Cancel Christmas :: Wessex Scene Online

Cancel Christmas

3rd February 2007
Chris Kilmartin

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Jan 07 - All you ever needed to know about Christmas
Dec 07 - Christmas Adverts!
Dec 07 - Christmas Songs and...
Nov 07 - The 60 Days of Christmas
May 07 - Jim’ll fix my wasted talent

As I sat at another Christmas meal eating a bird cooked in a bird cooked in another bird (a creation deemed by my politically depressing grandpa as "very homosexual"), I realised that I came home from the clouded ‘rear’ hole of Britain known as Southampton with desires of obtaining a Christmas spirit.

Yet again it was crushed, I had been broken and felt it was high time I stood up from this feast of gravy and fat and said: "I have no interest in any of your conversations and have suspicions whether any of you do", and scarper. There would be many reasons for this tantrum, not just because the last time I reached the cheese round I had a nightmare that Britain’s population of sheepdogs had been kidnapped and were being smuggled out of the country on the Eurostar, though they looked like they were living it up so maybe they deserve a break, or were in fact responsible for their revolt and just blamed it on the terrorists to get the farmers off their back. Getting back to the point, it’s the same things every year, apart from the cheese problem, that slowly suck the magic away like someone consistently farting in your face without allowing any recovery time or ventilation.

Firstly, every year my dear wee mother Terrence, or Tezza von Lezza, (she’s not a lesbian, but the nickname rolls off the tongue and fits well into songs, so much so it nearly inspired a drunken tattoo in Thailand), showers me with gifts such as XXXXL large jumpers and my favourite: a ‘throw.’ Now what this is for I have no idea; it’s a rug that you can’t touch because it gets dirty and you can’t wash it, but you put it on things to make them look better. Like make-up for couches. Brilliant. One year I opened my last present, that had to be the photo printer I’d been craving for two years, and was faced with a pillow embroidered with a picture of a dog with the profound words "Terriers are people too." I’m sitting on it now. Needless to say, I ruined Christmas that year.

Secondly, the Church stuff. When I turn the TV on to fall asleep to, I want to see either The Mint or News 24, not Claire the candle-lighter in some cathedral gibbering about how trimming the advent candles is like "peeling potatoes." As dull as it is I find myself being extra nice to religious people for some reason, thinking that whichever afterlife may exist, I’ll be able to lean in the door and tell the bouncer "I know that guy! Jim! Jim tell ‘im!"

Lastly, the relatives. They’re never gone, even though they looked so weak the year before. Asking the same questions and taking up the TV. I got to the stage where I just pulled them in the front door and said: "I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO DO, PROBABLY BE UNEMPLOYED AND BUY DRUGS!"and threw alcohol at them ‘til they slept, then hitched the next train back to Southampton with the sheepdogs.