I
reject Christmas as a Capitalist celebration. I can't bear
the thought of sitting around a pine tree, or worse, a plastic pine
tree, for hours, stuffing my face with candy and watching present
after present, each lavishly wrapped and entirely superfluous, passed
around like a great ritual.
I
need not reject Christmas as a Christian celebration because this is
an idiotic abstraction. Growing up it was an implicit joke that
Christmas had anything to do with the birth of Jesus. We
were urged to remember at Sunday School specifically because none of
our rituals related in any way to this theme.
Every
year throughout my adolescence we would quietly confess to each other
that it didn't “feel like Christmas” so much anymore, as the slow
realisation of the unlikely nature of it all dawned on us. How
cheated we felt. How disappointed. I never
found out that Santa Claus didn't exist. The solemn
hopeful deceit of it simply became obvious. The sacrifices
my parents made, the magic that permeated reality and the devastating
realisation of my own naivete were like the crushing weight of
adulthood. It's all a sham, and happiness is to believe in
lies. I was inherently incapable of believing the lies but
my hope and faith would carry me far; hope in the loving unity of our
family, faith in our culture, to contain and protect us. It
was only later that my parents separated, deconstructing my family,
and our whole culture was pulled out from under me with the same slow
shameful disappointment as the Santa Claus lie. This early
humiliation can only survive in my sensitive body like a trauma. The
ultimate specialness of Christmas that has leaked out of me like a
dripping landfill for years is now completely gone and in its place
is the grief of loss – loss of my childhood, loss of my mother,
loss of my culture, of a world that made sense.
I
was invited to spend Christmas with my three siblings and their five
children, in whom the ritual survives into the next generation. Out
of love and loyalty I said yes, and then the thought of piles of
Christmas presents under the tree and hours of significance given to
what amounts to garbage bags full of rubbish for the landfill, made
it perfectly clear that I couldn't put myself through it. To sit in
a cluttered sanitised house with these people I love so desperately
and see their fake smiles for the video camera as they open each
present, to see the disappointment at the disillusioned hope that
this item could possibly make them happy, would break my heart.
Fuck
you, Santa Claus. Repent. Stop releasing the
propaganda, all that ingratiating Christmas music and sentimental
family TV specials. Release the Elves, slavery is illegal
under international law. The obvious fiction of your
existence has failed to alleviate me of the possibility of
magic. Your plan to turn all children into Atheists and
Consumers will fail. The magic of the unseen worlds will
prevail and your rituals will be undermined with the ridicule of
great art. I reject you, Satan Claws, and I will enjoy the
summer solstice with my family, those who are truly able to be
present with me, without the buffers of alcohol, presents and
sugar. The weather outside is not frightful, it is warm
and bright, the cool water beckons, exuberant summer fun beckons. I
am not dreaming of a white Christmas, I'm dreaming of a naked
Christmas, where the the white of my bare bum is slowly tanned by the
sun in preparation for months of summer.
I
dream of a new year, in which the curse of Christmas is far away and
a refreshing and challenging new life awaits. When the
uncomfortable blip of Christmas passes, New Year will be an
exhilarating rage, a shedding of skin, a release of madness, an
immersion in the world, a baptism of mud, an ecstasy of sex and
psychedelics. The non-existent Satanic fantasy of Santa
Claus is discarded and decays while we celebrate the Earth, each
other and the complex intensity of incarnation as a human being.
