Christmas

Who wants to sit on Santa's lap?

Merry Christmas from the Gaylords.

Christmas Day is upon us and if you’re anything like me it’s not so much about the season of giving these days as it is the season for getting time off work!

But it’s all for the kids really, a fact that becomes frighteningly apparent only after you’ve had some. Of course it’s never apparent when you’re a kid because its just one big present takefest but when I look back on those days now I wonder just how my parents did it so impressively for so long – on less money and less opportunity too.

Our parents would buy us stuff throughout the year and not leave it till the last minute, mad farken rush that seems to befall most people these days. There was no such luxury of the late night suicide run to the mall back then either. Almost as soon as the tree went up at the beginning of December that would be a shitload of presents under it just screaming out for we excited kids to try and take a peek and blame any partly open presents on the cat. Of course nothing under the tree at that point would be for us kids but it drove you mad seeing that bloody pile every day.

Thankfully kids these days have four school terms, the one and only advantage of which is that they finish school quite late in the year meaning they don’t quite get the Chrissy bug till around the same time you do, about a week before the big day. Very little present tampering can be planned and executed in a week. Trust me.

My son – almost ten – has given up the ghost that is the Santa myth. He’s done the same with the Easter bunny too but strangely still holds on to the belief that the tooth fairy exists! It’s a shrewd bit of play by Junior because whereas the other two bring cheap presents and cheap chocolate – now that’s the story of Jesus – the mythical molar fairy brings cold hard cash and that is the shit, even when you’re ten.

My belief in the big fat fulla died out not long after I realised that it was mother who kept buying me Master of the Universe toys when I clearly stipulated in my letters to Santa that all he had to leave under the tree for me was a mega pile of G.I.Joes. I even sat on a lot of semi erect penises in the various Santa Grotto’s around the place asking for the same thing, whilst clearly in ear shot of my mother, who I now realise had that same glint in her eye that she always had when she played the ‘I’ll buy him something he doesn’t really want so I can claim ungratefulness when he gets disappointed’ game.

Did you know Santa wears red and white because Coca Cola put him in their colours for a promo once and he’s been in it ever since? How’s that for the best advertising campaign ever? Think about that next time you do that thing you like to do in the shower with the empty Coke bottle that saw you taken to A & E once where you had to use the excuse “I had finished drinking and just slipped on it after putting it down”.

So my Christmas day will be spent with the extended family and the food fest that is Christmas lunch at the in-laws. It’s a fantastic day with lots of presents, happy kids and booze on tap. Last year I decided to make a day of it and tried to drink the wife’s 18 year old train wreck of a cousin under the table. Little did I know back then that she was a certified alcoholic and I never stood a chance - by the time I was slurring my words she was just getting warmed up, so needless to say my day ended with a comatose power nap on the couch and a shirt dowsed in dribble.

I did have quite the insightful discussion though, whilst inebriated, with the wife’s other 18 year old cousin and just how much porn he surfed whilst locked away in his room all day. It was one of those discussions that always seem to be louder than it actually was, probably because the room had gone quiet. I also questioned him at length as to what the two gauges on the dash of his pimped out motor actually did and what was the point given that we can all only do 100kmh on the open road?

I don’t recall him giving me much of an answer but that might have been down to the fact he was half way down the hill driving it away when I asked. It’s true what they say you know, excess alcohol does slow down your reactions….

The father-in-law loved it; he had been working on me for years to turn in a performance like that in front of the Aunties. His theory is if you can’t get pissed on Christmas day when can you aye? It’s a theory I’m beginning to see the benefits of and lets be honest, rules are meant to be broken – that’s why my wife and I don’t use the ‘safety word’ any more.

Anyhoo, Merry Christmas to you all and I trust you’ll have a safe one. I’m off to see if there is any G.I.Joes wrapped up under the tree for me this year. I’ll blame the partly open presents on the boy and if that doesn’t stick, the cats.

Why Seedy Santa Only Comes Once A Year

I've come to realise as an adult just why it is that Christmas comes only once a year; because it's a mission and a half to put up freakin Christmas trees!

I did ours the other night and I haven't been that ball deep in foliage sweating like a rapist since ‘Nam. Which I've had a few flashbacks to recently but then I always do this time of the year what with the high humidity, the hot nights and lots of Asian students about, all of whom I strongly suspect of having a hand grenade or AK47 concealed on their persons.

Why just the other day DougalMac and I were enjoying each others metro sexual company down at the lagoon and I was reminded of a similar idyllic setting we had encountered in Da Nang in '68. We'd come across a water hole amongst the hills and had taken to bathing. There we all stood, soaping each others backs all the while hoping that whoever held our single bar of soap didn't drop it, when out of the reeds snaked an advanced patrol of VC.

Quite why they didn't open up on us there and then has always been a mystery to us but we'd like to believe it was because that even they, with their narrow little eyes and communistic ideals, were moved by the poignancy of several hardened men taking the time to gently soap each other in a brief reprise from the madness of war.

Either that or they were awestruck by the length and girth of Lancey's M60 – and I don’t mean the one he'd left on the bank besides the pool.

Yep, someone was watching over us that day. Perhaps it was 'ol HeyZuez himself. He's the reason we have a Christmas after all, not that we should joke about it like Tui did last week with yet another of their billboards. Despite the harmless humour of it all - and it was one of the funnier Tui efforts in quite some time - somebody complained about it. That somebody was a Christian, proving yet again that a small religious minority in this country can't handle the jandal, quite possibly because they know that we know that their religion is a sham.

Not that complaining about Christmas is restricted to Jesus and his home boys, some folk have decided they don't like the giant Santa that has stood in central Auckland for the last 50 years because he has a long crooked index finger, which makes him look ‘seedy’. Now let’s get one thing straight, if he was bumming Rudolph whilst a topless Mrs Claus watches on then it could be claimed he was ‘seedy’, but a crooked finger...

