WATCH OUT! CHRISTMAS INCOMING

CAROL SINGERS AND SECRET SANTAS FORECAST

“Sing Jingle Bells one more time and I’ll smack you in the kisser.”

Visting London last week reminded me of previous Christmases spent far from home – a few of them in Britain. As much as we loved England, my American wife and I never lost that sense of being outsiders, least of all at holiday time. We assumed our friends and neighbours, mostly metropolitan and media-savvy, viewed the festival as we did, with amused scepticism. But as it loomed, many took to mooning about, sighing, staring out the window, and by Christmas Eve the streets were empty of cars that hadn’t moved all year. Even ancient bangers which, from the evidence of accumulated grime, dead leaves and bird droppings, had taken root in the asphalt, were coaxed into a final trip back home.

One year, hoping to strike a blow for a more austere, less family-oriented Christmas, we invited to Christmas lunch a dozen friends who, like us, were alone in London. The event could perhaps have been more depressing if we’d asked the vicar to deliver a sermon on sin and retribution, but not much. Following the ritual drowsing though the afternoon movie on TV  – probably Zulu (it usually was) -  our guests, in various stages of inebriation, subsided into arm chairs, staring in silence at the walls while night drew on and dead leaves blew along the empty streets. 

Even worse, we once found ourselves in Detroit, at the invitation of Barney, a fellow movie scholar who’d married one of his students, abandoning a wife and two small children to do so.

“It’ll be great!” he told me over the phone. “Sharon is letting us have my kids for Christmas. We’ve got a tree, and Jenny’s bought a turkey.”

My wife grimaced and mouthed silently “Detroit?”  But Barney was a friend, and we had no other plans.

Christmas Eve dawned stormy. Cold fronts marched across the eastern seaboard, paralysing already overstretched airlines. At Dulles,  the controllers slipped our flight in between two storm cells. A roiling bank of steel-grey cloud pursued us as we blasted off, cheered by twenty drunken African-American doctors who’d seized business class and, even as turbulence shook open the locker doors and dumped luggage in our laps, refused to sit down.

By the time we reached Detroit, the storm had become a blizzard, and flights were grounded everywhere. We reached Barney’s apartment to find him desperately calling his ex-wife, begging her to ignore the weather and put his kids on the plane. By nightfall, it was clear that, sensibly, she wasn’t about to do so.

For Barney, the holidays ended then. Inconsolable, he wandered the apartment, staring out at the horizontal snow and muttering, “Christmas is nothing without kids.”

Hoping to lighten the mood, Jenny suggested we see a film. Barney sullenly acquiesced, and we crept out into the gelid night. A few blocks away, as we paused at an intersection, a battered car without lights or silencer, and sagging to one side on ruined suspension,  roared out of the dark and, engine screaming, plunged across our path. We stared after it, open-mouthed.  A twisted fender caught the asphalt, spitting sparks.  If Detroit had an Angel of Death, this surely was his chariot.

Next morning, the lights on the tree remained unlit, the gifts unopened. By mid-day, the snow had passed but not the wind that drove it. Since nobody felt like cooking,  we descended once again into the Arctic cold  and trudged to a deli for a pastrami on rye with a pickle, followed by a slice of pie. 

Returning to the chill apartment, Barney suggested another film. “How about It’s a Wonderful Life?” he suggested, sorting through his DVDs. But the thought of Jimmy Stewart oozing Christmas goodwill in this desparing environment made the pastrami turn over uneasily in my stomach.

“Have you got Zulu?”  I asked.

“What do you mean ‘It isn’t fancy dress?’ “