The Annual Christmas Whinge; Also: Reflections on Various Incarnations of Joy

Christmas is a terrible, horrifying time. Every year, I allow myself to feel hope as December progresses - hot, spicy drinks, mince pies, pretty snow-dusted coniferous trees, wonderful drunken friends, and lavish, velvety decorations (preferably in a stunning crimson or imperial purple) lure me into a false sense of security and contentment. Every year, however, this lovely mirage dissipates on Christmas Eve (sometimes, if it's particularly bad, earlier on in the week).

Last year, Christmas Eve consisted of sobbing with exhaustion and defeat in Heathrow Airport as a young child vomited profusely (and really unexpectedly) on the floor next to me while a customs agent clawed through my underwear and confiscated a gift of cognac butter for my father, BEFORE sitting at a standstill in a British Airways cabin for three unexplained hours.

This Christmas, charmingly, is proving to be an inventive variation on a time-honoured theme (Kudos to the Cosmos! Really - I'm impressed). Something struck me today, though. In exchange for a nun paying for one of my recent transcript requests at Marianopolis College (I didn't have any cash, okay?), I had promised Sister Cleevely to donate some money to a charity this holiday season. The thing is, I HADN'T DONE IT (yet). Was this potentially the source of my bad luck? Clearly, I was godless and ungrateful. I was pumped full of blackened, bilious sin! I HAD NOT HONOURED A PROMISE TO A NUN. The only thing I could think of at that precise moment were those people dressed in red, standing outside Ogilvy's on Sainte-Catherine Street and jingling bells in what, I suppose, is meant to be a cheerful, encouraging manner. Yes, the Salvation Army people. They would get my money, on Christmas Eve, and all would be well.

Saying goodbye to Jess in NDG, I tore through Westmount and downtown. I double-parked on de la Montagne Street, to the consternation of all, and dashed to the front of Ogilvy's to shake out my wallet and absolve myself in the blink of an eye. Then, something terrible became apparent: the Salvation Army jinglers WERE NOT THERE. They had GONE. It was Christmas Eve and they had abandoned their posts. Standing desolately on the sidewalk, hoping I wouldn't actually see anybody I knew, I flashed on the realization that I had completely, and pretty much voluntarily, stumbled into the realm of the truly and utterly insane. How in God's name was this supposed to work? My life isn't built like a movie (a disappointing thing in itself, because it would be fun to be accompanied by a soundtrack). Dejected and worried, I collected the car and sheepishly made my way home.

So, as this holiday moves forward, I feel compelled to welcome each fresh mind-bending horror, whether external or internal, with a particularly sarcastic and slicing comment on joy. The only thing is, I can't even remember what this mean little quip is supposed to be. Is it 'Oh, unbridled joy?'; 'Oh, boundless joy?'; 'Oh, unending joy?'; or 'Oh, joy unrelenting?'

This brings me on to something else - some reflections on these varieties of jubilation. All of these expressions for joy are pretty... weird and menacing. 'Unbridled' and 'boundless' joy only make me think of out-of-control, mad sheep running amok in an open field; maybe of horses foaming at the mouth, too. It is a joy that is mindless and all kinds of unstable. 'Unending' joy sounds a bit blah, in the same way that you'll always have to pay for parking in town, or that you'll always have to deal with human stupidity or things clogging the sodding drain. It's a joy that gets boring because it never, ever changes. Joy 'unrelenting' is my favourite, though: boy, does that sound scary. Constant, endless, hammering, possibly drug-fuelled, joy. The joy that eventually drives a person insane by building up to such a tremulous pitch that your mind fractures and/or your head explodes. I'd like to think of it as the manic-depressive king of right royal rejoicing.

That's enough for this Christmas, I think. But I guess things are looking up in the sense that my holiday wishes aren't coming to you this year from the Holloway Road. That, my friends, is most definitely a pretty good thing (although perhaps Nick Hornby would disagree. But sod that).

Merry Christmas.

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