The Ghost of Christmas and a Nod to Mr. Kipling

A

I don’t really think about Christmas until I’ve ordered something and UPS is later than usual about delivering it, or I want to go and get groceries and, ‘Why the hell are all these people here, shopping?'

…Oh.

Christmas just doesn’t happen here, up on my mountain, like it does in the rest of the world. There are no lights or trees or presents or family get-togethers. Top sides, we’ll pop popcorn and watch ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’, on Christmas Eve. We used to string popcorn for the tree when I was a kid. That was the greatest ever.

It’s not that I don’t want to do Christmas. I just don’t have any reasons to think about Christmas. So I don’t. And then, of course, it’s here and gone and too late.

Gloria is a huge fan of Christmas, and were she to actually manifest, it would be absolute mayhem around here. I guess I do have a kind of Christmas with her, in my head.

Our Christmas only last a second though, like they say that dreams do.

But still, we string popcorn to spin round the tree and bake bread dough ornaments in the oven that we paint and hang in the ever-green boughs. And there are presents, mounds of presents, mostly book shaped presents, but two or three you will find, when you get to digging, are shaped like mittens. And we’ll open one present each, together, on Christmas Eve and one hundred Christmas morning. There are smells, too: pumpkin and wasselly smells, sprinkley and sugary smells and beneath them all, the rich smell of fudge, and you are forever finding yourself back in the kitchen to taste and being told to stay out of this or stay out of that. And there is always snow that morning, Gloria sees to that, enough to go sledding anyway, and hot chocolate with marshmallows after and you’ll bring back your prickled cheeks and fingers to stand beside the fire and thaw.

I could go on and on, Best Beloved, but I’m sure you can see how one second could be the greatest Christmas ever. Can’t you?