It’s Christmas and I can’t contain it, I’m so happy so manic so wildly lit up! I want Santa and I want him now.
Santa is a famous fat man who understands snow and stars and birds and Bambi and visits kids at night, gifting all sorts of stuff.
Watching, waiting, glowing kids prick up nostrils, smooth back curly hair (dark or fair) looking for gifts, for surprising animals (a fox, a chimp, a fish, a rhino), putting out Dad’s gin and Mum’s cola.
Christmas wasn’t always fun. In old days, Christmas was, for many folk, dark and morbid. Christmas had Satan.
Satan was a bad man. Satan had a chariot and took infants from cots at night. Singing songs of damnation, Satan slung sorry bairns into sacks and took his loot into his Christmas shop, a shop dimly lit with dragons and mouldy sprouts.
Anyway, you don’t want to know about Satan. It’s Christmas! I’m planning a carnival for fun with biscuits, rum, trout, scallops, custard and vodka – all of it in bright glass, pans and pots – all of it for folk in our church.
I’ll put this pillar of gifts by our arbor of oak and holly and folk will sing hymns, sing loudly for Santa and Mary (although sadly, many may sing for that awful man Satan).
SANDERLINGS 