A Vicar's First Christmas

Ss Philip & James Whitton

And so it came to pass that Christmas came to pass, and that Christmas present fast became Christmas past. The Christmas to which I refer was, as a Vicar, my first and I hope and pray will not become my last. I arrived with hopes and a few more aspirations. The truth is, dear readers, that each was amply surpassed. Of my train of thought you may inquire, and on I get with it, pretty fast. 

As a curate, in many ways the show that is Christmas is laid on by others. One joins an organisation that has its routines and rituals, and it is incumbent upon the curate to slot in, pick up some of the duties, and generally crack on. That changes, subtly, as the Incumbent. Yes, we join an organisation with its routines and rituals, but not a single one would happen without our 'agreement'. 

As September edges into October edges into November, as the New Vicar, it fast becomes apparent that an unspoken expectation develops. What are doing this Christmas, Farv? The response was, this year, along the lines of 'what you did last year is good this, so I can watch and learn'. A pall of relief fell over the community.

Then the great feast arrives, Advent flies past with a pace, and the services start to loom. I confess that threw a few curved balls to see what response I would get - a meditation on the penultimate Saturday before Christmas, opting to sing the Preface at Midnight Mass - things like that. The response was good, though if I am honest the lock-changes occupied people's minds more than my liturgical adaptions. 

Priests will tell you that Christmas is a busy time. Poppycock. Actually, in the great scheme of things, it is about the same as the rest of the year on one level, although the burden of stress seems to increase on another level. We churn out more services, yes; but the meetings abate, the schools close and many aspects of a Vicar's day fall away. Lots of carols, lots of stress. The stress is as a result of knowing that, to a greater or lesser extent, the parish Christmas is in my hands. That is a big thing to absorb. I am blessed with brother priests and readers who were able to look after a few services, and sitting back in a pretty cope was still stressful. What if ... what if ... what if? We want Christmas to be perfect, unique and fit for use and fit for God. Anything less is, to most of us, abject failure. We worry about numbers, collections, musicians arriving on time, all that stuff.

In the end, although I would have sweated every bead whatever I knew the outcome to be, it was a wonderful Christmas. The stress implicit in the 'what ifs' is balanced in the satisfaction of a well attended service, the faces of children engaging with the content, the laughs of typically straight-laced adults, feedback, swollen collections, people coming back already, myriad myriad new faces and returned familiar ones. I didn't make it happen, because I am but one wheel in a very large cog, but that doesn't mean I didn't pat myself on the back on Boxing Day. This Vicar is blessed by a capable, committed and energetic flock, most of whom added to the celebrations in specific ways. The church was full most of the time, and with minimal stress from anyone (apart from the Vicar).

It was everything I had dreamed of and hoped for, several times over. 

Late, But Sincerely Meant

or not, in this case

By the time I collapsed after the last Christmas Service, I had forgotten to do something very important. It wasn't that I had forgotten to cook the chipolatas, although I did, and it wasn't that I forgot to put out cranberry sauce, which I also did fail to do - it was to write a post on this thing (and I had turned off the computer).

So, belatedly (but not, at the same time), I would like to wish every one of you a happy and holy Christmas, and hope-filled New Year. I pray that your prayers are answered, but that in any instance 2012 is happy for you all. 

I want, too, to thank you for your support and friendship here. It has been an interesting year to say the least, but that has caused me to be less present here at times. That you come back, engage, and regard this drivel as worthy of a moment of your precious time means the whole world to me. 

Thank you. 

'Tis The Season to Be Grumpy

It's a funny thing, this whole Christmas pavlova. In itself it is a wonderful thing, hope-filled and hope-fuelled. We have Baybee Jeezuss, Lickel Donkay and Mairee and Joziff. We have many pies-a-mincing, much wine-a-mulling, considerable alpine trees-a-dropping, the prospect of a good number of under-cooked turkeys-a-poisoning, and much much  more. I love Christmas, for all the right reasons, for how it makes me feel like a kid again, for the theological and scriptural stuff - Crimbo ticks all the boxes. 

Until I step outside of my front door. 

Only in December do humans turn into slavering animals. Only in December do ordinarily friendly folk turn, as if by magic, into red-eyes fire-starters. The fury in the High Street is palpable, where manners and decency are not, manifestly absent as they seem to be. Smiling folk are now grimacing folk. Oh the pressure we pile upon ourselves ...

