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| Getting fired up over Christmas! I feel triggered! |
‘Tis the season to be jolly fucked off I reckon, especially
in my family where we have two birthdays in December as well (followed by two
in fucking Jolly January). I totally
wish that I got as excited as a cherubic, naive, little child as the month of
December inched ever closer with its giant sleigh of financial and time burdens
in tow, but alas – those days are over for this Grinch bitch.
Here’s how Christmas could be great for me. Someone, maybe a fairy godmother type
ethereal being, turns up with a Christmas tree, switches on some Christmas
music, decorates the house with the sights, sounds and smells of Christmas,
wraps presents noisily and excitedly in a nearby room, offers me chocolates and
creates a menu for Christmas Day that they are going to execute with zero help
from me.
They arrange for all my loved ones to come together in one
giant, peaceful, happiness fest, and organise suitable accommodation so that we
can all be together in a happy haze as though we’ve all just downed Christmas ecstasy
pills with our rose champagne. Any mess would just magically disappear in the
twinkling of a Christmas angel’s eye, as though it had never even been
there. The only evidence of Christmas approaching
would be a gently rising excitement flushing over me, building up to the
equivalent of a Christmas orgasm.
Enough with the childish fantasies! This is what really
happens to me at Christmas. I can sense Christmas
Satan coming with his sleigh of evil elves.
The stores get viciously threatening by hanging their intimidating decorations
up, it’s a warning – Satan and his Christmas
Mafia are coming – you better pay up.
Time speeds up so that people look like they’re moving in fast forward
and yet I’m in that dream like state where I’m trying to run but nothing’s
happening. All around the warnings are
whispered insidiously into my mind ‘Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming...’
I can’t focus properly, the Christmas mafia are after me and
I still have two birthdays to take care of, and a work do to organise, and all
these end of year school events to attend. A lot of people start acting like evil elves
and furiously shop, do their gardening, clean their houses and take care of
their whole lives work as though the world is actually going to end on Christmas
Day! Some of the spiteful bastards see
me just getting on with normal life and are determined to make sure I’m aware
that Satan is coming, and they cleverly smile with their teeth and crinkly eyes
as they deliver the blood curdling question “have you done your Christmas
shopping yet?” I play it cool and
sinister and let them know – I’m doing mine at the last minute- that stops them
in their seasonal stride.
Even though I’m lurking in the shadows of Christmas and not
operating in the frenzied, fake, tinsel-fuelled hell that many people are, I’m
still subjected to annoying issues as a result of things like the sudden need
for everyone to drive into town and take all the parks. How the fuck am I supposed to feel Christmassy
when I can’t even get a park at the supermarket!!!
Despite the horrors of Xmas I still eventually have to force
myself to create the sort of atmosphere mentioned above for the sake of my
family’s enjoyment, and lifelong memories of joy that will sustain them
throughout their lives. So at the last
minute I will conjure up a delightful menu of food, heartfelt gifts, Christmas lilies
that make the house smell like Christmas smelled when I was a kid, and I will
kick Christmas’s ass! I will sweat out my dreams in the kitchen and enjoy the
sounds of my family enjoying themselves, and I will clean up even though I feel
like shooting a gun at a line up of Santas.
And the Christmas joy for me is knowing that my Mum did all
that for me and my siblings, and I loved it, that boxing day is the best day of
the Christmas holidays now for me, and that I have three kids who are teenagers
and eventually they will do all this, and I will enjoy a Christmas smorgasbord
of delight at their houses in the near future and then I will be singing Christmas
carols at the top of my awful voice.
Merry Fucking Christmas Everyone!
