Sad Santa...
I’m always woefully unprepared for Christmas.
Mentally, physically, emotionally… I always realize that, once again, I didn’t do what I promised myself: prepare gifts and organise things way in advance to save myself the agony of last-minute scrambles.
But here I go again… courting a headache and psychotic breakdowns in the cattle drive that is a mall in the days before Christmas. It’s a wonder that I haven’t lashed out at one of the frantic and grim and single-minded people that keep on bumping into me. We pinball off each other into stores and doorways and fast-food outlets and gift-wrapping islands in the middle of the main square.
My eyes can’t focus anywhere; they keep skittering off teddy bears and bestseller books and fashionable sneakers and Paris Hilton’s new perfume and Kagiso on the Nando’s poster. And then I catch sight of a face in a store window and do a double take: the ashen-faced girl who looks on the verge of tears really is me. But I shamble on, ‘cos I haven’t found the proper Christmas-themed serviettes yet… Like a Christmas zombie. (‘Cos I have to get a zombie reference in here somewhere, you know…)
The purple bird of happiness... Well, it made Peroni happy, that's for sure...
Add to that the audio… A low drone of screaming kids and annoyed adults and tinny music and beeping cellphones. I usually get home exhausted and upset, to find that I spent loads of money on nothing much and I still don’t have what I wanted or went for in the first place.
There’s not much magic left in the holiday season. But I suppose that, despite all the stress and drama and commercial mania and despite our cynical selves, we did get a few things right this year…
• Jamie Oliver’s roast potatoes. They actually came out pretty damn awesome. All crispy and golden-brown and peppery and… I’m going to make some more right now.
• My two-year-old niece Mea’s face while opening Christmas pressies. She “wowed” at every single thing, even the empty bags and leftover wrapping paper. And she kept on sneaking peeks into packages, she just couldn’t wait…
• Her Royal Highness Queen Peroni’s delight at the purple baubles decorating our lopsided Christmas tree. “Ooh, new toys! All for me? Well thank you very much!” We had to save those fragile little balls on numerous occassions… But if you’ve never seen a cat in a Christmas tree, you haven’t lived.
• A Christmas card arriving in the post from a different continent and much-missed friends. Pasted closed with a Halloween skeleton. Because that’s how they roll…
• Trying to bake ginger cookies, getting them burnt, but ending up with the most awesome psychedelic icing sugar ever. And calling the unsalvageable biscuits Julius Malemas. We decorated them too. But they didn’t get eaten.
Never trust a Christmas penguin.
• The smell of tinsel, and the immediate wash of memories, making you forget for a little while that you’re actually a grown up and over all this mumbo jumbo joy nonsense.
• Listening to rockabilly Christmas songs that are just so much better than anything Mariah Carey can come up with.
• Spending the whole weekend with family and close friends. And not getting upset or murdering anyone. Instead, just being really happy to have them all alive and well and there… Soppy, yes. I don’t care.
And, of course, Christmas leftovers. Picking over them, groaning at the sight of them, eating them all in the early hours of the morning…
I’ve promised myself that, next year, there will be no last-minute scrambles and no problems and no tears and no trips to malls. And there will be magic. Loads and loads of Christmas magic…
