooooome-thing!

At Christmas there's generally an attitude that everyone has to at least try for a little time to be good to one another - 'peace on earth, good will to men', and all that stuff - but we can't be expected to live up to those standards the rest of the time, I mean, come on. At the End of Financial Year, however, the motto is very different: 'peace on earth, good will to me', and the jovial and happy spirit of the season is well expressed in that favourite (and very singable) old carol:

We wish you a productive first quarter
We wish you a productive first quarter
We wish you a productive first quarter
And death to your competitors!

Along with the general feelings of misanthropy and helplessness the season is often associated with a robust sense of paranoia, as we find in the following carol:

You'd better watch out
You'd better not shout
You'd better not cry
I'm telling you why
The taxman is coming to town.
He knows when you've been sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you have paid or not
So PAY UP FOR GOODNESS' SAKE!

The origins of End of Financial Year are shrouded in the mists of time, of course, and no-one knows when or how it started. It has been speculated that primitive accountants in the stone age first celebrated the event every year with the ritual sacrifice of taxpayers to the Sun God. Or something. (The science of accountancy was in a very primitive state back then, you understand). Now, we just sacrifice the taxpayers money to the Sun God, so you can see how much we've advanced.

What a nice and carefree time of year it is!