For the summer I’m going back to the series of pieces mythologizing my growing up in Cape Breton. Check the Village Stories page http://wp.me/P1RtxU-1fT for links previous pieces in this series.
Santaphohohobic
to this day
I cannot hear the name Santa
without shuddering
the first few times it gets uttered are the worse
a tremble comes from my toes
my teeth chatter
I squeeze my arms tight to my body
to contain myself
it’s as if I’m going to fly to pieces
though I get used to hearing his name
I always dread the start of the festive season
and go out of my way to avoid
any reference or images of his likeness
I don’t know when this started
honestly, I had a fairly normal childhood
Christmas was nothing special in our house
I was never dropped off Santa’s knee
when taken to see him at the strip joint
I never woke to find
his white bearded visage
kissing my Mom or Dad
I once did get to undress
one of the elves
I was always satisfied with what gifts I got
I was an easy to please child
this Santa-shudder didn’t start
till I moved here to the big city
in our village
there were few likenesses of him
the usual ones of him harnessing a moose
or sneaking a beer out of the fridge
so how it came to be
that the very mention of his name
would cause this reaction in me is puzzling
it led my coworkers to think
I was some sort of xmas hater
when the opposite is the truth
I decorated my cubical with a little tree
some garlands
but would resist any likeness of him
it wasn’t if he was the centre of the celebration
but they would take great delight
in putting crystal Santas on my desk
once replacing my mouse with a Santa head
my shrieks were mocked for weeks after that
ho ho ho scream
my demands to be transferred to another section
were greeted with ho ho ho no no no
those fuck heads
how could I do my job with such disrespect
luckily this only happens once a year
next year I won’t be here to put up with it
I’ve already made reservations
to spend that time of year at a xmas free resort
where one can just float in the sun
drink tall cool drinks by the pool side
be undressed by cabana men
and then return to the escapist reality
that I was escaping from
This is one of the few pieces written in which my narrator has left the Village but is still enmeshed in mythology – in this case the festive myth of Santa. Personally I have no issues with Christmas or Santa or the Elves. As in many of these pieces the allegory is of those things in the world that go from annoying us to blocking our happiness.
Santa has become more a symbol of Christmas than the Jesus. Though both symbols have been commercialized to the point where they are meaningless beyond their commercial potential. So in some ways my hero is reacting to this reduction of a symbol to a logo for consumption as opposed to a symbol of generosity & fellowship.
My hero is like many who have left a small town for the freedom of the big city only to be trapped in a cubical. The childhood bullying has been replaced by the office mocking of his Santaphobia – by people who apparently don’t even question their own belief systems. The fact he doesn’t toe that line is enough for them to single him out. There is also a sense that some myths are considered superior to others.
I knew a guy who hated Christmas to the extent that he would fly to Australia on 23rd or the 24th & thanks to date line & time change arrived there & would skip Christmas Day. He flew back on New Year’s & got two New Year’s eves as a result. But like my narrator he had to return to a cultural reality he might avoid but could never escape.
For the summer I’m going back to the series of pieces mythologizing my growing up in Cape Breton. Check the Village Stories page http://wp.me/P1RtxU-1fT for links previous pieces in this series.
Hey! Now you can give me $$$ to defray blog fees & buy coffee in Washington at 2018’s capfireslam.org – sweet,eh? paypal.me/TOpoet
Tuesday – September 19 – feature – Art Bar Poetry series – 8 p.m., Free Times Cafe, #20 College At., Toronto – $5.00
http://It’s No Accident
