I'm Dreaming of a Wet Christmas (and other irritations)

Following is a piece of writing I did for my creative writing module at university last December. It was intended to be a lighthearted column centred around my feelings on the winter season but as usual I went off on a tangent!



I hate the festive season. It’s that time of year when eccentrics and lunatics come out in force. Now I’m not suggesting that if you like Christmas that you are automatically one of these people; I am merely pointing out that this particular time of year is seventh heaven for people with a ‘certain’ disposition. Take charitable organisations for example. The Yuletide celebrations give them the perfect excuse to bombard the rest of us with advertisements (or propaganda, as I prefer to call it) trying to persuade us to part with our hard earned cash in favour of some poor starving/neglected people/dogs/children (delete as appropriate.) Apologies for the cynicism, but if they spent half the cash that is normally spent on advertising on helping these poor creatures, the probability is that they would collectively write off the entire debt of war-torn Eritrea whilst providing drinking water and portaloos to sub-Saharan Africa.

That was merely an example though. Hate is such a strong word and I would never wish harm to any poor creature in the world. Except maybe the grinning goons that you often see gracing the front of your local ‘free’ newspaper with their houses garishly decorated in 50,000 watts of festive lights and ‘Santa Please Stop Here’ signs. These specimens are probably the very same people that drive ‘green’ cars the rest of the year and vilify anyone who doesn’t recycle every last piece of waste that leaves their homes. I call them the Bandwagon Parade. I shudder to think of the appalling hypocrisy. I was once asked by one of these insufferable gits if I recycled. I said, “I throw shit away if that’s what you mean.”

Of course though, I do recycle. As does everyone else who lives within a council borough. We are fined if we dare to even drop a cigarette butt on the streets of Leeds. They fine you for dropping orange peel in the park even though anyone with half a brain could tell you that orange peel and most other foodstuffs are biodegradable so therefore dropping it on the grass is recycling it. If only the council would employ people who can grasp this simple logic, life would be so much easier.

I grew used to recycling as a child as I was brought up in a very poor household where it was the norm to recycle as we couldn’t afford to buy more of life’s little luxuries. I was 23 before I realised that it isn’t normal to recycle teabags to my colleagues amusement. I can’t seem to go anywhere nowadays without making a fool of myself. It’s almost compulsory now to leave the house wearing at least one item of clothing inside out and smelling of toilet duck after blindly selecting the wrong bottle whilst showering.

I think it was my experiences of Christmas celebrations as a child that has made me so cynical. In school I was always the one chosen to play the Arch angel Gabriel due to my natural blonde hair and angelic face. (Damn my parents and their favourable genes!) Naturally, I hated this role and conspired to sabotage the play by any means possible, usually in the form of itching powder sprinkled generously in Mary and Josephs’ costumes. (When interrogated on the possible causes I used to surreptitiously implicate that the donkey had fleas). Of course nobody suspected little old me of any wrongdoing and I was free to cause chaos and mayhem at every available opportunity. Which I did, with vigour and relish!

My favourite memory of Christmas was when I discovered that the elusive Santa character was in fact my dad in a fat suit. I remember being told off at school for telling the other kids that I had seen Santa stumbling down the hallway, pissed out of his head shouting “Come here Rudolph you red nosed bastard!” It was a secret victory for me because I always knew that if Santa did exist he would probably be a piss artist.

And the festive season looms ever closer. We can probably look forward to rain, rain and more rain followed by a sharp freeze which will turn every part of terra firma into a veritable death trap and will guarantee me a permanently bruised rear as I go on my daily trip arse over tit every time I step outdoors. Oh joy. Bring on the summer!!