Don’t you sometimes wish Christmas could be like it was when you were a kid with no responsibilities? My grandparents lived in an old Victorian house with ceilings as high as a P addict and every year Granddad would get in a real tree that only just fitted in the room. That sucker - the tree, not Granddad - would soon be covered in decorations, candy canes and so many lights that half the town had to sit in darkness whenever we switched them on. It seems over the top now - says the guy who just struggled to erect a 5 foot plastic tree from China - but that is what people did back in the day.

They didn’t do shopping malls packed to the brim though. Apparently Christmas shopping means only one thing at this time of the year; hard out five fingered discount time as professional shop lifters hit the shops en masse. Who knew there was such a thing aye? I mean we were good back in my College days but we would never have called ourselves ‘professionals’ but we would've practiced more if we knew we could make a career out of it!

I remember once spending almost an hour in Toy World once waiting to pinch as many G.I.Joes as my mate Brent’s bomber jacket would hold. I made like I was buying them for my little brother and even went to go so far as to joke with the owner that ‘they all look the same to me haha’. The fuck they did. I was hard core and I knew what I wanted and the moment the guy went out the back to check something I had more plastic down my pants than a lezzo with a strap on.

It almost went pear shaped though. No sooner had I got out the door than those Joes not tucked into my pants fell out the arse of Brent’s jacket and onto the pavement. Luckily the stores window display shielded me from view and I was able to kick them out of sight of the shop before picking them up and legging it all the way down the main street. I must’ve made quite the sight; a pubescent boy in an over sized jacket running down the street with G.I.Joes in hand and a small erection.

Now that’s seedy.

Retailers Are Stealing Christmas

Now that another Christmas has come and gone do you ever sit back and wonder “why the fuck do we bother?”. People seem to get more enthused about growing a pornstache or a retro minge for a month than they do about Christmas these days.

Geez even Santa gets it in the neck, what with the politically correct telling him he can’t call nobody a ho, or the skinny brigade telling him he’s overweight. I suspect the very same people also write into the TV Guide each week complaining about the actions of the characters in Shortland Street. Get a life folks, for fucks sake. These are all are fictional characters, that makes them automatically exempt from your neurosis. Why not focus your attention and efforts on your stoner kids, or your husband who spends hours online pretending he’s single?!

Personally, I blame the retailers. And the Dutch but I have no actual proof yet that they're behind it. Retailers desperate for your hard earned cash who are putting up the Christmas bling earlier and earlier in the hope that you’ll spend your lolly in their shop in November and not in the chemist getting your missus some cream for the pash rash your hoMovember efforts left her with. Some were even starting their Boxing Day sales before Boxing Day this year because they were literally gagging for your money. And people were buying into it for fucks sake!

Doesn't it seem to be sale season all the time these days? This is the retailers taking you and I up the pooper finger by finger until before you know, it they’re up to their elbows in our asses. To me, a sale should mean ‘cheaper than anywhere else’. It should mean that “it’s a deal; it’s a steal, its sale of the century. Fuck it, it’s so good we just might keep it.” What a sale shouldn’t mean is that four branded stores, all owned by the same company anyways, sell the same product – say an Xbox – at a reduced price every other week. That’s not a sale, that’s just bullshit.

Ever tried comparing mailers for the same sort of store over a three or four week period? Probably not because who would be sad enough to do that aye? But if you did, you might just be surprised to see just how often one great deal or sale is repeated by a similar store the following week. We used to do it in Hallensteins back in the day, we’d drop the price of our Levis by $10 one week and then the gay Samoan boys over at Hugh Wrights would do the same to theirs the next week. Different companies mind you, but both with the same goal; to bum the unsuspecting consumer.

Incidentally my hope that the summer sun would herald the return of the young blonde minx in hot pants that used to deliver my junk mail has not come to fruition. Which leads me to believe that either a) It was the Hanson look-alike boy all along or b) she got scared off by me appearing at the lounge window every time she made her way up and down the street. Me being naked on every occasion probably didn’t help either.

What these ever present sales do make clear to me though, is just how overpriced the shit that we buy is. Just because a store is having a sale it doesn’t mean they’re not making a profit. If Rebel Sport can sell the same Adidas top at half price in their sale and still make a profit then why do we buy it the original price? Let’s not forget that those Nazis at Adidas have marked up the garment before selling it to Rebel too.

Maybe my Christmas angst comes from my childhood. My Christmas as a kid were fucked up. All I ever wanted were G.I.Joes. My letters to Santa were the shortest in history because I only ever wanted one thing. When I sat on his knee in malls I only ever asked for one thing. I didn’t actually ever want to sit on his knee, as he always seemed to have a roll of winegums in his pocket or something, but I did it whilst my mother watched because I wanted to make it absolutely clear to her that I only wanted one thing.

Needless to say I got everything but G.I.Joes. This was how my mother worked. It was some fucked up Mum joke that we unsuspecting kids never got. She would buy me and my sister a lot of stuff and to be fair, we always got a lot of stuff, but it was never what we asked for and it pissed us off! So that inevitably put us in the unenviable position of being ungrateful – which we were – for the shit we didn’t want. Mum would then take immense pleasure in telling anyone who would listen just how ungrateful her two kids were. Reverse, rhetorical, you’re-fucked-either-way psychology at its best. That's how my Mum rolled.

So lets not forget next year that Christmas is for the kids and not the retailers. I say buy only what your kids really want and left the rest. It’s a sad fact of life that our kids grow up way to fast into a world that exploits them way too soon anyway, so lets not fuck up Christmas.

P.S. Up yours Mum. I’m still bitter about it.