Andrew Trench notes from the revolution

Jingle hell, jingle hell…

Hands up all of you who promised to do gift shopping before the Christmas rush. Now, hands up, all those who kept the promise.
I thought so. Tsk, tsk. Why do we never learn?
Now let me rub my crystal ball and see where you will be for the next three Saturdays.
Perhaps fighting with the parking ticket machine at Vincent Park? Sitting in the traffic jam at Retail Park? Rushing into Spar at the last moment to get a box of choccies for the relative you forgot?
If you’re anything like me, this year will be like last year – an bruising last-minute shopping scrum that flattens your Christmas spirit.
I bet that by December 25 you’ll have produced another anecdote for your arsenal of Christmas Shopping Horrors and, almost certainly as a result, a decidedly odd gift for someone.
Who hasn’t got a present on Christmas Day that made you wonder if Santa had hit the sherry long before the reindeer took off?
I had an old aunt who used to give me – shall I say “unique”? – things for Christmas and birthdays but the real stand-out gifts from her included half a dozen chicken eggs (in grey egg box) and a plastic container of olives in brine.
Now I know that somewhere someone would think these are fantastic gifts to receive but a young boy is unlikely to cherish them as much as, say, a new toy car.
To this day, I wonder what was going through her head. Perhaps she just got bored with gift shopping and pulled a couple of items for me off the pantry shelf before leaving home.
Well, they say it’s important to give kids memories at Christmas so here’s a belated thanks, Aunt Ticky.
Perhaps I should get Santa to give my three-year-old daughter a banana or a dead mackerel wrapped up with ribbons. Thirty years from now Gemma can at least say thanks for the memories.
But let’s go back to the land of shopping. I don’t know if you have experienced this, but every year I find I get to the point where I abandon all rational thinking so desperate am I to get it over with.
At this point the details blur, budgets fly out the window and spending goes ballistic. “That jacket is much? R5000? Do you take plastic?”
Next thing you know you’re moonlighting as a taxi driver to pay off the credit card bills.
Christmas is generally about chaos and panic from the gifts to the food.
I got caught short one Christmas Eve. I had agreed to cook a gammon ham for a family lunch the next day and realised I didn’t have a pot big enough to hold the ham. So off I went as darkness fell over London trying to find a store that was still open and which could supply me with a pot.
Eventually I washed up on the doorstep of Habitat where out of desperation I was sold what I believe to be the last pot in London and which only cost the equivalent of a small family sedan – all so we could have the humble ham the next day.
With all these horrors its easy to be a bit humbuggy about Christmas, but somehow it’s all these crazy moments that make it special.
What would Christmas be without the madness of the malls, without rescuing the cat from the Christmas tree, without the turkey burning, the pudding flopping, the nutty relatives, and the dumb gifts?
What would Christmas be without meals that make you full as a tick, without the sunshine smiles of children when they spot Santa’s gifts under the tree, without that warm glow that comes late in the day when all is quiet and your family is close?
I don’t know what it would be, but it sure wouldn’t be Christmas.

* This is my column for Friday's Dispatch