Christmas is the Dragon

Brian Kiteley, author of The 4 A.M. Breakthrough, a book of 'unconventional writing exercises' I am currently reading because I am in the process of preparing a creative writing course for students at the Recovery College where I currently volunteer, quotes Fran Lebowitz as having once observed that 'After forty, Christmas seems to arrive every three months.' From this I take it that, at least from her forties onwards, Ms Lebowitz has known sufficient material comfort that Christmas has never been a financial problem for her. I say this because I am 47 years old and, for the past five years, I have not known a year in which I was not crushingly, grindingly aware of the gravity of that festival and the dent it would put in my bank account. 

I say gravity because, like a planet, Christmas, for the poor, distorts all the space around it - both the months beforehand, in which money for presents, cards and wrapping must somehow be found, and the months afterwards, in which one must, Sisyphus-like, attempt the impossible feat of stretching even less than usual out until payday, to the point where the brevity of February is experienced as a profound fiduciary mercy. With the advent of March, one can breath again - a little. But by September at the latest the fretting over gifts begins anew. 

Last year I tried to follow a saving regime which I thought would make Christmas a breeze. The theory seemed simple: on the first day of the month, transfer one penny from the current to the savings account; on the second, save two pence; on the third, three, and so on. Going up in increments of only a penny a day, and starting anew at the beginning of each month, I calculated that I could save enough money to handily pay for all the expenses associated with Christmas, might perhaps even be able to purchase my relatives something which felt properly special for once. 

This did not work. The cost of living increased; my flat flooded; soon enough I found myself forced to empty what little I had saved back into my current account, and Christmas, which had seemed tame, resumed its place as what it had always been: the dragon waiting at the summit of the year, eager as always to exact its crippling tribute. And I resumed, again, my state of knowing, in the depths of my pockets and the pit of my stomach, every single step I would have to crawl up to that summit. 

And yes, I know how this sounds. I know what you get called if you have a negative take about Christmas. And I've written about how that's a bunch of bullshit too. 

Bah and, indeed, humbug.