Dec 25 - The Magic of Christmas
By Stefano Blanca Sciacaluga
Some months ago I wrote another article on Christmas. Some months ago. The countdown to Christmas has been the longest ever this year; I was still taking photos of washed up sea creatures and I was already buying Christmas gifts online. And it’s not only because the run up is too long that the magic of Christmas loses steam. Yes, I’m complaining about Christmas (see this Grinch-thing on the left*). My experience with Christmas has – looking back – not been that bad but come to think of it, it was barely a wiz-waz-woo experience**.
I bet you’re all thinking: The best time is when you are a child. It is a pretty sweet time to be alive, a human and a child. You get to see family members you might not see much, eat all sorts of goodies, not go to school for a bunch of time and if you’re lucky to be of the ‘multi-cultural’ kind you’ll get presents from the fat man and the three fellas. But I bet you forgot about all the hours spent rehearsing plays or songs for a ten-minute show that no parent is interested in (especially now when they’re not looking at their kids but at their iPad screens filming their kids in a video they will never see again). Or all the people asking you what you want for Christmas for weeks or months. You get it.
But it’s probably the best time to be alive if you’re after the “magic” of Christmas. Because as you get a little older, in your teens, when you start getting treated like an adult and get bought a pair of slippers and pyjamas your magic starts to wear off. But you’re still thirteen and if you’re anything like I was you probably have nothing to do but feel really bummed out that all your older cousins are off having fun and you’re watching Time Team and How It’s Made until really late at night because after all, you’re an adult and that’s what adults do: stay up late.
It’s only a couple of years later that things start to change. You start to have places to go to (on a curfew, but you’re getting somewhere). You finally feel like the adult they’ve made you feel for a bunch of years now. Christmas Eve on Main Street? Yes, please! Plans for New Years Eve? Sure! Everything’s new, everything’s good, you might have even got something cool for Christmas and there’s always that family member that says you’re now old enough for a drink at the dinner table.
By this time and for another maybe four years the magic of Christmas is coming to you in another form. If you know what I mean. Especially when you’re doing the Chris Rea and driving flying home for Christmas; with the promise of an early grant from the government and a nasty spending habit akin to a Cribs rapper, that you’ve picked up in the UK. “This year I’m buying Christmas presents, even if I have to eat ASDA Smart Price 10p noodles for most of January and February” (pipe down, big spender!). You feel like an adult. You’re tipsy on the 24th watching English people karaoke outside the Venture Inn and you’re doing a mad rush to fix up, look sharp for New Year’s Eve. Thinking about it it’s probably the best time really. Because things really go down hill from there, let me explain.
So you’ve finished your degree, you’ve got a job and things start to look a whole lot different. NOW you’re an adult and by late September you’ve chosen the meal you’re going to have at your work Christmas party on the first or second week of December, you start to get grumpier about how little time (or will power) you have for Christmas shopping and you realise you’re penny-pinching before your December pay check because money isn’t free like it is when you’re a student. On top of this you feel like somebody’s turned all the water in the city into wine and the festive spirits have made you feel like you never want to see alcohol again; and it’s only the second week in December. But you’re still determined to do what you’ve been doing for what’s probably four or five years by now and you get out of work at midday on the 24th and take to Main Street, only to find people you know your parents’ age blind drunk; and the only way to remedy this is to have a few (too many) and turn up red-faced to a family dinner. Then you eat and drink like it’s your last meal and three days later, after constantly feeling full, you come back to life (just about) and regain an almost-normal eating pattern; or whatever you can stomach because the drinks on those still-festive days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, even if few, will get to you and make you feel like you’ve been hit by a truck full of turkey, legs of ham and prawns. So it’s no surprise that the idea of leaving your house after midnight and staying up all night on NYE makes me feel like crying.
After all, by the time you’re back at work in January you need another break, you’ve spent all your money and you’ve put on weight that you’re going to be too lazy throughout the rest of the year to get rid of. Hardly magical. Actually, the magic might be in how you manage to make it through alive.
*This is a screengrab from a video where they were asking people on the street if they had done crystal meth. He was the only one, the Grinch.
**Who remembers that children’s birthday party magician?
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