Santifada

The Desecration of Christmas

Wakefield occupies the throbbing centre of a gulag archipelago, surrounded by backwater towns in a blast wave of chip pan fires and missing teeth. A third rate city not discerning enough to warrant a reputation. Just another blistering cold sore festering on the pot marked face of Miss Yorkshire.

Winter has come heavy to Wakefield. Christmas is in the air—accompanying many other pathogenic diseases. Parents are shepherding their offspring past frostbitten tramps to stare vacantly at soulless light installations masquerading as Christmas trees. A homogenised winter light parade proceeds cheerlessly through town so not to provoke the ire of the African tribes that have come to live deep under ground in the National Mining Museum.

The brave are wrapping their children in Kevlar vests so that they not perish in customary Christmas Jihad. These have become a regular feature of the Christmas Market tradition. It simply wouldn’t be Christmas without vehicular manslaughter. Throngs of white shoppers full of undercooked bratwurst and overpriced mulled wine, throwing themselves at the speeding cars of homicidal Islamists in the name of diversity.

Bleeding out on the needle-strewn streets of Yorkshire under the hollow lights of a German market staffed by Bosnians. Their cries for help ignored but filmed by a twenty year old influencer in a keffiyeh possessing a militant form of syphilis that will eventually outlive her and go on to live a happier life.

The sound of gunshots and screaming fade as their ears fill with blood. The last thing they’ll see is a transvestite Santa Claus interfering with himself as one final question occupies their minds—what the fuck happened to Christmas?

There’s no two ways about it. I’m no longer any kind of young man. I’m sick, I’m tired and I’m pushing forty like a compressed stool. Perhaps I’m falling victim to a whimsical bout of nostalgia. Nevertheless—there’s an emptiness in my smoke-tarnished soul that used to be occupied with Christmas.

Little by little Christmas has been sterilised. Like Steve Guttenberg, it had a fantastic run and hasn’t been seen again since the nineties.

Christmas used to descend on a man like a Zulu war party. It hung in the air like a storm about to break. The very mention of Christmas was enough to send a child into convulsions. I could have shat myself with excitement.

From the moment that first advent calendar door was kicked open, something was in motion. Something visceral. A haunting air blew through underfunded classrooms where I spent hours gluing metallic pieces of card together to present to my dishevelled, half-cut parents. Their arseholes clenched tight with anxiety — ahead of being subjected to the ordeal of a nativity play.

Nothing on this godforsaken planet brutalises the nervous system like a chorus of sugar-addled midgets screaming out of tune. Our heads wrapped in tea towels, faces caked in viscous, yellow crud. Nobody dared to ask why Mary was black or why the spastic kid was made to play the donkey. I played a shepherd. I couldn’t deliver my lines straight — having fixed my attention on the weird, shrivelled hand on Mrs Ball. Her arm went all the way down but when it came to the hand there were no fingers — not real ones anyway. Just fleshy, little stumps that twitched of their own volition. I did everything I could to not vomit on the baby Jesus.

Afterwards, the adults were crying. They wrapped us in our little hats and gloves with strings on — like we were all fucking retarded — and took us home where my mother did everything she could to cook as bland a chicken as humanly possible.

I was unceremoniously pushed up into the attic — like a human suppository. Rooting through the fibreglass and asbestos in the frigid darkness, looking for something that resembled a Christmas tree. Everything up there was rotting and cold. Something scurried in the shadows. I’d emerge moments later wearing soot and a haunted expression I haven’t since been able to shed.

Oh Christmas tree! You glorious tart! She was undoubtedly an abomination. An assault on the senses. We’d kept her prisoner all year — like Elizabeth Fritzl — and pulled her out at our most decadent in order to subject her to a humiliating bukkake of tinsel and trimmings. Wrapped in rusty wiring and beads in case she tried to make a run for it. She stood six feet tall, dressed like a midlife crisis with colour co-ordination that would make a Nigerian blush.

Inevitably I would be shepherded into town, where the lights were an exhibit of vulgarity that would shame a prostitute’s vajazzle. You remember those. They were invariably switched on in towns and cities across the country by redundant celebrities and disgraced soap stars, fresh out of rehab. It was customary to attend this ceremony and walk aimlessly through town marvelling at the epileptic blitzkrieg. Overstimulated by an assault of bells, snowflakes and stars — flanked on all sides by luminescent snowmen and the occasional Star of David to keep the Jews happy.

They reflected across the black, wet paving stones strewn with cigarette ends, the air fettered with sleet and the perfume of chestnuts tumbling out of Kirkgate Market. As I was led through the sprawling department stores and shopping arcades of Leeds, I could hear the Salvation Army playing a sorrowful Christmas lullaby to a time long forgotten.

Through the throng and bustle — jingling all the way — into an Arndale centre where every shop front was festooned with snow-dusted window displays and hyperbolic merriment. We must have walked a mile down that precinct before we came to the grotto. Everything glistened and glittered.

A cheap pine chalet stood in a large livery populated with animatronic reindeer and grotesque elves hammering and chopping and whistling around Christmas trees and a hundred boxes tied with ribbons.

Santa’s grotto resembled a tinsel -scattered abattoir. The end of the line.

A slutty elf took me by the hand and led me within and presented me to an unvetted alcoholic crouching in the darkness — like Colonel Kurtz.

The door closed behind me. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the room dimly lit by lightbulbs masquerading as candles. It smelled like fear. I began to sketch the faint outline of a man pushed to the edge of sanity.

There was no sound. Only a distant dripping and the old man wheezing. The rattle in his lungs said he wasn’t long for this world. I wasn’t sure he even knew I was there. It was an hour before he bothered to say anything at all.

“Have you been a good boy?” he asked, his voice low and rumbling like a distant stampede.

“I don’t know, Sir.”

“What — do you want — for Christmas?”

“I don’t know, Sir.”

“You don’t know very much do you?” He never looked at me and I never replied. I could feel him staring at me through his soul. “Not that it matters. What does it even mean—to be good? Everyone gets what they want anyway.”

“I guess so Sir.”

“They’ll come for me eventually son.”

“Who will come for you?”

“The Mujahedeen.” Santa wheezed.

“The Muja—?”

“Those bastard Communists too. They take everything you ever loved — one inch at a time — and they call it progress. One day, the only way you’ll be able to tell it’s Christmas is when you hear about a family dying in a house fire on the local news.”

“I don’t understand Sir.”

“One day you will. Just leave me.” He began to cough hysterically. I turned and tiptoed silently towards the door. The brass handle was cold to the touch. “Oh and kid — ”

“Yes Sir?” I turned to see him look at me in the eye, a wry smile daring through his yellow beard.

“Have a Merry Christmas.” He whimpered. Tossing me a Cadbury’s selection box.

The Arndale was alive. A harmony of novelty jumpers and the distant ringing of bells. I never looked back at the grotto. I wasn’t sure if what I’d experienced was even real. Until I heard the clap of a gunshot. Right then and there — I knew — Christmas was fucked.

Merry Christmas.