Verse Snow
WHAT LIT UP our lives as children at Christmas wasn’t Santy or what he would bring. He was quite poor in those days, having misappropriated funds, and we never expected wonders from him. I must say, though, he did his best to surprise us. The most extravagant thing I ever asked him for was a watch when I was ten and instead he brought me a pair of those pink binoculars that you rotate to see various pictures of the children of Fatima. I guess he didn’t have time to make the watch.
Mostly we felt sorry for him. He was old and fat and always laughing. He had so much ground to cover, so much climbing and descending to do and so much to carry. No wonder he was forever losing some of the toys he was supposed to bring to us. That would never happen nowadays. Children wouldn’t stand for it. Also his elves had not developed their skills like the modern elves, who have the ability to produce everything and anything regardless of whether it is actual, virtual, animate, powerful, useless or imaginary.
Santy nowadays has unlimited resources at his disposal and this of course makes his job easy. No matter what is needed in the pursuit of children’s happiness can be flown in from Miracleland by helicopter or carried in an airborne wheelbarrow courtesy of Ryanair to Childrenmusthave Workshop at the North Pole.
Santy is younger these days, though I have never figured out how he manages that – a touch of the Benjamin Button syndrome perhaps – and he is better nourished, of course. He is fitter because of time spent in the Arctic gym during the spring with his personal trainer, so his navigating skills are better. And, most important of all, you will never hear him moaning about money.
‘The Wren’, was what we looked forward to. From a very young age I longed for the day that I would be old enough to be accepted into the Big Wren which came trumpeting into our yard on St Stephen’s Day at around 11 o’clock, carrying aloft a tiny speared bird. I never understood how they caught him. My father would down tools and my mother