Two Notes on Impending Christmas ‘24

My Christmas holiday has now begun and I’m really very happy about that. 

I particularly love these years when Christmas falls in a way that allows me to get a few days off before the big day arrives. It gives a little time to walk around and smell the cloves, so to speak, and drink in the feeling of ‘something nice coming’, rather than the bulk of the holiday being spent having a slight tang of ‘something’s over now’.

And I’m walking around, and I get thoughts about things. Christmassy things. As usual, none of these thoughts are of a particular depth or relevance. The main attribute they have is that they are my own. So, I thought I’d see if I can now remember two of these thoughts while I’m typing and, if so, set them down. Then, when I (hopefully) look back on these scribblings in years to come, as I sometimes do, I might get some taste of where my head was at, in December 2024. Don’t expect much from here on. These are, after all, only my thoughts.

Christmas Radio Times: I had a thought about the Christmas edition of the Radio Times. It has been sitting under the tree for the past week. I’ve peeped inside but I haven’t sat with it. Until yesterday, which was Saturday. That was the day the programmes in the Radio Times began. I opened it up, read for a while about what was on offer for Saturday, and set a few bits to record. 

I’ve been getting the Christmas Radio Times since I was a small boy, even though we’re here in Ireland and the RTE Guide is the weapon of choice for 99% of the populace. I loved radio from a very young age and used to get nearly as much from the radio listings as I did from the television ones. So, every year I still get it, even though it’s got really quite expensive now. This year’s outlay was 9 Euro! Anyway, I opened it up yesterday morning and immediately realised that, for me at least, the item in my hand had devalued by a full 50% by the very act of starting to use it. 

I realised that much of the joy in the magazine now lies in a) its arrival on the shop shelves, offering a portent of a holiday to come as clear as a morning star in the east and b) the untapped potential of what might be on offer between those covers. The deterioration of a) is pretty clear. Like the Ghost of Christmas Past, and like most everything of the season, the potency wanes with each passing hour until it is, once again, gone. My Radio Times is like Schrodinger’s Cat, except the box is now open and I can see that, dead or alive, the contents is merely a cat.

Water My Tree: Every year we get a real Christmas tree. I’ve written before here about the extraordinary interaction I have with the Christmas Tree Man since the year I gave my tree away, so we won’t go into that here again. Here’s the thing with my tree, and I hope you won’t brand me as being cruel, I think I have just been a little unthinking, which is perhaps worse. Until this year, I didn’t really understand the real Christmas tree in my living room needs water. Sorry, I just didn’t. I tended to leave a bowl of water adjacent to the base of the tree and thought that was okay. The trees generally clung on to acceptability until the start of the New Year and so everything was fairly okay. 

This year, though, has been slightly different. The tree I got is a little smaller than previous tress. Not substantially so and not for any reason of economics. It was just the prettiest durned tree on the lot, as my American friends might or might not say. Perhaps because the tree is that little bit smaller, it seems to have started to deteriorate more quickly that the trees of yore. It just looks a bit ‘saggy’ and there’s an aura of ‘advanced tree’ about it that I never noticed before. 

When I went and looked it up on the Internet, I was shouted at from all sides, “YOUR TREE NEEDS WATER’ or ’YOUR TREE WILL DIE WITHOUT WATER.’ I was immediately in a high state of guilt and remorse and I resolved to amend my oversight forthwith. But there was a problem, The metal base of my tree (re-used every year) extends out quite a bit, such that I would need a tray with a diameter of just over 800mm to accommodate it. I searched all over town but couldn’t find anything that worked. Removing the base in favour of some other, more water-friendly, base would be a nightmare (before Christmas) what with all the lights and baubles and things in it. 

So what to do? I’m rather proud of myself that I devised a little ‘water delivery’ system at the base of the tree after puzzling over it for a while. A slender plastic lunch box lid, slipped under the slightly elevated part of the stand at the base of the tree, filled with water, and then a cut sponge squeezed between the base of the tree and the water in the Pyrex lid. The sponge, even as I speak, is soaking the water up and delivering it into the base of the tree by a mixture of Capillary Action and Blind Faith. Will it make a blind bit of difference to my dehydrated tree. The newborn Christ only knows. But it’s made me feel a bit better about the whole thing. At least I’ve done something. 

I’ve just been and had a look and the tree seems to be drinking up the water although maybe it’s all in the sponge. Please don’t give me good advice about this. I will do better next year (artificial tree, probably) and my ingenious little arrangement has brought me some temporary peace of mind.

And, at the end of the day, isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

I wish you all a Happy Christmas and, hopefully, some Temporary Peace of Mind.

x