Alexia Golez

A very special treat this Christmas Eve – a guest post by Charles for the season that’s in it. Enjoy. Part of the Selection Box series.

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Photo owned by Rojer (cc)

I’ve never been one for Christmas; call me a Grinch or something analogous to Scrooge (preferably politely) but I’ve never seen the fuss – it haunts for you for months before, pressuring you to buy the perfect gift and feel joyous 24/7 and even after, the residual haunts conversations with “so what did you get up to?” and “belated happy New Year!” (though that’s a separate issue). I might be negative, skeptical or simply unfriendly but when I’m told to be happy and positive by someone who can’t justify it beyond “but it’s Christmas!”, or yet another ad pimping out a shop’s goods like it’s the Apocalypse, I tend to act with complete and utter disdain. Worse still, it always leads to being sequestered with my family for an unhealthy amount of time staring blankly while we scramble for an used topic of small talk.

Perhaps it’s something going back to being a child, I was never inclined towards religion so the general association I had with December was presents, something that swiftly ended when I was about eight or nine when I awoke to discover one gift instead of my usual two gifts. Instead, I found one followed by my parents performing an unceremonious drive-by shooting on Santa (and I’m sure for the sake of efficiency, the Easter Bunny) to explain the lack of another. From there on in, it become procedural, Christmas had to be done in order to keep going. Like taxes, with the same systematic theft of your money and doubt surrounding it’s subsequent value.

Yet, this year seems to be different; I’ve done everything to avoid thinking about the whole occasion during the true festive season that I had all by presents bought and divided up by the end of November. I started studying for January exams in October. All these things were simply to enter fully decorated shops with pushy sales people and all the other repulsive necessities related to the madness but seem to have given me more time to think about what it can actually mean. For once, I’m actually evaluating what I can personally make of the holiday I once loathed more than Valentines, Mother, and Fathers day combined. I don’t enjoy sentimentality, generally it elicits laughter or antagonism more than anything, but without Thanksgiving (not including the mass slaughter of an indigenous people that followed) to celebrate, perhaps Christmas is now becoming that time of year I can be thankful for everything that’s going right. Yes the economy is shit and the political climate is as inept as its ever been but overall, it’s been a good year – I get to finally graduate with my LLB, it looks like I’ll get to do what I want after it’s over and my personal life is overall, the best in memory. So I won’t be buying into the immaculate conception or wanton consumerism but maybe, I might just to be able to focus on what’s good and aim for another year of the same, playing white noise in my head to block out the rest…

… Then again, ask me after I’ve escaped the cabin fever to see if I feel the same.

Today’s Selection Box post is from Irish techenterpreneur Pat Phelan. What an inspiring way to end the series and 2008. Thanks to everyone that donated their time!

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Christmas 1999

I had done it again, massive promises, massive anticipation, all the presents wrapped, house looking like a winter wonderland, 6 weeks sober and an idea came into my head, “I deserve a celebration drink on Christmas eve, I have been amazingly good for the last six weeks”.

I still remember the horror on their faces as I told them I would be back in an hour.

Arrived home 1am Christmas morning, drunk, suicidal, hallucinating and another fuck up behind me.

I woke up on the sofa on Christmas morning hallucinating so bad that I thought it was snowing in the house, snow was under my feet as I walking in the house, I was trying to remember was it Stalagmites or Stalactites that hung downwards whilst my brain was telling me that this couldn’t be real, snap out of it.

My wife and kids nursed me though Christmas until I was somewhat fit to get out of a tracksuit on the eve of a new millennium.

We had to get the bus to town as I was unable to drive.

We stood on Merchants Quay looking up at the fireworks and I prayed like I never prayed before.

“Give me one last chance and I will try to change”

I was fit enough to crawl into AA on the 7th of January, a new chapter begun.

Hope I never forget that Christmas.

Photographer Mr Iced Coffee Phil O’Kane is today’s Selection Box guest blogger.

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Another year, another set of goals, new memories and hopefully many good times. As is the norm this time of year, I have created a short list of resolutions; some vaguely realistic goals and achievements for the year ahead. I’ve never really been one to take resolutions seriously, though this year I think I’ve made a list of potentially do-able things.

Putting it into practice is always much harder while having a few

• Go to sleep earlier
  I seriously try to try to get to sleep earlier, but I just don’t like going to sleep. I always have far too much on my mind to keep me occupied.

• Be more creative
  By this I mean that I want to expand my range of photography even more and possibly also improve of Photoshop techniques.

• Meet more people than last year
  This was really a great year for meeting lots of new people, and Twitter did help a lot with that – I hope that this year will have even more new encounters.

