We haven’t decorated for Christmas this year. I just haven’t had the heart. I did think about decorating the mantle over the fireplace, just to have some seasonal cheer, but that would have required taking out all of the christmas boxes and it was just too depressing. So we are just riding out the holidays, waiting for January and better times.
I was handling it, until this morning when we went to pick up a few things in a local department store. They played Fairytale of New York. It undid me. That’s always been one of my favourite Christmas songs, in all of it’s disfunctional romance and fractured dreams. I finished shopping and walked out, eyes hot, trying not to cry.
Even hearing the line “you cheap lousy faggot” in a family department store couldn’t cheer me up. (Maybe you have to be American to appreciate that.) :)
Here’s hoping for new years and new opportunities. Here’s looking at an end to a very bad year. Here’s a promise that we’ll never make the same mistakes, that we’ll learn from this. And here’s hoping that we get through these warm and fuzzy holidays with our hearts and hope intact.
Marks & Spencer are running ads that are currently my least favourite ads ever, with impossibly beautiful people at a house party in a very elegant country house, obviously spending the season far away from the less attractive, poor, ordinary types. It irritates me every time I see it.
And so, here’s a fairytale for all of us who aren’t having the perfect Christmas:
My Christmas story: nine years ago we were TOTALLY broke, and so close to being litigated, not paying rent for months. To have any money for normal food we wanted to sell our cd-player, but luckily day before Christmas friend stopped by and lended us small sum (in GB I assume it would be like 50 pounds). Cheered up with this lucky coincidence, we made very tight budget Christmas dinner and spent Christmas with only two of us, feeling unbelievably lucky and happy. Of course this fairytale has prolonged happy ending, three months later our bad luck turned.
I still remember that Christmas fondly.
I wish You to able to retell such story soon. If You ask me, bad luck isn’t valid reason to skip Christmas. Come on, at least get drunk with that awful mixture You Anglo-Saxons call egg-nog and get all sloppy and sensitive (err, I probably used wrong word here). You’ll feel better when hangover worns out.
And by the way, many thanks for introducing me to this awesome Christmas son,havent knew it before and now it surely will find place among my Christmas classics:-)
It’s a wonderful song, isn’t it? :)
It’s stories like that that give me hope – to know that people can be down, and still come through it. It’s good to know that everything CAN turn out right in time.
Merry Christmas to you and your family…and have some eggnog, it’s a real taste treat. Ok, so maybe skip the eggnog, and have some Glögg instead, which is much nicer. :D