Over the last five years, I would awaken on a tourbus about now, rolling smoothly somewhere along the midwest. I would spend my mornings consumed with hangover management and truck-stop constitutionals. Wifi signal strength was my preoccupation. Chicken-wraps, my nightmare. These tours lasted weeks and weeks. Staring out at a sea of blue-hairs sat comfortably in their Sunday-best, I'd perform the canon of Yuletide chestnuts every holiday season.
That's all over now.
I've done nothing this week. I have been resting on my laurels. I admit, watching Christopher Hitchens pick apart inarticulate god-fearers on YouTube will have consumed most of my morning, slipping in to an afternoon filled with indignant self-righteousness. The TV remote my sceptre, pyjamas and beard my costume, successfully achieving nothing. Dishwasher half-emptied, laundry half-folded, I rule with a commanding yawn.
Invariably I will gravitate towards a keyboard to shop online and rid my brain of holiday melodies. Historically, these ditties would have turned the voices in my head into carolling demons from hell.
No more.
Never wishing to fully dampen spirits and to give the impression that I have been an effective team-of-one today, I have decided to spread mirth and cheer, like fertilizer on flowerbeds.
To quote a holiday film favourite: "Follow me down the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, past the Sea of Twirly Swirly Gumdrops" and into the Lincoln Tunnel.
Enter Santa.
This week, comedian Kitty Flanagan on her last appearance as an Australian infotainment show correspondent told viewers Santa "doesn't even exist" and that they must be drunk to believe it. Naturally retractions and apologies followed. Twitter and Facebook displayed their contrition. The network has since promised to prove the existence of Santa in the North Pole. If you're kids are watching this tripe at 6:30 pm you probably are drinking and good on ya' mate. All your neglected children need is more media-therapy. Not to worry, the government has your back.
Norad's Santa Tracker is 13 short days away from following Father Christmas' high-speed pimped-out toy-shuttle as it makes its way around the globe. Richard Branson take note: Invest in magic flying caribou. On the NORAD website right now there is a little elf building a snowman and another skating along the ice. Not a security guard in sight. Anyone could just walk right on in. If it's discovered that the North American Aerospace Defense Command has dropped the ball we might as well all start learning Russian, yesterday.
St. Nick was a Greek. He lived and died in Myra, which is now Turkey. He would never have been caught dead anywhere north of Milan.
Half of him now lies in Bari, Italy, having been moved there in 1169. The rest of him, thanks to the some grave-robbing sailors during the First Crusades, in Venice. Not a bad coupla' pied-a-terres for a bearded bishop.
Born, March 15, 270 AD, Nikolaos of Myra died December 6, 343 AD. That puts him in his early seventies. He's usually portrayed white-haired and slender, with a receding hairline. No smile or twinkle in his eye. Nothing like our Canadian type-2 diabetic version.
I was reading (online) some Egyptian census returns, printed on papyri for the first 300AD. If Nikolaos had indeed become a septuagenarian, he'd probably have been one of the few in all of Myra. There's no denying Turkish coffee and Greek olive oil have lasting health benefits. Being a member of Team Jesus probably helped.
Indulge me, fans o' Christmas.
According to Forbes, most Greeks retire around 58. That's 11 years before the Germans. I'm just saying there's a reason they're unpopular in the EU. Clergy in the Greek Orthodox Church of America get a living expense of roughly 120,000 USD a year after 35 years of service to Jesus Inc.
So, if we are to use my well-researched and scientifically peer-reviewed algorithmic model for the employment history (and outcome) of a one Mr. Santorini Clausodopoulous, then by the time of his demise he would have been retired for roughly 15 years.
There was no monetary system in Greece prior to 500BC, but his indexed pension may have afforded him to barter for a few toys for the kiddies. Legend has it, he kept a trio of sisters from a life of prostitution by giving their impoverished father dowries on the qt. It's hard to imagine prostitution was far off from a life bridal-servitude seventeen -hundred years ago.
Most retirees in my neighbourhood don't earn half of a greek bishops salary, even after a lifetime as a public servant. I do sometimes see old nuns driving around in a Buick. It's a reliable automobile.
They also don't give a toss about any kids but their own grandchildren and rarely leave the house. I do see them shuffling along their driveways to recycle, a full day before it's collected. Clockwork, these people. Most of them certainly don't look anything like a healthy Grecian Bishop. A rich diet and limited sunlight does thing to a person. Red noses here are usually the result of rye whiskey induced thread-veins.
I'd like to think of a realistic, modern Santa as simply, Nick the Greek, retired sonofabitch.
I think if kids today believed that "Nick the Greek" knew they were naughty or nice, instead of coal in the stocking there would be much shitting of pants over the potential removal of thumbs at the hands of former alterboy henchmen.
He'd drive an old Caddy. Smoke cigarettes like they owed him money. Through thick rimmed coke-bottle glasses, this myopic, irritable old bastard would be more likely to yell at children, hire prostitutes, get caught up in a Nigerian email scam ( if he could get his damn nephew to come over once in a while to help him download "the internet") and probably never be able to lift a sack heavier than the one he's denied himself all his adult life. His sciatica would keep him from attending church bazaars or taking up golf in the spring. Flipping through old photographs, he would remember when kids would lovingly call him Papa Nick. The neighbourhood kids jeer and yell now. They flip him the bird as they walk past his first-storey condo.
This season, when feverish, mucus-oozing hobbits line up to have their picture taken with a pillow-bellied stranger in polyester pyjamas and sit on his lap in a west-Ottawa shopping mall, take comfort.
We have created a far better version than what we could have realistically had. Live the lie.
Conrad wrote that you should be "faithful to the nightmare of your choice".
Christopher Hitchens believes "Faith is a surrender of the mind".
Once again, I am flummoxed.
I submit to you fat Santa. I have been a good boy.
I'll finish the laundry, promise.