• Travel more around Ireland (besides Dublin and Cork)
  I have been to the South of Ireland more times this year than in any other year. Many times in Dublin and twice in Cork. This year I want to venture to some other parts of the country; Limerick, Kilkenny, Galway, Waterford etc. There is a small chance of a Road Trip so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

• Understand the infrastructure of the Internet
  Cables under the sea! Name servers? IPs? General hosting woes. Yeah theres lots about the architecture of the web I would love to understand. It may take longer than a year.

• Save more money
  I’m terrible at doing this, but this year I hope to try very very hard.

• Become more confident at public speaking
  Ah yes, public speaking. So many people seem so damned good at it – the ones that are just have a certain amount of confidence in themselves, what they are saying and that the audience wants to hear it – that’s where I go wrong. This will be me year.

• Take more day trips around Northern Ireland
  I love taking train journeys around NI, usually somewhere by the sea (there are no trains in the West), usually somewhere slightly interesting to take lots of photos. I didn’t do it often in 2008 so big effort for 2009 – as well as a photo trip to the Giants Causeway still in planning.

• Email friends more often
  I just don’t write personal emails to friends often enough, I feel bad when I don’t. It’s often the feeling bad that puts of not doing it. Friends, you will feel the love this year.

Resolutions are one of those things that everyone asks about in the first week of January, right after saying they have just broken theirs by eating chocolate, having that takeaway, or having those drinks the very next weekend. It isn’t until two or three months later that they realise they still haven’t used the gym membership.

A year can be a long time, better planning of that time will be a major one really. The more variation of activities each day brings, the the shorter life won’t seem. No matter what it is, if each day is the same I want to make an effort to change that. Do more on the spur of the moment, hop on that bus/train when the opportunity arises.

Today’s Selection Box star is Sinéad Keogh, Mistress of Inkheart.

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Could we all just agree not to buy each other bath sets? Especially the ones displayed in a Tesco or Dunnes Stores wall of uniformity, smack bang in the centre of the imagination void? They are the opposite of puppies. They are just for Christmas and you don’t have to love them and you never jump up and down asking for one (please please Mammy please, the one with the 50mls of generic bubble bath, please!!). It doesn’t happen.

We all suffer the temptation. You get the weird one who frequently asks you out in the work Kris Kindle. You’re so afraid to give any gift that might suggest you have an emotional bond or any knowledge of what their heart desires that you consider giftwrapping your stapler in sellotape and slapping a name tag on it. You realise that you’ll need your stapler come January. You buy them a box with soaps and lotions small enough to render them ridiculously useless. For the people who you really don’t know who you’re somehow stuck buying a present for with a spending limit that would make it difficult to buy wrapping paper, this is almost excusable. Almost. Except for the fact that bath sets are basically everything that’s wrong with Christmas. They’re generic and thoughtless and bought with good money only to sit gathering dust on a shelf until the gift recipient dusts it off and passes it on to a new owner the next year, complete with new name tag.

Perhaps it’s the inner curmudgeon who never really liked smellies coming out, but soaps, salts, lotions and potions feature high on my ’smack in the face’ gift list. Thankfully, I haven’t received one in years. I am notoriously easy to shop for. If you buy me a book, I will read it. If you buy me silver jewellery, I will be so delighted that you didn’t get gold that I’ll wear it even if it’s a blingin’ dog collar. If you give me some sort of voucher, my practicality will be basically delighted that I don’t have to find shelf space for some useless toss that I don’t want.

Yeah, Christmas shopping can sometimes be the seasonal devil, flittering away your salary for December while simultaneously having you living on your nerves – “will she like it? what if it’s the worst thing I could ever buy and I don’t know her at all. am I spending too little or two much?” – but you can get some joy out of it by handing over something that’ll put a smile on the recipient’s face.

If you’re buying someone a bath set you really shouldn’t be buying for them at all. It doesn’t safe face in any manner. You might as well attach a card that says ‘here’s the thing I was obliged to buy for you’ and yet clearly it’s something we all do year in year out, as evidenced by the mass production of pampering product.

I love getting a present right. My chosen shopping method is to make a list of things I associate with a person or that I know they like and then Google until some mystical product shows itself. My Mother is addicted to some complete crackpot psychic who has a Sunday evening tv show on ‘the channels’. I Googled him. He’s written a book.She’ll be receiving his book. I can tell you that because she has yet to realise that you can Google a person’s name. My Grandpa, on first inspection, you would say, is completely devoid of interests. He watches the Discovery Channel a lot and does crosswords – neither of which are particularly condusive to present buying – what to get him, what to get him – like, some sort of wildlife based crossword books? Hells. Eventually, by insistently Googling words associated with any item the Granda owns and appears to like, I found an exact toy replica of his classic car. Sorted. Obviously, I inject a lot of time into Ultimate Present Buying. Obviously, not everyone does or should. Alls I’m saying is (and I’m saying it for the last time, I swear) is that bath sets are the Digestive biscuits of Christmas presents – they’re sort of unpleasant yet somehow in the press because at some point somebody decided to spend money on them.