But I am not immune, oh no. I was in a card shop in the very deliberate act of making a purchase of, well, a card, when I discovered not a single card with Baybee Jeezuss, or even a Joziff for that matter. I could have bought a ton of cards that celebrate that beast of yuletide - the Robin (not that a day throughout the year passes in my garden when I don't see them - which means that a card featuring a grey squirrel would be just as appropriate). This card shop was in the parish of this here religious blogger, Vicar, eejit. I WANT A BAYBEE JEEZUSS, FOOL! But rather than let those words slip out, I simply asked, in a wan wet English defeated way "Do you have any religious cards for Christmas?" to which the reply from a very solid looking woman was "No, mate". I left, when perhaps I should have jumped up on to her counter and mounted a protest and chained my Adonis body to her Epson till. Instead a frowned like a man retaining flatulence

I ought to say, though, that I have seen another side to Christmas this year, apart from that represented above. I have seen my little church full over and over in recent days. I have welcomed people back who had scarpered years ago. I have welcomed people who have never been before. The locals say that numbers are up, and that is great. But not as great as just sitting on my Throne and just reveling in being the Vicar for the first time at Christmas. I have hardly done a thing, the crowd have - but I am like a pig in mud at the moment. Christmas couldn't be any better than that (until I go home to be with the kids when it then improves even more). 

...sigh

Being Without a Vicar

As before, my actions are constrained by a wife who would prefer not to have her picture all over the internet, so I am going to make do, once again, with this poor substitute. My missus isn't too bad to look at either, so you are going to have to jolly well cope with this image.

My comment sort of gives away who I might be talking about. In the Parish of Ss Philip and James in Whitton, that place where I peddle my ecclesiastical wares like a be-cassocked dementer, I have (apparently) 15,000 souls in my cure. The thing is, only 14,997 of them have a Vicar. The fact oft forgot in parish circles is that Mrs Vicarage and the Baby Vicarages, by virtue of the other relationship they hold with the village dog-collar, do not have the care of the Vicar as everyone else has. 

Now, I can hear those Smilers out there squaring up to tell me that I minister in my home - and to that I say this: rubbish. At home, I am someone very distinct, and it is a role I cherish. The roles of husband and father are wonderful, but I don't think that I can do those and be Vicar while wearing the same pants. Simply put, Vicarage families are the families without a Vicar. 

Whilst there is not a thing I can do about that (and I find that clergy wives, male or female, are normally fairly good about making alternative arrangements), I wanted to stand up and pay my respects both to my own wife and family, and to those in their position. As I have said myriad times, it is our wives who have to cope with us parading around the place with our mini Messiah Complexes. Mrs Acular, a gifted woman with her own career, has put much on hold or aside so that I can do my work. I will be endlessly thankful to her, both for that, but also for living in a home that is semi-open to the public, above 'the shop', across the hall from my office, for providing my lightening conductor when I return seething from something or other and just understanding (most of the time) that what I do is unpredictable and vague. It is my work, and it affects her - directly. Yet she has no Vicar to talk it over with, to take pastoral support from. No, she is disenfranchised from the great Church of England 'presence in every community', together with all the 'wives'.

So I pay tribute to them all. I thank them for propping us up, for taking the hit more often than any partner should, for knowing just the right way of coping when we do not, and for taking on a public role that they didn't choose for themselves or the kids. 

To you all, I wish you a Happy Christmas - we'd be lost without you. 

Fresh Revelation Through the Eyes of Children

'Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la la, la la la la. In the life of Mr Vicarage, it means the now regular jaunts around the schools to enjoy their Nativity plays. Regular readers of this blog (thank you) will know how deeply moved I am by each one of them, with offered by the youngest of our children moving most of all.

The added dimension this year is that my own children have just completed their first Nativity. One of the Twins Aculae was a Star, the other a Wise Man. It seems only weeks ago that they were Car-seat fodder, little bundles of indiscriminate squirming. 

Now, they are modern day vehicles of the purest revelation - and let me tell you why. 

In the weeks leading up to the Great Day, they have clearly been rehearsing the words to the songs that they are going to offer the world. The great joy of watching all this happening (professionally and personally) is seeing little ones learn, by-heart, the words to anything up to ten songs which they will and do warble out without a moment's coyness. The thing is, when they come home and tell us the songs they they have working on, or even when they offer a rendition, they are mortified when we join in and sing with them. "How do you know that song, Daddy?". There is the right answer and the honest answer: the right answer is that the teachers told us so that we can help them learn at home; the honest (but wrong) answer is that we did the same songs as kids and in every year since. 

