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According to the popular Christmas song, this is the most wonderful time of the year, but surely it is also the most dangerous time? Christmas is not just about parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting and carolling out in the snow. It also involves diseases for spreading, grannies for flattening and animal importation rules for flouting.
The facts speak for themselves. Every house in the land can expect a visit from a reindeer with an alarmingly red nose. The high colour surely points to a long-running and chronic viral infection yet he never wears a mask. It’s a well-known fact that half the country succumbs to a cold or flu after Christmas. Coincidence? I think not.
The same reindeer has been implicated in a fatal hit and run incident involving a beloved grandparent. Is there any other time in the year when we joyfully sing about a grandparent being run over by an antlered mammal? Yes, the vehicle piloted by the unruly deer was a festive sleigh but don’t let that minimise the gravity of the offence. After all, there were hoof prints on Grandma’s forehead and Claus marks on her back, and yet the offenders continued on their merry way.
The case never went to court, of course, but had it done so, I think we all know how that would have ended, given Mr Claus’s connections.
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Is there a judge in the land who has not benefited from his largesse as a child?
Saint Nicholas has also been implicated in an adulterous and unsaintly liaison with a married woman, as witnessed by her own child who saw the pair canoodling under the mistletoe. Granted, the child did not seem too traumatised when he sang about it but, given that he was intent on telling everyone, it must have made Christmas dinner as frosty as a snowman. And most likely their harmonious family life came crashing down around their ears on St Stephen’s Day.
And then you have the encouragement to illegally import endangered wildlife by that child who urged Santa to bring her a hippopotamus. It is troubling that she doesn’t give a moment’s thought to the regulations concerning the importation of semi-aquatic mammals. Not to mind the cruelty involved in bringing one of those large animals into a family home. She rejects eminently sensible gifts such as dolls and dinky toys and petulantly insists on the hippo.
Of course, she promises it will stay in the garage but that’s what they all say, and before you know it there’s a hippopotamus sprawled on the sofa, taking lumps out of the cushions and urinating in the potted plants.
Hippos aren’t the only dangerous animals entering family homes during the festive season, if the Twelve Days of Christmas is an accurate depiction of yuletide gifting. The late Frank Kelly highlighted with pinpoint precision the sad reality of receiving the 12 gifts. Battles raging between the turtle doves, French hens and partridges. Swans turning savage in the bathroom. Cows eating leaves of the pear tree. And then you had maids-a-milking scandalously smooching piping pipers and drumming drummers.
If a few of the lords, ladies and maids established new romantic relationships then good luck to them, because every second Christmas song involves heartbreak and broken relationships. Poor old George Michael gave his heart away last Christmas, but it was promptly returned the very next day. And one year later, he is still clearly pining for his lost love.
Joni Mitchell is looking for a river to skate away on because she has gone and lost the best baby she ever had. Elvis is contemplating a blue Christmas without his love and, as for Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl, well they’re stuck in a police cell on Christmas Eve, competing to see who can hurl the greatest insults.
But at least Bing Crosby will be home for Christmas. You can plan on me, he sings. But after ordering that presents be put by the tree and requesting snow and mistletoe, he then suggests that he mightn’t be home at all. He may only be there in his dreams. Really, Bing? How is anyone supposed to plan an elaborate dinner with that kind of uncertainty?
But is any Christmas song as heartbreaking as Nat King Cole mournfully singing about the little boy that Santa forgot? He wanted a drum and a few soldiers but instead got nothing.
The poor child watched the lucky boys playing with their new toys before he wandered home to play with last year’s broken bits.
The most wonderful time of the year, you say? That poor laddie who didn’t have a daddy might respectfully disagree.