Eleanor Elliott Thomas is immune to the Christmas spirit…until Boxing Day, when Santa gifts the gossip.
I saw something terrifying this October. The craft shop was full of zombie masks and fake blood – but the thing that sent a chill through my very bones was a true harbinger of doom, a malignant spirit, the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. Friends, I think you know where this is going.
I saw an elf…on a shelf.
I froze in my tracks. A sudden wind rustled through the paper craft aisle. “Ho, ho, ho,” whispered the elf.
“No,” I whispered back, “please, god, no.” There was a malevolent gleam in his googly eye.
“Christmas is coming.”
Reader, I fainted. Okay, I didn’t faint, but I did have to breathe deeply and rest my perspiring forehead against a nearby pile of pompoms.
It’s true that I am a naturally cowardly person and have many phobias (bugs, fascism, people who understand negative gearing). But Christmas is the only thing that truly haunts my nightmares. To me, there is nothing in the world quite so menacing as the opening notes of a Michael Bublé holiday album.
When I was young, other kids looked forward to Christmas, but I could never understand the appeal. What was so great about a day spent enduring wet kisses from whiskery great-aunts and faking excitement at unwanted presents? Thanks Grandma, just the woollen longjohns I’ve been hoping for! And I simply can’t wait to wear this Kenny G T-shirt in front of all my friends.
The food was usually good, but any enjoyment of ham and roast potatoes was soured by my knowledge of what was coming: a Christmas pudding made with dried fruit so old it probably pre-dated the automobile.
As for Santa Claus, a senior citizen driving a crew of reindeer across the night sky before sliding down the chimney to offload piles of plastic waste on unsuspecting children troubled me deeply as a child. Don’t even get me started on the army of elves forced to live in Siberian labour camp-style conditions in the icy reaches of the North Pole.
You’d think that growing up might have dulled my Christmas dread, but things only got worse. In my twenties, Christmas was synonymous with drama, and my friends and I required a lengthy group therapy catch-up on Boxing Day to emotionally debrief. For some reason, it was always at Christmas that our boyfriends chose to cheat on us, our parents announced they were getting divorced and our garrulous uncles decided it was time to disclose their history of polyamory. I know people love to rewatch sappy movies at this time of year – The Sound of Music and Love Actually always get a mention – but for me the movie that accurately sums up the Christmas spirit is Knives Out, a film in which every family member appears capable of murder.
Now that I’m middle-aged, the drama has settled down, replaced by a complex negotiation process not dissimilar to what I imagine went down at Versailles in 1919. Whose parents will get the coveted Christmas lunch slot while the in-laws are relegated to Christmas Eve drinks? Which family members are no longer on speaking terms and cannot meet without a lawyer present? Honestly, a shout out to the polyamorous uncles; this holiday business is complicated in a two-person relationship, lord knows how you do it in a polycule.
For years my friends and I simplified things by hosting Christmas ourselves. Unfortunately, this also meant we had to do all the cooking, which once involved catering for three vegetarians, an egg, dairy and peanut allergy, and a FODMAP diet (if you haven’t encountered it, FODMAP involves avoiding any substance traditionally considered a food). By the end of the day I was considering converting to Scientology and/or faking my own death.
To be fair, there was one year when I truly enjoyed Christmas. My partner and I spent the day in bed, eating takeaway and watching the first three Mad Max movies back-to-back-to-back. Heaven! I’ve tried to pitch this to my kids as a cute family tradition we could adopt on an annual basis, but they’re not keen. I suppose it would be difficult to replicate the magic anyhow now Mel Gibson has come out as a full-blown nincompoop.
Instead, I have now decided to accept the inevitable and lean in. I’m investing in candy cane earrings, gorging on gingerbread and installing Christmas lights bright enough to blind a possum. The best cure for a phobia is exposure, and so in the immortal words of 50 Cent, this year I intend to get merry – or die tryin’.
By Eleanor Elliott Thomas @ eleanorelliottthomas.substack.com
Eleanor Elliott Thomas is the author of Do We Deserve This? and The Opposite of Success.
Published in ed#751
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