Mood:
brightNow Playing: Let it snow let it snow let it snow...
Topic: Daily Doings
RIGHTY-HO FOLKS — IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE well and truly. It being Sunday and my having done everything I was able to ahead of time, I had nothing to do today except to sleep… and sleep… and sleep… not waking up from my multiplicitous dreams till it truly was evening.
I have always had mixed feelings about Christmas. I have to admit I did feel slightly tearful for the sake of certain Xmases past…
The Anglo-American Christmas means going totally over the top. (It bears little resemblance to the same festival as celebrated in Continental Europe, seriously!) Tinselly decorations all over the place, Christmas trees popping up everywhere, Santa Claus’s dodgy face (what is he smiling about??), our high streets festooned with Christmas lights… office parties every night… TV and newspapers full of it… increasing drunken celebration every day… one big countdown… last shopping hours on Christmas Eve… then BANG! The entire country starts shutting down — so God help you if you have an emergency not covered by the 999/112 services. Trains stop running not far after eight o’clock (even if they are scheduled). By midnight nearly everyone is in Church… or down the pub. Christmas Morning is peak time for Children, tearing open their presents. Adults do the same in a more restrained manner. Americans have the edge over us Brits when it comes to Xmas dinner as they also cook turkey on Thanksgiving Day — more practice.
There are two basic patterns of Christmas Day I could describe to you…
A: the respectable family have their detested relations round. Not too many people get drunk. Dinner is definitely ready by 2 o’clock. Cuckoo clock-style presents are opened at five pm because the family are so respectable and restrained. They probably go to bed at five thirty, knackered out by the intoxicating kick of three extra-small Sainsbury’s own brand (Advocaat+lemonade) snowballs…
B: the “normal” or “rough” (depending how you view ’em) family awaken at 11am hung over, kids twittering on downstairs. Wife swears, rushes downstairs, retrieves beachball sized turkey, slams it in oven. I can worry about the trimmings later, she tells herself lighting up a Benson and Hedges. Suddenly: — Gaah! People remember precisely which detested relations are expected in an hour’s time. Ten minutes later and a queue at the diarrohoea-stinking bathroom and a car honks merrily outside. The idiots are an hour early. Christmas Day for this family involves ever increasing doses of alcohol as anaesthetic. Drunken games of Trivial Pursuit (or Twister if you’re feeling daring). At three pm the Queen comes on television to make vague platitudes and wish everyone a pleasant Xmas. This marks a pause for renewed drink-pouring and much clinking of glasses (assuming by this time people are conscious enough to pay attention).
Turkey is finally cooked by four or five pm. Most people can’t manage much more food as they’ve been at the Ferrero Rocher/Quality Street/Guylian Chocolate Shells/Terry’s All Gold all afternoon. But everyone gives the dry bird a good stabbing.
Remember to compliment the cook. Six pm and emotions are running high. If outright hostilities have not broken out before, they’re well overdue now. If not, most people pile down the nearest pub (and it has to be the nearest as they’re all far too bladdered to drive — even on Albanian roads.
And night-time passes in a haze…
Come Boxing Day everyone wishes they’d remembered to stock up on more Alka-Seltzer.
The country stays half dead until January 2nd when things spring miraculously back to life and everyone has to work extra-hard to pay their humungous overdrafts off.
And that, My Friends, is the Gledwood’s sketch of Xmas…
Do have a Merry One!!