My children, at four years of age believe, with ever fibre of their being, that they are the first to tell the story of Jesus. It is their story to tell, not ours. They believe too that every song that they sing is an innovation just for them. That means, to me at least, that every Nativity play offered by Reception age children is as fresh and real as the Gospel account itself. It is in their hearts; they mean it; yes, they even believe it. They are telling it as they feel it, in all the glorious and beautiful chaos that only kids can bring to such a performance. Give me a little child over Luke the Evangelist any day of the week. One is impressive, the other is life changing, if you but let it.

I have said it before, and I will say it many times again: try being cynical about Christmas after you see a Nativity play offered by the young. They 'get' Christmas more than even I do, and they teach me more about the magic of the Incarnation that I could ever hope to teach them.

Retailer Gets Christmas

I am not normally fussed by the pre-Christmas advertising campaigns of the big retailers - too many memories, most difficult (about retail Christmases being a hard slog and wholly devoid of religion for the most part).

Until last night...

An ad appeared between the many bouts of Gladiator TV that knocked me and Mrs Acular sideways - and it was courtesy of John Lewis. [Link to You Tube courtesy of Martin]

In summary, we were treated to a tale of a boy who is wishing and willing for Christmas to come. He tries to play magic tricks with time, willfully move the hands of the clock faster, and so on. On Christmas Eve, we saw the little lad bolt down his peas, and sprint to bed, clamping shut his eyes in an effort to bring Christmas into view with greater speed than time will allow. I think at this point we could all relate, though in the first viewing did not realise that we were misjudging the motivations of this rather enchanting kid.

Christmas morning dawned and the boy jumped out of bed, paused to regard his mountain of gifts, but darted past them for a parcel secreted in his own cupboard. He retrieved a poorly wrapped (but wrapped none the less) gift and ran in to his parents' bedroom.

His joy was in giving, not in receiving. If ever a perfectly wonderful unexpected heart-warming tears-inducing story-end to a two-minute advert ever existed, I can't remember it. Mrs Acular wept, I swallowed tears back! 

Well done, John Lewis - nail on head!

Perhaps hope really does spring eternal!

From Me To You

The time has come to wish you well
For your Christmas joys to tell.
But please, I urge, do not be sad
For now I stop writing to be a Dad;
Putting the blog aside for family life
And to be a husband to my wife.

...for a few days, that's all.
I hope an order not too tall!

A CatOlick Christmas

A message from a friend ... 

On a  seperate note: after 3.55pm today (sunset in UK), we move into the great feast of Christmas (as all fine liturgists will tell you, the next day starts at sunset the previous day - but that is perhaps why 'proper theologians' laugh at liturgists), and it thereby ceases to be Advent. As a purist, I determine that the time will then be right to post my Christmas cards and start my Christmas shopping. Excellent! Let's hope that Amazon delivers tomorrow before 5am when the kids rise for the Festive Morn!

My Christmas Message

As I sit here in my study looking out at a snow covered view, I concede that I am perhaps about to have my first (to the best of my knowledge) white Christmas. It has been a tough week for many of us in Britain, for reasons of cancelled holidays, late or cancelled deliveries of gifts, cancelled services in some of our churches, general inconvenience, families unable to reunite for the Big Day, those who are at home alone more isolated than before - and a whole array of other things.

"I'm Dreaming of A White Christmas"  - that rather beautiful song seems to sum up and typify our hopes and dreams, our wishes, for Christmas. That wish has now come true, though perhaps not with the end result that had been intended.

This realised Christmas wish caps off an interesting year. In Britain we have a  new coalition government that shows signs of stress at the joints as I write. For many, that form of our government is another wish come true. The Church of England continues to spat over incidentals and over significant matters like the realisation of calling and ministry. People have wished for their place on our governing body and those dreams have come true. In so many countries, we have wished an end to the financial melt-down that has afflicted us all, and our wish came true with the measures introduced in October by the Coalition - perhaps not what many of us expected. 

So many wishes - so many coming true in ways hitherto unexpected. All reasonable, none wrong - but a lesson perhaps about being careful what we wish for. 

