Christmas

The Christmas I was used to and loved was a gaudy, tinselly, wholly irreligious affair but, even so, a work of art (one of the very few, actually, experienced by the masses in those days). A work of art which sometimes seemed to extend beyond the circumscribed intentional world of festivity and involve the
world at large - for what, so it seemed to me in that holiday season, was a cerise or pink sky above ostensibly non-festive lamplit trees and white, red, green city lights but Christmas decorations on grand scale?

But perhaps I loved Christmas even more in the anticipation than in the experience: no actual Christmas ever did could match the idealised one. And Iidealised the non-religious Christmas in the way most children (and some adults) do, by subconsciously combining elements from different sources: in my case, Hollywood films, popular music, comics. The films: a sunlitsnowman, a great decorated tree, young people with a glow ontheir faces and romance in their eyes, presents in sumptuousTechnicolor wrappings, a feeling of joy suffusing everything,everything, an American apotheosis of the secular Christmas so beautiful it was beyond anything you were likely to experience yourself. The music; the jubilant, winter-crisp `SleighRide', which portrayed in every jingling note a steamy-breathed exhilaration, the romantic, tender 'Have Yourself A MerryLittle Christmas', theme music of some out-of-this-world party at which I would kiss a lovely, sweet smelling girl under the mistletoe,The comics: "Grand Xmas Number' (the tingle of those words!) above the masthead of Dandy, Knockout or Film Fun, snow mantling the masthead itself,paper-hat-crowned, cracker-pulling characters seated around an every-course-at-once-ladenboard featuring an enormous, spheroid, custard capped pud, and, seen through a window beyond, snowflakes drifting down... O my! O my!