If there's one thing that gets me wanting to flip my omelette, it's the way people carry on at Christmas and Easter. I mean, every Christmas and Easter they act the same - more frenzied than a lion in a first century Roman amphitheatre. It’s all one big derby of trolley charging and handbag blindsiding as frenzied credit-charging barbarians swoop in on their favourite shopping malls and claw their way to supremacy in a race to lay claim to the last worthless trinkets of the ‘while stocks last’ bargain-bin and display stand.
Take Christmas for example. As the ‘take-no-prisoners’ slaughter-fest begins, we are reminded by the claustrophobic displays of plastic baubles, tinselled trees and triple ‘A’ battery-lit angels that there is a deeper meaning to all of this – the birth of Santa and the corporatisation of Coca-Cola.
Yes, this is that time of year where the first trailers to the prequel of Mel Gibson’s epic film The Passion become available on You-Tube. In the original film Gibson had tried to explain how Santa, like William Wallace in Braveheart, had managed to annoy the local aristocracy and, as a result, ultimately came to experience the deadly kiss of deceit and betrayal. In the prequel to this, Santa is born in the apparent presence of the three wise men; presumably Christopher Nolan (author of 'Silent Night, Dark Knight'), Len Wiseman and James McTeigue. But given the time of year, the fact that there is six feet of snow everywhere, and that there is no room left at the Holiday Inn; one has to assume that Santa’s birth is possibly the result of an unplanned pregnancy. And although it is worth noting that Mel Gibson hasn’t approved the script for this film yet, it is being developed under the working title of “The Unplanned Birth of Santa in the presence of the Three Wise Men somewhere adjacent to the Coca-Cola Vending Machine near the Holiday Inn on the corner of Fourth and Main”, aka as "The Gospel according to Mel".
Yes, Christmas is a time that challenges even the most passive of individuals. Take for instance the provocation of Christmas Carollers – they come to your front door and sing those insipid songs, daring you to come out with your garden spade and pulverise as many as you can before the Police arrive (I can usually manage about four). Then there are the union strikers: pilots, train drivers, bus drivers, ferry captains, food court attendants; anyone and everyone whose job it is to make your holiday season more enjoyable – if only you had a Desert Eagle and a box of hollow points, that'd do it. Finally there are all those hippy twats who want to tell you about the savouring properties of Cheeses!!! I don’t get it… what does “our savouring Cheeses” have to do with Christmas for God’s sake?! And who the hell was the Major in
Now, the thing I hate most about Christmas is the ridiculous expectations and poor conduct associated with the gift giving ceremony. Take the idea of the $5.00 Secret Santa for example. This is particularly relevant to workplace/office Christmas functions. Prior to the event the organisers reiterate several times that the Secret Santa gift must cost no more than $5.00 – it’s stated on the invitation, verbally reaffirmed on a number of occasions by the office PA, and it gets repeated in the reminder email the day before the event – so it’s virtually a written contract that your Secret Santa gift should cost no more than $5.00. But if you turn up to the event with a Secret Santa gift that actually did cost $5.00, then everyone is going to judge you as being a ‘cheap bastard’ – and you won’t get invited back next year.
So that's Christmas - And while Easter might be a different celebration altogether, it’s just as bad.
For example, you have the Good Friday shopping frenzy where everybody in town heads to the only few retail outlets legally permitted to trade on the day; namely garden centres and hardware stores. Thousands of people literally cram the carparks of these places as if it's the only time of year that they're open. And everybody rushes into the store, tripping and falling over each other, and they grab at this and snatch at that - and it's not important what they're grabbing and snatching at, they've just got to have it because it's Good Friday and they can. And there's actually no point to any of this - not unless you suddenly found a project that requires nothing more than a thorny rose bush, some timber and some nails.
And then there is the traditional Good Friday Supper, the ultimate test of tolerance, restraint and quiet endurance – a feast recognising true Christian passive-agression. For it is here that people ritually gather at their tables: husbands alongside in-laws, cousins adjacent to aunts, siblings next to grandparents; and they all partake in their traditional Good Friday dish – a hot serving of chips.
“Chips?” you ask, being the eternal heathen that you are. Yes chips – no meat and no fish on this day. Chips and hot-cross buns, that's all they eat. This is their suffering, their atonement – to painfully endure the company of relatives they can't stand and to eat a meal so bland and lacking in protein that it makes a Dominos' Pizza look Divine.
And after everyone agrees that there has been enough suffering, they all head off to midnight Mass. Thousands of them at every church. And you ask yourself why?...
...Like I'm pretty sure that when Jesus gave his sermon from the top of the mount he didn't say “and blessed are the annual one-nighters”...
...Yet here they are, packed to the rafters and all looking at each other and trying to half hum/half lip sync their way through the first hymn.
But the madness doesn't end after midnight Mass either, because all the shops reopen on Saturday morning and town becomes a mob riot. And all those wonderful messages spoken at Mass in the early hours of the morning – to love thy neighbour, to respect thy fellow man, to stop coveting his wife - all forgotten. Everyone wants to be first in queue, and they're all going to tell you in no %*&$#) uncertain terms why they should be served ahead of you. It's retail carnage and the blood-lust consumeraggressionists are out and ready to blaspheme, hand gesture and fight their way to bargain supremacy.
So let the eye gouging begin!
And this is all because the shops weren't open yesterday. No wonder people get upset after a tsunami, like when they happen the shops don't reopen for ages.
Fortunately tomorrow is Easter Sunday, a day where sanity should be restored, when the messages spoken at Friday's midnight Mass are finally remembered and enacted.
Except that everybody wakes up on Sunday morning to exchange loads of chocolate with each other. Now that's just what everybody needs after the last couple of days, a transfusion of Cocoa and Caffeine to help calm them down...
That's what I think... And usually I'm right.
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