As we focus on the empty manger in expectation of the coming of the Baby, let us hold on to the most important wish tightly, the wish that comes true for us every Christmas, that we start another year with hope, something about which to be joyful. Life sometimes seems to be a catalogue of the 'nearly', the 'almost', and the 'if only' - except the Incarnation. From that moment alone, all that is good spings forth. From this wish-come-true can we dare to make renewed wishes for 2011, for ourselves and our loved ones.

May I wish every one of you who reads this, a wonderful, peaceful and blessed Christmas. If you read this without the faith that I hold, may you too be granted a wonderful Winter Festival. May this time be for us all one of hope and joy and a gateway to a new year of opportunity.

Remembering Young Carers

I sat in my study yesterday bemoaning my poorly lot because of the imposition of snow. I was replete with self-centred angst about how life could ever re-start, and whether the snow would ever thaw.

In the end, I resolved that I had a house full of food, even if not the menu items of choice for the festive day. I had wine and gin, power and heat, my health, a couple of cars parked with full tanks of petrol, a job that grants me flexibility more than most, and in the end, nothing so major that its deferral would cause anyone a problem except me. In short, I have it alright - snow or no snow.

Something then emerged on my own horizon which caused me to feel like something of an ass - as it gave rise to me thinking not just about those wonderful people who care for loved ones at home, but youngsters who are the primary carer for a parent or other adult relative at home. What must life be like for them in such adverse weather in the run-up to Christmas?

To my shame, I know no such young carers, or am unaware if indeed I do.This video is courtesy of Young Carers.

We are all tearing around (or not) trying to get Christmas Day perfect. It will be perfect, whatever we do about it - and a deficit of brussels won't hinder that. Please spare a thought for these kids who do so much real good for those closest to them, often unnoticed, often unthanked, often not understood by the world outside - and for the Christmas they are trying to bring together, that their family may enjoy the day too. Take our adult lives and the pressures of making Christmas perfect, subtract time, car, credit cards, hands-on help and add back the needs of an adult who requires so much help at home - then we might come close. 

... but only ever close.

Christmas in the Real II

Further to my earlier post today, I have an additional perspective.

It was my great joy to witness the Early Years Nativity, and this closely on the heels of the Key Stage II carol service last night. The presentation today was raw, about the potential in small children who stepped up the mark, with varying degrees of ability and success. They were surrounded by loving families who willed them on to success, and in the end, all of the little ones were. 

The Christmas story is, after all, a tale of a child, his family and their hopes and fears. It is a story about raw hope to be found in a young life yet to be lived. It is about parents who guide and inspire, but in the end, are passengers on the journey that their child has embarked upon. It is about mistakes and best efforts, about unknowing and blindness to futures - about wondering. It is a story of a child who will make the best of his chance in whatever that direction will take him, who will get it wrong, who will get it right, will do it with eyes open and heart open. It is a story about a child who will give without counting the cost, and of parents who could  not find it possible to love more than they already do.

To me, all of these qualities are embedded in the very presentations that happened before me today. Every facet of the Christmas Story so far as the 'human' is concerned, is a present reality in the eyes and efforts of little children and their pride and joy. No Christmas can ever be complete until it has been seen through the eyes of little children.

Christmas in the Real

The essence of a sermon preached recently

The Christmas that we have come to know and love in Britain at least, is wrapped in imagery and notions that are wonderful for marketting and evocation, but less pinned to the facts. We see the usual Christmas Card images of little domed houses to represent a tiny peaceful Bethlehem (and the carol tell us so too). We see the 'magazine rack' manger in art and in the wonderful nativity plays that are unfolding all around us at the moment. We see the noble shepherds huddled around their hillside while their sheep gambol around the place. Cow sheds, silence and stillness are ever-present qualities in all the things that we see and sing about. A moment of attention to the real world of first-century Palestine will reveal all these images to be flawed, and to my mind, unhelpful.

