The production of Christmas

Christmas is my favourite time of year. The 24th of December is my favourite day of the year: we all go to my grandparents’ place for a huge dinner followed by presents and togetherness. I love it. I’m like a little kid in my anticipation. I’ve even been known to send Lala text messages saying “X sleeps till Christmas!!”

Christmas is such a production in my family. Admittedly, when trying to organise 24 different people into one house on the same night, some productionality is to be expected. However, true to form, the family-at-large tends to add a little more production-value than is perhaps strictly necessary.

Despite the amount of work that goes into setting up such a monumental event, very little can ruin Christmas for me. One cousin, however, is usually behind any attempted Christmas-ruining: my cousin Rick. Rick is, unsurprisingly, the only son of Aunt Agony. I’ve never really liked him; we appear to have a mutual-tolerance policy. To me he’s a jerky know-it-all and to him I am, no doubt, a whinging faggot. But I don’t see him much so I don’t think about him much. Even when he isn’t being a jerk our conversations are stilted at best.

Rick is 25 this year. He is desperate not to be counted with “the kids”—ie my generation—and sets an invisible line between him and Lala (the next in line at 23): on one side of which are the adults and on the other are the kids. This line has crept up higher as the years have gone on. I remember once-upon-a-time when above 20 was an adult. Then it was 21, then 22... you get the idea. This year it will be 25. Last year he thrust a bowl full of small pieces of paper into my face upon my arrival. “Pick one” he said. I picked one. “That’s your job for the night” he said. I asked what his job was and he told me that his job was to make sure we all did our jobs. He then proceeded to ask each of “the kids” if we’d done our job; if we hadn’t he’d ask why not and if we had he’d come up with some way in which it was not done correctly. He is definitely his mother’s son.

So anyway, I was at Grandma’s on Tuesday hanging lights on their back patio. Mum and Sister were there too, putting up the tree. Lala, Ade (Lala’s brother) and Ade’s friend were helping me. Lala’s dad was there too although he didn’t help at all. The phone rang and Ade answered. It was Rick. He wanted to speak to Grandma. Ade told him she was in the toilet or something and he’d get her to call him back. He said he just wanted to know if his “girlfriend” (and I do use the term very loosely) could come to Christmas dinner. When Ade relayed this message to Grandma I swear you could have heard a pin drop.

You see Grandma doesn’t like the girlfriend. AA doesn’t like the girlfriend. I don’t like the girlfriend. Lala definitely doesn’t like the girlfriend. No one likes the girlfriend. The girlfriend is a prostitute and a junky, which while not being worthy of hatred in and of themselves are compounded by the fact that she has stolen from AA to support her drug habit, emptied Rick’s bank account to support her habit (the idiot gave her his keycard), written off Rick’s car while driving without a license (probably drunk and/or high) and been caught sleeping with another man who wasn’t a paying client.

Maybe in a normal family this would be much less of an issue and Grandma would just say no. I wouldn’t know; my family isn’t normal. Bringing boyfriends or girlfriends is fraught with intrigue at the best of times. Interestingly it was always Rick who objected to Lala bringing her boyfriend (the one before Cal) to Christmas—Rick didn’t like him and I can’t say I blame him—and made a big fuss each year saying “you should only bring a boy/girlfriend if it’s serious”.

This year I am not going to let him get to me. If he thrusts another bowl in front of my nose I will tell him I have already spent the day light hanging and decorating and suggest that he takes my job instead. If he refuses I will politely suggest he stick the bowl up his arse. I will have my stick with me as my legs have not been good lately so if he makes a comment about it I will—politely of course—stick the stick up there myself.

Merry Christmas everyone.