Last laugh

Father Christmas was always a pregnant woman, says father-of-three Craig Bishop

SEE, THIS PATRIARCHY is a cunning old business. You know how a cuckoo lays its eggs in another bird’s nest, and fools the parents into rearing its own offspring? Well, that, it occurs to me, is how the patriarchy works. It adopts, adapts and co-opts. With the festive season upon us, what better example than that jolly old pagan Santa Claus, aka Father Christmas. See what I mean? Father, says you? Ornamental balls, says I. Yes, apart from the beard, though, which is so fake as to be embarrassing, there ain’t nothing particularly fatherly or masculine about the man in the red jacket. My ground-trembling theory leads me to believe that originally the geezer with the reindeer was actually a woman. And a pregnant woman at that. Mother Christmas. Bear with me. I’m not saying you look like a fat old man. There’s proper scientific methodology at work here. She drives an eco-friendly sleigh, not a penis-shaped carmine Maserati, which any self-respecting male deity figure, with a planet full of presents to deliver, would of course choose to drive. That’s the first giveaway. Not convinced yet? Consider. Santa Claus’ unique talent occurs on just one very special day of the year, when a very special delivery will arrive. And while Santa makes use of the tight opening provided by the allegorical chimney, well, so too does mom-to-be fit her present through an equally tight delivery chute, too. Both sometimes get stuck. Both require little helpers to shunt them round their day. I suspect back in the day, the obviously male elves staged a rebellion and overturned the status quo, replacing Mother Christmas with their own tyrannical father figure. Maybe they were unhappy with their working hours, or the stupid green outfits just like the ones their elder sisters used to force them to wear when they were toddlers. But the elves just could not remove all traces of the archetypal Mother. The truth will always out. There’s that rosy-cheeked glow, for example. There’s the obsession with sweets, crisps, chocolate cake, brandy liqueurs and all manner of Germansourced biscuits. There’s the baggy clothes. My God, the bagginess, the bagginess! The inability to see one’s ankles, the protruding belly, the sudden obsession with other people’s kids, the enlarged boobs, the clasping of the bottom of the tummy, the waddle, the odd grunting sounds, the similarities are eerie and endless. Did I mention the baggy clothes? How about the large, bulky colourful sack that fills up mysteriously by itself and sits in a corner of the passageway biding its time till D-Day, jampacked with no man knoweth what manner of intricacies. And it does not end there, of course. It was when I started researching the psychological similarities that I really became convinced. Consider. There’s the superhuman ability to keep track of everyone who has been good and everyone who has been naughty, all year long! Yes, husbands? Yes, boyfriends? Are you with me now? Then there’s the sheer magic of it all, the otherworldly awesomeness of it all, heralding a time of unprecedented joy. Famous children’s author Roald Dahl was a trailblazer in this regard. He knew the score. “Where art thou, Mother Christmas?/ I only wish I knew/ Why Father should get all the praise/ And no one mentions you/ I’ll bet you buy the presents/ And wrap them large and small/ While all the time that rotten swine pretends he’s done it all./ So Hail To Mother Christmas/ Who shoulders all the work!/ And down with Father Christmas,/ That unmitigated jerk!”

THEN THERE’S THE SHEER MAGIC OF IT ALL, THE OTHERWORLDLY AWESOMENESS OF IT ALL, HERALDING A TIME OF UNPRECEDENTED JOY