Good day, world. It has been a while.
Violence is on the increase; road deaths have spiked; everybody’s broke, bad-tempered and feeling fat; shopping malls have turned from merely unpleasant sweat-pits into mimicking the deepest bowels of child-infested hell; ABSA has woken me at 7am two days in a row to tell me my credit card payment is due; and my mother has locked herself in a dark room for three weeks straight, muttering. Yes, the unmistakable signs are there: it’s Christmas.
I’m going to say it: I hate the festive season. At all other times of year I am jolly, even pleasant. I spread love and good cheer and enjoy giving small people presents. I bring colleagues cookies and donate to charity. I pose for pictures with Ivory Soap. I pet stray dogs and shy clear of dope.
At Christmas, I’m 75 litres of pure, undiluted bile.
Of course, there are some happy memories of the Christmases of my youth: like my cousins’ incredible chocolate sauce, and the time I got lost on the way to Rustenberg and ended up instead on a pecan nut farm in Louis Trichardt with three people I adore*. Or the times my sister and I would escape the countrywide massacre and glug champagne straight from the bottle while making up rude lyrics to The Sound of Music on late-night TV. Or the times I’ve switched my phone off and pretended to leave the country.
But for the most part, the whole business is an effing nightmare. I feel no shame at all for grabbing my Grinch cape and marching proudly forwards with a steak knife in one hand and a vomit bag in the other. I don’t like being told what to think and feel, so don’t tell me when I’m supposed to be in the mood for a party. Especially not when the DJ is playing Boney M.
There are other reasons I resent Christmas. Number one, if you are not a Christian, you shouldn’t be celebrating Christmas at all. Fail. If you are a Christian, you should realise that Easter is a far more important festival. Fail.
Number two, nobody actually likes spending their only two work-free weeks stressing about what their relatives are going to think of the turkey and whether the vegetarians will be okay with the mini-bruschettas. You should be putting your feet up. (Plus we live in Africa, so whose silly idea was it to eat hot turkey anyway?) If anyone is going to judge you because your house is not clean enough or your food isn’t good enough, they shouldn’t be invited to your party.
Number three, nobody actually likes spending their only two weeks of relaxation being force-fed so much food that they can’t move. I have never heard anyone say, “Gosh I’m excited for two weeks of bloating and continuous hangover.” I’ve only ever heard people wailing and gnashing their teeth as they stumble onto the treadmill on 2 January, unable to zip up their gym shorts. Just bypass the whole business and cook vegetables. Everyone over the age of 5 is going to thank you later.
Number four: presents. This should be the highlight. Unfortunately, because everything anyone actually wants costs six times more than it should during the festive season, and everything else is a floral notepad or a gilt-dipped photo frame, you have about as much chance of a satisfying gift exchange as Julius Malema has of a one-night stand with Debora Patta. In my family, gift exchanges are particularly difficult, as there are over a hundred of us, which means that if you want to buy something for everyone and eat anything other than All-Bran for the rest of the month, you have to buy everyone Bar Ones. Not that I have anything against a Bar One every now and then, but you see where I’m going with this.
Number five, Christmas is supposed to be about spending time with the people you love. But the people you love are also trying to cram in everybody else they love on the same day, and those people are trying to cram in the people they love, ad infinitum - resulting in a logistical nightmare, at best. Plus, if people really do love you, they probably a) see you fairly regularly anyway and b) understand that you might not be able to see them on Christmas, and don't hold it against you. This results in one usually making apologetic plans to squash in your nearest and dearest on some other date when you can, instead spending Christmas itself with the usually bloodthirsty mix of people nobody else wanted to invite over/ people you haven't seen since Christmas last year/ people you can't really avoid because they will yell at you.
Personally, I think the answer to this whole Christmas dilemma is to pursue a life of crime. The way I see it, the only people scoring during the whole season are burglars and drug dealers. Otherwise vigilant people are drunk, disorderly, and away from home. Tempers run wild. Substance abuse is at an all-time high. The urge for violence is strong.
It’s so simple. Need a bonus? Streets of empty houses - twice the revenue for half the work. Time out? Try a little perlemoen smuggling at the seaside. Annoying relatives? Slip a little black-market Valium in their tea. Presents? No problem. Just grab a little whisky and a hi-fi from some middle-class moron’s cupboard. Done. And that’s a reason to be jolly.
* Incidentally, this otherwise pleasant detour alarmed my relatives so much that it resulted in the entire Rustenberg police force being set on our trail: posters, radio ads and all. But that's a story for another blog post.
