Happy fucking xmas, fuckers!

I hope you all stuffed your faces and got got everything on your wish list; not limited to, but probably including: an iPhone, an iPod Touch, an iPod nano, a MacBook, a PSP, a PS3 and if you are seriously lucky, a Wii and if you are super lucky, naturally you found an nlh deluxe under your tree!

I’ve had a fairly normal xmas, well normal for me, because I’ve worked right through the holidays and I ain’t finished yet! I worked xmas eve, xmas day and I am working tonight, boxing day too.

Apparently, loads of people have to work over xmas, only I didn’t “have” to. I chose to and given the chance, I will probably choose to again next year.

Next year is a long way, away. Who knows what the next 12 months may bring? Do you? If you answered yes, then email me with some horse racing results for next week, or better yet the lottery numbers for the next giant rollover. Please?

The first xmas I ever sold was 18 years ago. I was offered the chance to do a shift in a newsroom in NYC for double pay, 400 cool dollaroonies.

Did I just type “dollaroonies”? I must be stoned.

I am.

I remember ringing up my mother and informing her that I was going to be a newswhore for xmas and I’d be missing the usual family gathering. That was 1989. She was less than impressed, but ka-ching! That was a lot of money! It still is!

As a kid growing up, xmas was a big deal and in my (now estranged) extended family, there was much celebrating to do with both my mother’s and father’s side of the family.

As I got older and we fell out with various branches of our family tree, xmas’s were downscaled, but still big events in my immediate family.

I liked it mainly for the gifts.

Xmas stopped being fun when I stopped getting bicycles.

The last xmas I shared with my parents was 1991 and every year since, I’ve either worked or just not gone. My dad died in Sept 2004, my mother is very disabled and has been confined to a bed, following a stroke in 2003 and now lives in a nursing home. That’s 13 xmas’s avoided.

I tried to write about all of this last year and I couldn’t finish it. I went into far more detail and skipping down memory lane was difficult, if not impossible and I gave up. I still have what I wrote, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it again. Hey ho.

For most people, I think the holidays are pure stress. All you need to do is visit your local high street or shopping district and watch how cunty everyone is to each other to see proof of this. Expectations have to be met at all costs, even if it means elbowing some old lady out of the way, so you can get the last copy of Nigella Express.

Xmas for me, has come to mean my family, my immediate family. When I think about xmas, I think about the four of us, my parents, my younger brother and me.

I can remember spending many xmas eve’s unable to sleep, because I was so excited; adrenaline coursing though my veins, making it impossible to rest.

I can remember the smell of my mother’s home-baked xmas cookies.

I can remember my dad swearing when he thought I couldn’t hear him, as he tried valiantly to assemble some crappy toy that wouldn’t survive in one piece for more than a week.

And I can remember my younger brother, just as excited as me, checking to see if our parents were awake at ridiculously early times, because we weren’t allowed to go downstairs until they were ready to accompany us for the ritual ripping of the wrapping paper.

I can remember more, much more, but it all just depresses me now because I’ll never have those times with my family again. I can’t.

These days, I don’t get excited about xmas, instead I count the seconds until it’s the 2nd of January. Then its all over and I can exhale.

Though when I think about that first xmas I sold, back in 1989, for 400 dollaroonies, I wish I could give them a refund. Four hundred bucks for one more xmas with my family would be the bargain of the millennium!

I hope wherever you are, all your holiday dreams came true and you spent it with people far less miserable than me. Maybe having me trapped behind a desk over the holidays is good for everyone, not just me. We’ll never know…