December 25th

I suppose most of you got out of bed on Christmas morning at a leisurely hour and lazed about the place in your bedclothes (or the clothes you wore to bed if there is a difference as I suspect there is), and stamped on your Christmas morning in various other ways, the indelible mark of idleness.

Spare a thought then for your unfortunate blogger, who was duty-bound to get up and cycle in the frost and first falling snow of the winter (as he hummed that most appropriate Bing Crosby Christmas song… ‘Frosty the Snowman’…), across the city to ring the bells of what was once the pride of Irish Catholicism: the Protestant Cathedral of Christchurch.

I did this somewhat weak and weary in the bleak December (ah distinctly I remember etc.), for I had been up very late the evening before to ring those very same bells to call folk to a midnight mass, and perhaps also to awaken the children in the locality, and restart their desperate eye-lid clenching efforts to sleep for Santa who would bestow the good and/or sleeping children of the world with presents to make up for his own lousy up-bringing, the loss of his childhood due to premature pop-stardom, and his dissatisfaction at being black (or is that some other wacko who only comes out once a year that I’m thinking of?).

On a whim, I went into the service for once, and found it to be pretty Christmassy, but not especially Christian. As a footnote that will have to appear in the main body (as my asides generally do with the help of these very facilitating parentheses as I am not technologically advance enough to pull the footnote thing off), I’d like to say that I will not be apologising for bitching about Christianity on the principal grounds that Saints Peter and Paul regularly did so all the time according the New Testament (man that testament is getting old) and they were both martyred brutally and grotesquely (if there’s a difference which this time I suspect there is not) which is, as you know, a clear sign of their great holiness and divine favour – not like Judas who fell and hit his head one of his ill-gotten rocks, which as you also know, is a clear sign of God’s disfavour [end of inappropriately long in-text footnote]. I say that the service was not especially Christian, as it was lacking any real sharing of love or affection – which according to the text of the mass, is what this Jebus is all about. Take that very solemn, “Take this all of you…” bit. That’s absolutely brilliant! He’s is essentially saying that his life is being sacrificed for nothing more than encouraging people to just sit down together and to share their food with one another. He is saying if you want to remember me, celebrate. Have a larf. Eat some bread. Have a little vino. I couldn’t help but think that some of Christianity’s (in general) policies of solemnity and standing, and silence and draughty churches or somewhat at odds at his ‘have-a-relax, let’s-all-be-mates’ attitude (don’t correct me on this by the way – I have a degree in theology and I’m not afraid to use it… to inflict paper cuts). We should probably all wear more sandals and one-piece dresses more often as well – maybe take the donkey to work instead of the bus the odd day – you know, just to be holy and stuff.

So the point is, in case you lost it, which I’m sure you didn’t was that I was a bit tired getting up in the morning – that’s worth writing a blog about, right?

So anyway. Christmas. Thanks to those of you who saw fit to put me on their spam ‘Happy Christmas’ text list, and you’re welcome all of you who got personalized but only marginally more sincere text message from yours somewhat-truly.

I thought that I was returning to my childhood by hand-making my (3) Christmas Cards this year but I didn’t expect that my mother would make the reminiscence all too complete by not realizing that she was looking at the picture of a snowman the wrong way up and saying it was ‘very nice’. They should have sent me to art classes instead. I mean who ever made a career out of ‘music’ anyway.

FYI, this year’s crackers read:

Q: How do you make gold soup?
A: With 24 carrots.

Q: Where do rabbits learn to fly helicopters?
A: The hare-force.

Q: What kind of bow can you not tie?
A: A rainbow.

Smart-ass comments:
1. I expect it would still be more orange than gold and what’s a recipe doing here, I thought they were supposed to be jokes.
2. Bet that’s funded by the CIA against a common enemy: Elmer Fudd (who looks a lot like Michael Gorbecov (sp?) now that I think of it. Is the 'I' still for 'intelligence'?).
3. Doesn’t it usually only become a bow once you tie it? And on a related note, what do you usually have before it becomes a bow? An unbow? A pre-bow?