Excuse me if I’m not full of festive spirit
MY mum’s thrifty ways meant I was only six years old when I stopped believing in Santa. She was the Queen of recycling, even back in 1967 when, in the lead-up to the big day, she gave me a gift “from Santa” to wrap up for my dad.
It seemed, somehow, familiar. On Christmas morning when dad opened his new, hand-knitted hat “to go fishing in”, it finally dawned on me that Mum had taken our household tea cosy, sewn up the openings for the handle and spout, and stuck a handmade pom-pom on top. It definitely wasn’t Santa’s handiwork.
It didn’t entirely ruin future Christmases, but they definitely lost their childhood magic. This year, though, I cannot get into the festive spirit at all. I cannot face the cheer, the commercialism, the pressure to have a good time, the too much food and drink when, in Syria, children have lost so, so, so much more than the magic of Christmas.
Their childhoods have escaped, their innocence departed, their parents, loved-ones, friends are no more. And too many children have lost their lives after years of being mired in the violence of a medieval brutality. All, arguably, started by America – aided and abetted by the UK – and its obsession with toppling authoritarian regimes in Iraq, Libya and, latterly, Syria. It’s a mission which has succeeded only in creating power vacuums, which were then exploited by ISIS and its brutal modus operandi. Street crucifixions, beheadings, sons being forced to rape their mothers – an act of such horror it’s hard even to write – are all daily fare under the so-called Islamic State, while we obsess over the John Lewis Christmas ad as though it’s a public service message rather than a cynical way to eke money from purses that can’t afford it.
We stood by, urged by MPs, who didn’t want to touch Syria because of our part in Iraq, while the country, its hospitals, its innocents, its children were annihilated. The misery of those poor, wretched, brutalised people is unimaginable, unconscionable. It is unspeakable.
It’s why I will value my family, my friends, our western lifestyles more than ever this Christmas, even though I’m feeling more Oh..Oh..Oh than Ho! Ho! Ho!
I can’t face the cheer when kids in Syria have lost so much