Twas the night before Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas

Last night a heavy darkness fell over North London like a languid curtain during a hot summer. It was only 5pm in the afternoon but even the birds were turning over for the night for a spot of shut eye. There is an air of brooding introspection in the winter night outside that just seems to be grim, dreary and all pervasive. It seems to drop like a blanket, swallowing up any mere chinks of fading December light before taking up permanent residence during the winter months and not budging for a second.

The bed and breakfast hotels in Manor House were still preparing for the big day, bright specks of silver and white Christmas trees glistening and glimmering in the full expectation that the guests will just party away for the whole duration of the festive period. The Best Western Hotel, which used to be commonly associated with America, is still doing a roaring trade in the Seven Sisters Road in North London.

Everywhere the world continues to spin relentlessly. The doctors and those vital emergency services will always be available in times of need, stress, infirmity and medical necessity. The little huddle of newsagents and sweet shops next to us will be a hive of activity with their varied selection of Lottery tickets, chocolates, bottles of alcohol, cigarettes, brooms and mops temptingly arranged outside the shop, loaves of bread, frozen vegetables, milk and cheese in abundance while not forgetting the cat food.

The commercial fairground that is Christmas just seems to go around faster and faster. This year the vast array of boxes of chocolates and biscuits seemed to arrive in June. As for all of those big and bustling supermarkets the TV advertising campaigns seem to get more elaborate and cheesier by the year. All around us is a huge collision of cultures, a festival of symbolic reds and greens blending, mixing and matching with the timeless decor. It could only be Christmas and the blatant festive references are quite obviously all around us.

All around the shops a wall of joyous humanity shifts nervously from one giant aisle to the next, crowds of people pottering around slowly but surely, pausing for what seems like an entirety and then shuffling. Yes folks, this is the season for shuffling, tentative shuffling, leisurely shuffling, smiling fulsomely over heaving supermarket trolleys full to the brim with excessive merchandise. Then they seem to lean their arms on the said trolley, glancing up at the starry ceiling with all the enthusiasm of the young children they used to be.

Then very young babies wearing thick coats and hoods are plonked onto the trolley, squeezed tightly into a very confined space while mum and dad spend the best part of an hour or two deciding what exactly to get and then possibly regretting it on the day after Boxing Day.  Then the older kids jump out of the trolley, go on what seems like a frantic half marathon around the sweets for the 20th time and then just demand that mum and dad empty those sweet shelves immediately before we kick up a fuss. Oh for the festive season. Isn't this fun?

But this happens ever year doesn't it?  There are no variations on a theme, the queues still stretch as far as Belgium and that's on a good day. The tills are ringing almost constantly, the patient and kindly cashiers try desperately to put on a facade of happiness and joy to all and that melodious muzak which plays Slade's classic Christmas number at least 300 times a day, just seems to have got trapped in a repetitious loop that keeps pumping out the same old tunes hour after hour. It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it.

And yet we really wouldn't have it any other day. We love to be spend money, barrow loads of money on presents, shopping and shopping until we drop, getting completely exhausted mentally and emotionally, shoving our way fearlessly past another mass of urgency and emergency. This feels like the most pointless stampede. How to explain the one time of the year when we all fall over each other, grasping and grabbing acquisitively, earnestly pleading for the manager for the one thing the supermarket has just run out of?

Then we blame the supervisors, the staff and managers for being so absent mindedly out of stock. Suddenly, panicky brows filled with sweat will be wiped while mum and dad sigh impatiently at the abruptness of the supermarket customer services. They just seem to fob us all off with excuse after excuse and when are they going to get their act together and how dare they be so bolshy and unhelpful?

So here we are again on the verge of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, followed by Boxing Day which then gives away to yet more turkey leftover consumption, fridges loaded with more booze than an old fashioned pirate ship, mince pies that the dogs and cats are determined to nab and more gastronomic goodies that we can still salivate on until, quite probably, next Christmas.

Many decades ago the trains used to run on Christmas Day, a full football fixture list would encompass the whole of the Christmas period and Boxing Day could only be reserved for the traditional family pantomime. Then aunties, uncles and cousins would very grudgingly go home on the day after the Boxing Day, the carpet will still be liberally sprinkled with a mosaic of tattered, snapped crackers, carrots and brussel sprouts sadly and forlornly scattered around the floor.

Then the youngerkids  will leave a piles of toys have unashamedly under the Christmas tree only to run out of batteries seconds later. It is at this point that sobbing cries freely emerge from the mouths of heartbroken children who will now become inconsolable. This is all too much for some, a vast majority of whom have been stuck in front of the TV since, seemingly, the 15th century.

Anyway folks, it's time to dust the shelves, now groaning with cards, arrange the chairs and tables, grapple with those final light bulbs on the trees, adjust the star on the tree, wrap some more papier mache lanterns next to the log fire and then count the innumerable Christmas cards which seem to multiply by the hour. Oh go on then spoil yourself. It is Christmas after all. Ding Dong Merrily On High everybody. Have that cracking Christmas, folks- the one you'd always promised yourself. Ho Ho Ho!