Loose cannon: Robert Kirby
This looming Christmas is, of course, the second last of both the present century and millennium. There also remains little over a year until the founder of the Christian religion hits that big ol’ double whammy and becomes the religion’s first 2 000-year-old Saviour.
As He starts His penultimate Y2K lap, it is clear that JC, His Gauloise crash helmet gleaming through the great curving water-scythes of His Bridgestone rain-tyres, will buzz efficiently past the chequered flag a comfortable week ahead of the Yamaha- powered Gregorian calendar.
Which isn’t too bad considering that calamitous tactical mistake back in 1913 when He went diving into the pits for a quick wheel-change and top-up, thereby allowing a sullen clique of tailgaters – Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Dr DF Malan, Margaret Thatcher, Don King and so forth – go into the lead for something like 80 years.
But enough of these merry salvation metaphors. With the threat of yet another depressing Christmas, any attempt at light-heartedness is only an act of desperation.
You can never be truly jovial at this
time of the year. It is the gloomiest of all local cycles.
I’m not talking about those facets of the Christmas nightmare which you can elude. It’s quite easy to turn off the television and the radio, to shun the popular press and magazines.
What you also have to do is try and stay alive by keeping off not only the great big highways and national roads, but the minor ones too. More especially if you are a pedestrian.
Apparently the vehicle-crushed pedestrian forms by far the greater body – as it were – of South African traffic casualties. (I thought I might include that helpful little statistic so as to encourage motor-borne road users to keep the balance fair.)
The next shuddering Yuletide horror to avoid is the persistent spectacle of other people actually enjoying the event.
When people – especially South Africans – celebrate religious anniversaries, they emit enormous volumes of pagan noise. So, for the next seven weeks or so, it is prudent to stay well away from beaches, caravan parks, office complexes, blocks of flats and suburbia in general. Wear earmuffs if you must venture within range. Keep the phone off the hook.
Above all, stay away from anything to do with South African shops.
The ethical cellulite of our merchant community turns its most putrid when it drapes itself in Christmas camouflage; something it starts doing from about the end of October.
Keeping yourself well away from shops means that while the children will suffer what psychologists call “Pick ‘n Pay/Shoprite-Checkers year-end tiny customer training seminar withdrawal psychosis”, you will save yourself quite a lot of money.
Instead of wasting yards of loot on expensive guilt presents, this year do what the better nursery schools do: force some more Ritalin down your children’s throats and send them into the garden to play with the mud. They’ll end up far more democratic for it, likely far more devout too.
The child Jesus didn’t need eco- friendly water wings or a brand new Pentium III to coax him through the “serious sevens”. As Lord Buckley once said: “The Naz was a carpenter kiddie. He could boogie with the best of them. Didn’t need no pricey extras.”
Having got the presents out of the way, what else to avoid like the plague over these coming weeks? Oh yes, the churches. Whatever you do, don’t go anywhere near a church anywhere near Christmas. This is because at this time of the year the hypocrisy count among churchgoers goes right through the psaltry roof.
When you go into a church at Christmas you find yourself surrounded by suffocating crowds of fellow phonies who, just like yourself, haven’t been near the place since the previous festive season.
Jiffy-Fry piety is one of the seven even deadlier sins. Don’t indulge. The only time God will look favourably on your attendance to His earthly house is when you pitch up at 6:30am on an icy cold wet winter’s day. Going to church in the high yuppie season actually scores negative points on your deliverance visa application.
I hope these few easy-to-follow tips will help you navigate another festive season without being too heavily slugged. Taking as little a part as you can in latter-day Christmas celebrations is a puny token, but at least something to offer Him in return for the wealth of human joy and misery that, in His name, has been dumped on us these past 1998 years.