Carols
You know how they over play a great song on
the radio, and then you want to pour hot manchow soup in your ears so you never
have to hear that song again? That feeling? Well, carols are the exact same.
I’m 35 years old. Imagine hearing the same song for a whole month for three and
a half decades. Enough! No more bells, chestnuts and drummer boys. He grew up,
got a job and switched to the flute. Start singing about something else now.
Gifts
Christmas should be about sharing and
caring. About giving hugs and meeting up with long lost family and friends.
It’s about new beginnings. It shouldn’t be about giving stuff. Do you know how
expensive stuff is? Receiving, on the
other hand, is not against the Christmas spirit. You know what I’d like to
receive this season? A tank of petrol, a kilo of onions, a dozen avocados, a
parking space in Panjim and a partridge in a pear tree.
Last
minute food shopping
Almost every catholic in Goa has a big
Christmas lunch. And almost every catholic will not remember to buy half the
ingredients required to make the Christmas lunch, a Christmas lunch. There will
be one poor twit at home who will beforced to go out and get those ingredients,
one at a time. Not all at once. No no… that would be too convenient. They
family will send you out to get bay leaves, vanilla essence, lemons, cooking
oil and one nutmeg… on five different trips.
Christmas
trees
I really, really
hate Christmas trees. The bigger ones need to betaken out from whatever secret
loft they have been stashedin for 11 months. You have to now relocate all the
spiders that have set up shop between the fake branches. There’s the whole
badkar, munkar issue, but nothing that a little gently coaxing cant fix. Just
like real life! Finally, the worst part of all, putting the tree back in the
box after Christmas. It just doesn’t fit. Never has. Never will. Little elves
sneak into your house and change the breadth and height of the box so that you
will never be able to put it back without ripping the box.
Santa
Claus
Santa Claus is a
fictitious commercial figure created to boost the sale of cookies. That’s why
everyone is encouraged to put out milk and cookies near the tree. If Goa got to
the Christmas lore first, Santa’s favourite meal would be recheado fried prawns
and Kings beer. Also, what is up with Mr Claus calling everybody a..you know… ‘person
of loose morals’? Everywhere he goes, there’s a ho, ho, ho. Really now? There
are children around, you big-boned, judgemental philanthropist.
Weather of sarcasm
People around the
world are covering themselves up with scarves and quilts are here we are in Goa
having our 3rd summer of the year. While Delhi is reeling under fog,
Goans are wondering if Bermuda-shorts are going out of style. And that doesn’t
stop carollers from knocking on your doorstep singing loud and proud “Let it
snow, let it snow, let snow.” Sarcasm at it’s best. Only at Christmas.
