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I
wrote this last year — for a project called World Year which
fizzled out, unfortunately, in less than a year. I liked it, and,
well, it's Christmas Eve so why write when you don't have to,
and you probably never read it anyway!
Enjoy
your Christmas, thanks for reading …
You
know Christmas is here because you walk down the crowded lunchtime
streets, sweating in the midday sun, and you notice the goddamn
busker kids have come out with their violins and flutes and one
time even the bagpipes, and they're sawing and blowing Christmas
carols about an experience you've never had where there's snow
and cold and darkness at Christmas, and they've got little hats
open on the ground and a sign saying they need money to attend
the Royal School of Music somewhere, and you just walk on by,
head bowed so you don't make eye contact and feel guilty about
not giving any money, dodging everyone else with their heads bowed,
and finally, finally, you've moved far enough down the street
so you don’t have to listen to that damned carol any more.
You
know Christmas is here because people have this weird mix, where
one part of them is already on holiday, lying in the sun with
a cold beer as the barbecue turns to embers, glowing hot for the
steak and sausage and lamb chops, and they have no care beyond
the next hour, and yet there's another part of them that is in
hyper-drive, finishing the projects and the reports that they've
kept putting off because the end of the year is always so far
away, and having coffee and drinks with all the people they won’t
see till next year, and wishing, oh more than wishing, that next
week was already here because they wouldn't be at work then, and
wouldn't be there for another two weeks, and who knows, by then
all the stuff they haven't done might have melted away, mysteriously
like the early mist in spring.
You
know Christmas is here because you've checked your bank account,
and worked out how much is on your credit account, which is way
more than you ever thought possible, but banks never lie about
things like that, and you know you won't get paid again till the
middle of January because everything has shut down for the holidays,
but you've still got Christmas presents to buy for more kids than
you know you're related to, not to mention the bills that are
all due on like 24 December, and it just doesn't add up in a way
that leaves any money in your bank account.
You
know Christmas is here because there is nothing on television
except tired old repeats of shows you never watched in the first
place, or Christmas specials by camp second-rate English entertainers,
or syrupy Christmas specials from saccharine American television
shows that passed their use-by date, oh, about seven years ago,
and the newspapers are really thin, because there's no news to
report on, so they fill up the pages with reviews of the last
year/decade/century/millennium which are kind of funny sometimes
to read, or, like in tonight's paper, they have a piece on human
blunders from 1999, ranging from the Christchurch, New Zealand
man who stapled his penis to a wooden cross, doused it in lighter
fluid and set it alight to win $500 in a bar contest, to the Finnish
teenage girls who discovered that a cool way to get drunk without
their parents noticing was to soak tampons in vodka and then insert
them.
You
know Christmas is here because the young kids are wide-eyed with
delight as they see their Christmas tree for the first time, and
they make little paper decorations with tinsel pasted on and hang
them off the branches, next to the flickering fairy lights, that,
when it finally gets dark at night after 9pm, look amazing and
wondrous, and the air is filled with the scent of pine, and every
night leading up to Christmas the kids check under the tree to
see if any more presents for them have arrived, and they shake
and rattle them, trying to guess what they've got, but they never
do, so they're surprised and disappointed in equal parts when
Christmas morning comes after the eternal wait through Christmas
Eve and they can finally open their presents and rip and strew
the wrapping paper around the house, even though their mother
wants them to fold it nicely and reuse it next year.
If
you celebrate Christmas, have a great day, enjoy your family and
know it comes but once a year!
If
you don't celebrate it, well, have a great day anyway on the 25th
December.
I'll
be at an extended family get-together, the likes of which I haven't
experienced in over 15 years. I'll enjoy myself.
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