Making Christmas Edgy

CC photo credit: snorp

I know it’s totally acceptable to be disparaging about Christmas.  It gives you a kind of intellectual, nonchalant, coolness to be so.

There is good reason to cynical about the festive season, but I’m on a mission to turn that around.  I’d like to help make Christmas the new cool, so it’s ok to like it again – a little bit like it’s cool to knit now.

It’s time to shake it off cynics.  Relax and let the festive spirit take you. As Susie Boyt, from the Financial Times reminded me this weekend, Christmas doesn’t have to be about religion or even consumerism, although it is those things too.  It’s a festive time and, if you try hard enough, you can focus on the great things that it is: people coming together, the wonder and joy of children, beautiful window displays, delicious food, lots of drinking and celebration, celebration, celebration.  Does it matter if you’re a Christian or not?  Hell no.  Celebrate under whatever guise takes you fancy.

It’s worth quoting the fabulous Ms Boyt at length;

“[Christmas is].. about turning life up to its brightest, most vital pitch for a fortnight, where heightened feeling is the norm and all joys and sadnesses are so dazzling they block everything else from view … everything should be celebration or mourning, gratitude and making amends. It’s a time for the opposite of caution and restraint and self-control. One’s personality must be dressed for the season, decked out in crimsons and emeralds, … Sound the horns! December’s the time to be most daring and open. Live!”

Parents, aunts, cousins or grandparents of young children probably don’t need any convincing. Remembering how magical this time was as a child and seeing the little ones go through the same is enough reason to enjoy Christmas. There are many well founded techniques to bring the magic of Christmas to children.   All have been tried over the years with varying degrees of creativity and success.  My father substituted leaving a glass of milk and cookies out for Santa with a long neck of beer and some Biltong.  We questioned neither the South African orientation of Santa´s culinary preferences nor the wisdom of driving an airborne sled between downing a long neck at every one of all the houses in the world.

Later, my parents creatively added to the Christmas Eve tradition with leaving out hay for the reindeer (for my much younger sister’s benefit). Unfortunately this backfired when Santa enjoyed the long neck so much he forgot to get rid of the hay. The joyous moment of wonder on Christmas morning was replaced by tears and some very rapid and devastating realisations. You could see in my little sister’s face the whole reindeer and fat man distributing toys all over the world story falling apart like pieces of dominoes in her head: reindeers that didn’t stop to heat the hay, smash, reindeers that can fly, tumble, tumble, a fat man getting down the very narrow chimney, crash, crash, crash. The hay consumption was only the first of many holes in the story.  And there were an awful lot of them.

A dear friend of mine (a great story teller who it’s apparent has inherited the skill from her Dad) tells me that every Christmas her father brought her and her two siblings to the point of hysteria with his antics in anticipation of Santa’s arrival.  In the weeks leading up to Christmas he would almost every evening stop mid conversation, look over their shoulders to the night sky, and say abruptly, “Oh! Goodness….is that?”.  Their hearts leapt every time and despite the rapidity with which they whipped their heads around to see what it was, they always missed it.   In response to the desperate pleas as to whether he REALLY saw Santa, or reindeers, or ‘what, what, what, what was it that he saw, please, please tell…?’,  he would leave it to their far more powerful imaginations with a mysterious and dismissive, “ Oh no it’s just.. no, it couldn’t have been, no it’s nothing, I just thought, I could have sworn..but no..” while continuing to anxiously glance up at the sky.  By Christmas Eve they were positively apoplectic with anticipation. Ahhh, THE DRAMA.

Are you doing enough to bring the children in your life to the point of sheer hysteria this year?  If not, why not? Hay for the reindeers (just don’t forget to get it eaten), muddy boot prints, little bits of torn red cloth on the chimney grill, strategically placed deer droppings (sultanas should do the trick), hoof prints and sled marks on the lawn…there are so many possibilities.  It’s not often there is such a golden opportunity for such beautiful theatre in one’s life.   Get on to it.  You are very important extras in the imagination of a child’s mind and the lifelong memories that come about as a result. And, on top of that,  get out amongst it, join the party and spread the cheer. Throw a party even. And definitely get a Christmas tree, or even just a branch. What a beautiful thing the smell of pine is in the house.

Merry Christmas readers – should I forget to tell you again before Christmas.  There’s a good chance because I’ll be busy throwing myself in amongst it.

Like

Unlike