AS a small boy Christmas was an important chance for me to reflect upon and appreciate the Christian values of sharing with and caring for others. From a very early age I had perfected this meditation, so it occupied no more than .0000000001 per cent of my time, leaving the rest free for me to stroke, rattle, smell and talk to unwrapped presents. As an only child I was utterly spoiled. At least that's what my relatives tried to tell me.
Aunty Sally: Sure look at all these presents, isn't it spoiled you are entirely?
Me: Yes, yes. Spoiled, blah, blah. Very good, other children would be happy with a rusty fork and a piece of string, blah blah. You may make your deposit now.
A.S.: Don't I get a kiss?
Me: Do you have any blank cheques, stocks or bonds lodged in your eye-teeth?
A.S.: No.
Me: And so Cupid finds the quiver empty. Send in Uncle Joe on your way out! Next!
But I was not entirely selfish. The scrawly drawings offered to my parents as gifts took up many seconds of business time.
Ma: So this is baby Jesus and all the angels and donkeys and things ... and these in the front, these are hills, right?
Me: No, these are mounds of cripplingly expensive presents.
Ma: Gold, incense, myrrh.
Me: The bible is an allegorical text. Research shows that Jesus, whose birth we are celebrating in a few short hours the shops close, received the following: Scaletrix, cash donations and chocolate. In buckets.
They were happy times, before my parents matured. Later, in adolescence, the main concern for me and my kind was deciding which hour of St Stephen's morning would be most opportune to disappear to the pubs. Food was irrelevant at this age. I was in the middle of my vegetarian phase, which did not entirely succeed due to my giving up meat on moral grounds while hating vegetables on an almost personal level.
I still loathe broccoli. People pick up broccoli and say "this one is fresh". But how do you know? All of it looks as if it's been around and done bad things. It is, after all, the only vegetable that would not look out of place in a nightclub, chain-smoking and writing IOUs at a blackjack table.
Bad Sam: You better be good for this, Lenny.
Lenny the Broccoli: Good, schmud. Button it and deal, if I want a lecture in morality I'll go talk to a lettuce. You give me a pain in my heads.
That year I sat sullenly over a plate of beans. I was sullen all that year. The beans depressed me because my acne was very bad. It was like eating my own reflection.
More recently my mother, who is a brilliant cook, decided quite brilliantly to abandon the dinner half-way through the preparations. Traditionally in our house the ceremony of this feast takes place quite late, three in the morning, say, the afternoon and evening being given over to wine-sampling.
On this occasion we had all been extremely rigorous in our sampling and the business of dinner was somewhat sidelined by our obsessive sommeliering. At a wee small hour I therefore assumed the role of chef turkey-meister.
First I had to stuff the bird. My parents thought this hysterical. I didn't. I don't know if you have ever held an uncooked turkey to your bosom with your hand way up its personal self, but if you have you'll agree that it's one of those times when you don't want your mother to take photographs.
Me: What the hell are you doing? Think I want evidence lying around?
Ma: (Click) We never see you. (Click).
Me: Stoppit! You'll get us all arrested.
Ma: It (click)... It looks (click) good. Very rugged.
Me: Yeah? You're gonna look pretty rugged in a minute. I'm gonna murder you with whatever I find in here. What am I gonna find in here anyway?
Ma: Giblets.
Me: Get me out of this bird right now, and call the social services. You're going down, sister.
I did find them eventually and they are not nearly as attractive as they sound. Giblet finding does not score well on life's scale of emotional highs. The Mafia probably uses them when there are no horse heads available.
THE other thing about this point on the calendar is that past and present become riven, your mind lolls at avenues of memory, you have a lot of conversations with people whose names you have forgotten.
Them: Hi!
You: Oh hi! How's everything in the, uh....
Them: Great! And you...
You: Couldn't be better.
Them: Good, it's certainly been good to see you again.
You: Oh God, yeah ... Well, Ha!
Them: Ha! Ha!
You: See you soon! Keep in touch!
Them: Youtooseeyabye!
But it can be instructive to meet old associates to get a perspective on what you've done with your life.
Maura: So that's how I ended up getting my whole face pierced, and the other thing about the religion was that you had to carry a piece of tree with you all the time, and we had to omit the letter "p" from everything we said. I was only in it for about eight years ... now I'm teaching mime to a group of convicted serial killers. And I do a little animal therapy on the side just for money.
You: I always knew you'd do well, you were very good on the recorder.
Here in London the festive spirit is all around, Oxford Street is all full of smiling faces, people all heading towards you, quite happy to trample you to the consistency of spit if you get in their way. Dublin's no better of course. V. and I spent all last week being pin-balled up and down Grafton Street. There's nothing like consumerism to make you feel like a doomed piece of cosmic crud.
Neither of us is talented. shoppers, the idea was to pick up a few books and shirts for siblings and parents. We returned to the room for a snooze. When we awoke we found we had acquired the following: one shortwave radio in the shape of a leopard in mid-leap, a pair of solar-powered whistling sunglasses, a holster for false teeth, hedge-trimmers engraved with Polish drinking songs, a triple album set of "typical noises emanating from Cavan", totem cleaning equipment, crotchless shoes and an angle-grinder.
Sure it's stressful, but I still like this crazy, necessary celebration. It's high emotion, it's family, it's people you haven't seen in ages, it's all those things you meant to say but never did. But crucially, for me, its my girlfriend and I going away by ourselves to leave you to get on with it. Merry Christmas and best of luck with the ..... ah.
