Christmas (The Bah Humbug Express)

09 December 2005   12:19 AM

Well, after taking time out to tell the delightful pixeldiva that she was entirely wrong to hate Christmas, I have to eat a small slice of humble pie. Not a large piece, no, I still love Christmas, but I've had one of those days and I'm feeling all worn down and grumpy about the whole thing.

Unusually enough for a bad day, there was no great stresses at work - sure it doesn't beat relaxing by the pool with a cocktail, but I can't find many vacancies for that kind of work. I got home, had my tea, put Bryn to bed and everything was going perfectly smoothly.

So what went wrong?

Christmas, that's what. Or rather it being the time when I thought I'd finally better get round to writing my reams of Christmas cards. Well, when I say reams I'm meaning twenty to thirty. Although to be fair this doesn't include colleagues - there's a donate money to charity thing to buy a goat instead. Where we're going to keep the goat once we've bought it, I've got no idea.

And I'm one of those people who can't just put "Merry Christmas love from Jack" on a Christmas card. No, that seems too impersonal. I've got to write out something slightly different for everyone. Okay, it's not necessarily witty, it's not necessarily inventive, but at least you know I've taken some time over it.

And then comes the great "Hunt-The-Address-Book" game. Which basically involves trying to work out when we were last likely to have used it, what that will have been for, and then emptying out all the cupboards onto the floor until it turns up.

Of course, now me and my friends are more and more settled down, there's the whole issue of children. Say I'm sending a card to my friends Mary* and Billy. They've got a child or children. I remember that child was called something like "Arthur James". Or is it "James Arthur". You see the dilemma? You can't go round telling your friends you can't remember the order their children's names go round.. not if you want to keep your friends anyway. So that requires a fair bit more head scratching before we can progress.

* All names were changed to protect the innocent

Fortunately I've already done the Christmas shopping and wrapping otherwise that would have been a whole new rant on its own. As it is it's only a little one. Christmas is the time of goodwill and stuff, yeah? So how come when you're in the shops everyone without fail is bad tempered and irritable. Christmas spirit my arse. If you can't be bothered to show a little kindness, compassion, thoughtfulness and demonstrate a little patience at Christmas, then what's the point? Why bother with the festival at all? I'm not saying you have to do the whole "baby Jesus" thing because there are plenty of non-Christians celebrating Christmas as a festival of being nice to people. That's the minimum I expect if you take part in the Christmas thing. So you can all buck your ideas up, 'kay?

Oh, and one more thing. Did any of you realise that if you hoover your Christmas tree lights up and get them wound round and round the mechanism that it stops them from working? You did? Yeah, to be honest we could have guessed too. It's not the sort of thing you do deliberately is it?

Oh, and to cap it all off, I was warming a bottle of milk in the microwave for the little 'un, obviously set it for too long, and it exploded. The teat was nicely melted, the door of the microwave was popped open and every surface in the kitchen - and I mean every surface: from the ceiling to the insides of pans, sides of cupboards, top of the cooker, clean dishes and so on - was covered with small warm droplets of milk. And then, right, then, it's bin day tomorrow so I've got to go and put the bin out at quarter past midnight and it's really rather cold out there.

Bah. No doubt I'll forget to post the cards next.