AND SO THIS IS CHRISTMAS

"REPRAZENT"

Yesterday I went to church. I haven't done that for a long time. Not that I don't like churches (I do) but I'm not exactly what you'd call the religious type. I don't mind if you believe in your magical man who lives in the sky and sees everything you do, any more than I mind if you believe in a magical man who lives at the North Pole and has similar powers of perception. Your choice.

But what got me about this church service (apart from the priest leading everyone in singing Happy Birthday to Jesus - I kid ye not) was the little kid in front of me who was watching a movie on his Dad's iPhone. What the devil? In my day you had to suffer through the thing like everybody else and there was no way little baby Jesus was letting anyone get away with watching TV during his Special Time. I guess things have changed.

In Caracas it's a Christmas custom to rollerskate to church on the Big Day. That's so awesome I'm tempted to move to Venezuela and become a devout believer just so's I can partake in such a brilliant Xmas tradition. Also, the convention of abbreviating the word to Xmas is nothing to do with the secularisation of the holiday, as people told me growing up, but stems back to the Eastern Orthodox habit of representing Jesus' name with an X or similar. No disrespecting the Lord there.

Here's a handy family tree illustrating the genealogy of Santa. Any chart that includes Jagermeister, Al Jolson and yowies is fine by me.


Here is a scary-looking Santa.



All Santa brought me this year was a couple of broken ribs which makes it hard to laugh, so I'm being even more Scroogey and frowny than usual. But for cheer's sake, here's the smooth voice and latent alcoholism of Don Ho singing Tiny Bubbles for your ecumenical festive enjoyment. Here's to the golden moon, here's to the silver sea!