The picture is at the checkpoint to enter Bethlehem from Jersualem - a forbidding and unsafe feeling place as one passes through the gates. The Bethlehem that I have visited and heard about is a busy place, a place of bustle and life. I am given to understand that it always was. The place is on a hillside so the warm air carried with it the fragrance of sweet smelling plants mixed with a very light tinge of effluent in places. Shepherds had a poor reputation, reegarded in  their day as borderline criminals - marginalised, excluded. The cow shed never existed - the Baby and his family were in a maze of caves in the hillside used as stables and storehouses. Mangers are hollowed out stone slabs, and if anyone has ever kept a pet, will know how saliva-washed sticky and snotty they can get.  I am sure that the Manger in our carols was no exception. The Holy family were refugees in an occupied territory, perhaps accustomed to checkpoints themselves. The Holy mother was herself a child of fourteen. How many labels and judgements would the Holy Family attract in enlightened 21st Century Britain today, I wonder?

It do not mean to decimate Christmas - quite the oppsite. I want to celebrate the place of the Birth of the Messiah in the same way that The Father did, and by seeing the world for what it is - real and flawed. God chose the real world of a messed up first-century Palestine as the place where he would cause his Incarnation. There were likely pretty verdant pastures with all the qualities of present-day Christmas imagary that God could have used - but he didn't. He chose messed up, messy, flawed, imperfect, stinky, snotty reality to breathe life into his only Son. 

This is a matter of complete hope for me, and should be for all of us. As we make our way through our lives, day by day, mistake upon error, mis-judgement alongside poor timing - we can take considerable comfort that that was the precise environment that God chose to come among us. It tells me, at least, that Our Lord understands his children only too well, and that in knowing us as we are in the good and the less good of living as human beings, accepts us as we hope all parents do (or should). Christmas did happen in the real, happens in the real every year, and all that will take place between us and God in the future will be placed into the context that we find ourselves in - not a picture perfect representation of where we think we should be.

An English Christmas in the Unfolding

 

The management are a little pooped after sermonising thrice yesterday - so offer this little perspective on the Twelve Days of Christmas as a lightener for a Monday morning in the manky mist. 

You gotta larf, 'avent ya!

innit

The Pointlessness of Christmas?

I am guessing that you are wondering where this post is going, with a title such as this. You are not alone.

I am not sure if this is a world-spanning phenomenon or just a quaint British one, or if any of you who are reading this have noticed it. Our tellies are replete with adverts selling flooring, furnishing and white goods. Most are advertising the Sale-in-Perpetuity, offering baggy settees for 'five-nine-nine', reduced from something daft like £1700.00. It's legal but it doesn't reflect the absolute letter of truthfulness either, but it is not that which I seek to examine.

At the moment, those adverts will have a little seasonal clause:

"Buy your three-piece suite before 11:16am on December 8th and we will ....."

"Order your flooring before 02:52 on Sunday 5th December and we will ..."

"Cough up the wonga before the close of trade yesterday and we will ..."

"Sign your life away in our stores before you next take breath and we will ..."

What? What is the panacea to which all retailers cling in these weeks? Yes ...

...they will GUARANTEE delivery/fitting before Xmas/Christmas...

Now, I am a cynic, so in the spirit of open-mindedness, I have to ask if these noble cash-purloining emporia are hoping to render your homes to the status of perfect in time for the moment of the Incarnation. Are they concerned that the entire population will want to return home from a Christmas Mass to a brand spanking new shag-pile? 

Of course not - don't be daft. I am fairly sure that Lord Harris of Peckham, or the present owner of the beleagured Allied Carpets, or the top honchos of DFS or Dreams are fixated on the 'Away in a Manger' thing, and let's be honest - none of us are that worried about having a new lounge carpet or furniture that we won't be at home to enjoy? Are we? You'd be surprised. I use to take sales in June that would be intended for supply in the week before Xmas/Christmas, quite routinely.

It seems that British culture 'gets' Christmas in its own quirky off-centre way. Churches will be busy just shy of midnight on Christmas Eve with people who won't have stumbled through the doors since the last year. Yes, they might have had a drink, but a symptom of inebriation is not typically a zeal for an encounter with a deity. The retailers frame the importance that we innately hold for a day, and for a season, for which the meaning so often seems lost. Perhaps it was never lost, just rather it has become less religious. The press would have us believe that most of our little kiddies have no idea what Christmas is about; disavow yourselves of that idea now.

White vans will be hurling consumer durables around our streets for the next few weeks, all labouring under what seems at the face of it to be a rather odd deadline - the birth of Jesus Christ. They will never use that language, but in the end, they are selling to a market that regards Christmas as holy at some level or another, and of not holy, as special - the only day in the year that we ever work towards in this way.

