There's something to be said for a really lousy Christmas. A nice Christmas with family and friends can be a joy and a treasured memory forever. But a really shitty December 25? That can have its own charms too.
I think you tend to have your best and your worst Christmas Days in your 20's when you're away from home for the first time. It can be a glorious adventure, in some faraway land. Or it can just be really dire.
As I get older I have strangely fond memories of the latter; of Christmas Day breakfast in a 24-hour cafe in Kings Cross, toasted sandwiches and coffee with the street people, the prostitutes and drug dealers, reading a three-day-old newspaper and contemplating a couple of hours napping on the brown couch back at the empty share house.
That particular year didn't bottom out the way it could have, however. One of my flatmates, Paul, invited me over to his parents' place to pick at their leftovers and I filled a doggy bag with turkey and all the fixings.
No, I reckon my best worst Christmas was spent with family. Specifically with my brother Andrew, a year that mum and dad were overseas visiting relatives. We were sharing a place up on Stuartholme Road, an old wooden house on the side of the mountain, which gave the impression of hanging, suspended in the rainforest. It was a great place, with good flatmates, but they all had families and homes to go to. We were our family and this was our home, at least that year.
We were also a pair of shiftless, layabout 20-somethings. I'm not sure how we wasted our time in the era before wifi, or even dial-up internet, but we did. Having agreed that at some point we'd have to go out "and get some beer and some meat or something" for what would, we agreed, be the most awesome, hassle free Christmas ever, we found ourselves on Christmas Eve in a house without food, drink or company of any sort.
We had managed to lay in a stash of Humphrey Bogart video tapes, so there was that.
But around about 5.30 in the afternoon, we figured, what the hell. The corner store was open. Time to get festive.
Unfortunately when we got there, the cupboard was bare.
We managed to buy a packet of processed ham – reduced to clear as its use-by date was perilously close – and a loaf of day-old leaf and twig bread. This became our Christmas lunch. And dinner. I would say it did for Boxing Day too, but we'd run out of spoiled ham by that time.
We did manage to find some beer, so we had sad ham sangers, sadder home brew and a Humphrey Bogart marathon for Christmas.
And for some reason, I recall it quite fondly.
0 comments
New User? Sign up