{"id":5,"date":"2010-12-26T16:41:05","date_gmt":"2010-12-26T14:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/?p=5"},"modified":"2011-01-03T10:42:01","modified_gmt":"2011-01-03T08:42:01","slug":"a-quiet-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/?p=5","title":{"rendered":"A Quiet Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday 26th<\/sup> December 2010<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve developed an aversion for the Christmas hoo-ha during my adult years. It probably originated in childhood, when Christmas increasingly seemed to become overlaid by parental tensions about money. We were not poor, but we were a large family and the additional expense arising from Christmas always stressed the family budget. I was also aware that the preparation of an elaborate meal trapped my Mother in the kitchen for days. Although my parents didn\u2019t fully subscribe to the gender stereotypes of the Fifties and Sixties, as a family of boys until the late arrival of my sister, we never quite embraced the idea of sharing the workload in the kitchen at this time of year. (In our defence though, we boys did at least do the washing up.)<\/p>\n

As I discovered during my university Psychology course, I have a rather contrary personality, and the runaway commercialisation of an essentially Christian religious festival stuck in my craw. That is not special pleading – I was equally offended a few years ago when there seemed to be a brief plague of commercialism surrounding some of the Jewish Holy days. I am not at all devout, but I am offended by the growing PC meddling with Christmas – it seems that everybody except Christians have “a right not to be offended.” Offended by what? We have the Americans to blame for that originally, although some UK Boroughs have made PC rulings which have left even Sikhs and Muslims gasping with derision at the ease with which 2,000 years of culture is being surrendered by woolly-brained apologists .<\/p>\n

As a nation, South Africans have become increasingly bumptious, arrogant, self-centred and concerned with appearances, traits which manifest themselves particularly irritatingly in Johannesburg shopping malls at Christmas time. The fault is undoubtedly my own that I have allowed these factors to grow into an aversion for the entire season, but there it is…<\/p>\n

I spent the day with my brother and his family, enjoying a simple, adequate cold meal in the company of his sons and their delightful partners. (Sad that the word \u201cpartners\u201d has become loaded and ambiguous… OK, the \u201cpartners\u201d are delicious young women!) The real feast was a feast of companionship and conversation, ebbing and flowing as neighbours dropped in during the afternoon.<\/p>\n

Stephen shared a story about his Christmas Eve with \u201cthe soccer boys\u201d. He has taken on the mentorship of the local soccer team, which has also given him the opportunity to impart some life-skills to the lads. With Steve\u2019s guidance, the oldest of the boys has organised his friends into a work-party clearing alien vegetation from a neighbour\u2019s property, with the result that they have, by their own admission, earned more money in the past fortnight than they have had in their lives. Steve took them into Caledon on Friday, and inevitably they blew the lot within a couple of hours. The noteworthy point though is that, apart from yet another hair colour change – their group identity thing – all the young men spent their entire earnings eagerly buying presents for their families. Their few hundred Rand has inevitably become part of the Christmas Sales Statistics and whilst the gamut of their motivation may be quite complex, the generosity of the young men cannot be discounted.<\/p>\n

On Friday evening the core of the team had come around for a social, during which they were introduced to sparklers. The oldest of the youngsters is 24, yet the whole team turned cartwheels, painted with light in the air, and generally behaved as if they were ten years old, they were so enchanted. I sense that Steve & Sandy will long treasure the memory the young men\u2019s uninhibited delight derived from a few R4.00 packets of sparklers.<\/p>\n

Withdrawing to an impoverished community for the Spending Season was an experiment in a way, an opportunity for me to step back and reassess my own attitude. Not having to deal with boorish shoppers highlighted how much I missed the most important thing about this time of year – the companionship of a most wonderful wife for a week or two away from the pressures of earning our living. Christa tells me that I have forgotten how to celebrate, and she\u2019s right. Perhaps I should take a lesson from those young men and their sparklers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday 26th December 2010 I\u2019ve developed an aversion for the Christmas hoo-ha during my adult years. It probably originated in childhood, when Christmas increasingly seemed to become overlaid by parental tensions about money. We were not poor, but we were … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}