Behind Closed Doors

We have now reached that time of year when we wander around our streets as often in the dark as in the light. For me, the sight of houses with their curtains drawn on a crisp starry night is an evocative one. The orange hue in the light that always seem to escape through the windows always grants me that sense of warmth that such light implies. I see these houses, and I instinctively regard them as warm, happy, by default full of kids relaxing by a default crackling fire. I find myself wanting to be inside those houses. Perhaps there is something of the Christmas card about such a sight, but it is nonetheless compelling. 

I was reminded this week that behind the closed doors of some houses it is far from warm and evocative, far from suggestive of Yuletide Joy. I heard this week of the plight of a child not too far from my own home, who had  yet to reach their second birthday when they were recieved into hospital  with a crushed skull. Such was the extent of that little child's injuries, they will not celebrate Christmas and will never be two. As a result of injuries sustained in that same orange glow, that child died a few days ago, and while the other injuries pale into relative insignificance compared to the primary one, they tell the story of that little-one's experience of this life. I suspect that it will be a life that will be measured by a greater number of injuries than months lived.

We will soon leap headlong into the 'Away In a Manger' season. The carols will shortly pipe up and link seamlessly one into the other until the day our Saviour comes. More often than not, those carols will be hollered out by excited children for whom the Little Baby Jesus is still something to be excited about. The priests of our country are already steeling themselves for the onslaught of three weeks of 'Most Highly Flavoured Gravy, Gloriaa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a', but if we let ourselves, we too will be intoxicated by it every time, and for that I thank God.

My reason for writing this was to remember some people. While we wail out our favourite carols, there will be frightened children who will watch what we do from afar. They may even be there, in body if not in spirit. There will be children who will know no love or warmth this Christmas, and I will hold them in my prayers every day. I want also to remember the beleagured people whose work (often thankless) is to discover this pain and suffering and often save these little-ones' lives before it is too late. Often they succeed, but every once in a tragic while, they discover the pain of a child too late to help. May God bless them and all for whom they work so hard.

Holiday Jabs

I confess, I found myself today, by accident, inadvertantly and beyond all reasonable control, watching the Jeremy Kyle Show. As we know, Jeremy Kyle is the King of the Chavs, so the programme meant very little to me.

However, it is not about that that I write. In the middle of the social anthropology lesson that unfolded before my eyes as I tidied the house, there was an advert - from DFS. In itself it is not a remarkable thing, and as you read this, you are likely wondering what an advert from DFS and a bottom be-needled has to do with the price of fish.

The DFS advert in question was for its Christmas campaign - so the normal muzak was suffused with donging chimes and jingling sleigh-bells, with a merry arborfeature behind the funky furnishings, as is the wont of the marketting men when trying to evoke the festive season for us mere mortals. 

But it works. It works like that bloody awful song by Slade works (yes, Nobby, it's Chriiiiiiiiiismasssss), like  'Pipes of Peace' works, like Troika works, like anything crooned by Sir Cliff works - (though not Jona Lewie - as 'Stop the Cavalry' was released in summer in France and other places, so how it ever became synonymous with Chr ... oh yes, it has sleigh-bells for two seconds) - the case for the prosecution is complete, M'lud. The DFS marketting men, like so many in their trade, have recognised that some things have become instinctive - we are the Yuletide Pavlov's Dogs - ding a dong and we crave turkey and family discord. 

The first such dingy-dongy Christmas advert was witnessed my your humble servant, the Vernacular Curate if you please, 26 days after the end of the school summer holiday. I am an uber-cynic, but I am nonetheless a fan of Christmas - I am not divorced from the childlike expectation, the inner euphoria of its prospect, the enjoyment of the evocation of Christmas night and crackling fires, and yes, the breathtaking moment when we herald Christmas, the Incarnation and all that is perfect and hopeful about the baby Jesus at that service in the middle of the night. I get excited, in October, in November and all through December.

My excitement is always tempered with a murmering worry - what if I become immune to the effect of Christmas because of collosal over-exposure? What if the year comes when I am sick to the back teeth of Christmas by mid December, wishing it over and gone? 

I like my Christmas drug, I love it, and under its effects I too can be a child inside - and for a grunt like me, that is a rare privilege. What I fear is heightened immunity and enhance resistance to it - I fear the loss of my Christmas.