God rest ye merry parents

East Fife Mail,  December 18, 1991

I seem to lack the Yuletide zing. Try as I might I just can't seem to rekindle the spirit of Christmas past and I resent not ever really appreciating it when I had the best chance - as a child.

Looking back, the presents and food provided over the festive period was the harvest of my dad's overtime down the pit and my mum's struggle with her `club' at the Store.

We, as children, didn't recognise that. We were too busy descending on everything like locusts in that bewildering but innocent egocentricity which youngsters possess.

We never really saved that hard to buy something for mum and dad - it was more a case of scrounging off one to buy for the other.

And as for the exchange of gifts between brother and sister ... well that was done as grudgingly and with as much mistrust as swapping secret agents at Checkpoint Charlie.

I always believed my sister's present to me was likely to explode with nuclear ferocity while she unwrapped hers with a trepidation which hinted at something within which could only be described as `soft and unsavoury'.

Unchecked, our imaginations would have become reality were it not for the intervention of our parents who acted as censors on the gift front - Beano annual/writing paper.

War had to be fought in a more subtle manner. The season of goodwill brought a code: “Tell no tales, last one standing is the winner”.

The holly in the socks attack brought an immediate spider in the bed reply... then there was no going back. Being tied to a clothes pole and abandoned in the back green brought a frontal assault on her precious record collection with Eden Kane's `Boys Cry' becoming Fife's first frisbee.

The title, unfortunately, proved apt when a knitting needle caused irreparable damage to the bladder in my leather football.

My pent-up aggression reached its climax when, with Milky Bar penknife clutched firmly in my hand, her teddy got it right between the eyes. She went straight for fratricide by plugging in the tree lights while I had my finger in one of the bulb sockets.

By Christmas Eve the sledgehammer was out of the coal box and concealed under my bed while she had strapped the bread knife to the end of her hockey stick and was practising bayonet charges on her pillow.

Just as the bloodlust reached frenzy point we were whisked off to church. The message from the pulpit, the candlelit manger, the carols, the whole atmosphere seemed to put everything into perspective; my sister and I always made our way home in comfortable silence behind our parents who walked gently ahead, arm-in-arm.

One Christmas was completed when it started snowing as we left church and my sister didn't even laugh at me when, on Christmas morning, I tied a piece of string around my ski-suited Action Man and took him for a walk.

No, it's not like it used to be. I miss my place among my family and wish I'd treasured every second we had together for it passed so briefly. I don't dislike Christmas now, it's just that I miss the safety I felt as a child.

We adults have a duty to give all our children that security, not just on Christmas Day but every day. If we could turn our minds to that, it would be a better future for us all.

Picture: Kinga88