I hand in my dissertation draft to my supervisor tomorrow, so right now Christmas involves only listening to carols on my laptop as I go through the painstaking process of editing, moving ideas in and out of my footnotes, and calculating exactly how many hours of productive awake time I have left before I have to hand-in. As a Christmas Elf adopted at birth, this upsets me immensely.
Oh, Christmas! Where have you gone old friend?
My in-again, out-again roommate complains that Christmas is horrendously Eurocentric: all the snow, midwinter feasting food and reindeer antlers is in no way representative of South Africa's sun, midsummer Chardonnays and giant foam fingers for the cricket that abound at this time of year.
But oh, Christmas! CHRISTMAS!
In the spirit of relativism--it's appropriate because I'm registered for a masters in anthropology and anthropologists love not only relativism but big words that are so meaninglessly vague their primary value is the aesthetics of their typography--here's how Christmas came to me on Tuesday.
'Twas just before 7am and the sun was already wilting my flowers as I left the house. I stood on the pavement at Main Road, waiting for a taxi to take me to gym. I got on the first Wynberg one, blurry-eyed and with one running shoe tied annoyingly tighter than the other. I sat miserably, cursing the early morning and the dissertation that caused it. I saw no 'keep yo 'fro off my window' sticker so I leant my head against the glass and stared out as no one drove passed us at this ungodly hour, on this ungodly day.
And then, oh just then as we drove by where the Sunrise Chip and Ranch used to be, the gaaitjie whipped out a recycled coffee tin. He'd stuck on bits of Christmas wrapping to give it a bit of festive flair. He shook the tin at us, demanding our attention. Our confused looks prompted him to cry out defensively: "It's for my Christmas bonus!"
The woman next to me snorted, the woman next to her howled. I don't know if it was the early hour, the earnest eyebrows of the gaaitjie, the driver's resigned sigh or just the state of my nerves, but I joined the woman two seats down from me in the laugh that reverberated off the taxi walls. "But have you ever?" the woman asked between gulps of breath. I shook my head.
"Sorry man," I said to him, "I only have enough for the ride there and back. But Merry Christmas!"
He didn't appreciate our derision and muttered out the window as he put his coffee tine away.
Oh, Christmas; it's a magical time.
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