Santa Isn’t Real God Dammit!

Okay, so I was one of those suckers who thought Santa was real, and you’d think living on a tropical island where it NEVER snowed nor were there chimneys, I’d have known better.

Well I didn’t! I believed Santa was real with all my naive, wishful thinking little heart. I mean, I wrote long sappy letters to Santa telling him how nice I’d been and basically kissing his ass to get on his nice list because all I wanted for Christmas was a ‘my size’ doll.

I remember when coming on to Christmas I’d make a deliberate effort to be extra kind to my siblings (I failed miserably).

As I grew up and became more sensible, I’d come to terms with the fact that the bastard wasn’t gonna show, Ever! This was when it really sunk in that he wasn’t  real.

This was the same epiphany I experienced for the tooth fairy and Peter pan. I mean my tooth stayed under my pillow for days without finding so much as pixie dust let alone money.

I even attempted several times to Alice in wonderland; ‘there’s no place like home’ myself home from school. Needless to say that shit didn’t work either.

What is real though is the fact that Christmas is literally just a few days away and the anxiety is rising as the race against the clock has begun. 

Not to buy last minute presents, no, no. In St. Kitts, Christmas isn’t Christmas if you don’t wait until the very last minute to transform your home into a spic and span palace.

Call it our version of spring cleaning. It’s a tradition I hated because it involved the rearranging of furniture, sweeping, dusting and washing hyperbolic amounts of ornaments!

We had tons of curtains to change and replace with tons more of new curtains -because my mother forfeited proper ventilation for her love of curtains-, windows to wash and years and years of junk  to arrange into junk that stayed and junk that had to go.

She had this pesky habit of stockpiling junk and I dreaded the countdown to Christmas; Christmas eve to be exact because that was the time we would learn just how much junk she had collected throughout the year.

She was also anti-claustrophobic, if there is even such a term. There was no space in the house that she didn’t want to see filled.

This made it all the more dreadful when it was time to give the house its immaculate face-lift.

Now our home was a cozy, tiny, two-bedroom  bungalow and my mind was in a permanent state of disbelief  at the volumes of junk this tiny thing was able to store.

But as I’ve mentioned before, my mom has super powers and with little help from us (my siblings) -because we would fall asleep during what ever chore we were doing at the time and wake up in bed the next day without the slightest idea of how we got there- managed to pull everything off by Christmas morning.

Cleaning + Christmas = Reliving Memories

Of course it wasn’t all bad. There’s a certain nostalgia that accompanies  cleaning and de-cluttering. There were usually valuable finds which always brought back the memories of the good ‘ole’ days.

Like finally finding the chicken bone that you threw at your brother because of some shit that he did, but it fell behind the sofa instead and you were too lazy to retrieve it.

Or finding those shoddy report cards that you told your mom got lost in the post, but you really hid them and if she saw them even five years later you would still get a whopping.

I even found old love letters that I never sent to my secret crush (ugh pathetic) I saved myself tons of embarrassment with those for sure. I mean ‘roses are red violets are blue, I want to go steady with you?!’ haha!

This is the second Christmas in my own home but I haven’t generated enough junk (and probably never will) to rummage at the eleventh hour and reminisce on times long gone.

I did have my first exciting find though- a colony of weevil- because I guess I didn’t use up the peas fast enough! 

My siblings and I have all left home, thank the heavens memories don’t leave like people do!

I’m backkkkkkk!!! Thank you so much for sticking and staying! I will definitely make up for my absence! In the meantime; What does your Christmas traditions entail? Let me know in the comments yoll!