Avoid temptation. Buy imaginatively. Merry Christmas.

Today, Mr. Twitter October Brett Nordquist is stepping up the plate and Selection Boxing!

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The year was 1987. It would be the first time I’d spend Christmas away from family and friends. Volunteering as a missionary for my church had taken me to Cologne, Germany where my friend and I would celebrate the holidays.

Or so I thought.

Neither of us had much money and that which we had went towards food, bus fare, and a tiny apartment on the seventh floor of an old brick building. We kept expenses to a minimum by eating potatoes, pasta and hearty German breads. We left the lights off during the day and turned the heater off at night. That meant I jumped into bed wearing a parka, gloves and a hat pulled down over my ears. I awoke each morning to feet that were numb from the chilly conditions.

Our job, if you can call it that, was to give service to others and invite people to church. This is a difficult proposition during slow months but nearly impossible during December as people hustle around town preparing for the holidays.

Although we didn’t perform many of our normal duties during this time we enjoyed watching families select gifts at the downtown Christmas Market which was full of handmade items. One could find hand crafted candles, castles made of gingerbread and enough savory smooth chocolate to keep even the biggest sweet-tooth happy.

But we were outsiders looking in on all the fun. As much as I would have enjoyed selecting gifts for my family, I didn’t have the means to do so. Money was even tighter for my friend who had to cut back on food that month in order to purchase enough stamps to mail Christmas cards.

Christmas Eve rolled around as did a thick layer of fog making it impossible for us to see the street from our window. I stared out the window thinking how happy my family would be if I had were able to send them a box full of gifts. I felt as though I had let them down. I was living Germany where Christmas is celebrated with with a fervor, and my family would have nothing to show for it.

I had to get out of that cold apartment. I had do something to take my mind off my family whom I sorely missed.

I calculated that if I carefully budgeted my money over the next week, I had enough to buy us dinner at the Greek joint around the corner. It took some coaxing to get my friend there, but we eventually found ourselves munching on a gyro with pomme frites and whipped mayo on Christmas Eve. I wasn’t surprised to find we had the place to ourselves.

The meal was fantastic. But that’s not what I remember most about that night.

What made that night memorable was listening to my friend tell me about his family. He told me about his mother and the sacrifices she was making so he could be there. He told me about his brothers and sisters and about how much he missed them. He explained that he didn’t feel he was sacrificing at all because he wasn’t accustomed to having much in life.

It didn’t take long for me to realize how blessed I’d been. Although I didn’t have many gifts to hand out, I had my health, my family and friends and my faith. On that night, I learned those were the gifts that mattered most.

And they still do.

Simon McGarr, Wordsmith of Tuppenceworth and walking barrel of Wit, is today’s selection boxer. (I secretly wish this was an endless Selection Box. Nyom, nyom).

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When Alexia asked me for a morsel to add to her selection box, I imagined a grand theory of everything set out in 1,500 words. Every one of them would have been polished until the meaning gleamed off the screen. It would have been like looking at one and a half thousand of Tom Cruise’s teeth laid out in a geometric grid.

Instead, it’s Christmas morning, everyone else is getting washed and ready to visit everyone else (but different everyone elses) and I’m banging out what few words I can between being shown Thomas’ latest adventure.

But I suppose really that has been the essence of the year for me. Whatever I aimed or intended to do has taken second place to looking after my small son’s wants and needs. And I haven’t even had to think about which I prefer. The plans of mice and men are tattered rags beside a small smile.

I warned you it was a finger of fudge. Too small, and much too sweet.

The Christmas Day selection boxer is blog wunderking Damien Mulley. No lickarsing allowed! Shame.

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It’s December 25th, 3am
A lot of preparation goes into something like this. He’s got his list in his hand though he’s memorised it all already. In the old days houses didn’t have eircom alarm systems or big fuckoff security locks, so his job tonight of delivering these presents was a little more difficult than it would have been 20 years ago. Not too difficult, these systems were nothing to someone of his experience.

He liked some of the little touches in the homes. A few had left out plates with pieces of cake and some milk or a beer but it appeared someone was here before him and gobbled up that 3 layer cake concoction that was left out for him. Instead he took a selection box from under the tree, slit open the box with his knife with the jet black handle, slowly opened it out and took the curly wurly. He liked curly wurlys. He slid the selection box closed again and put it back exactly as it was under the tree.

There was a note from a girl and her brother in one of the homes. He thought it very cute. Such belief in someone obviously not turned cynical by the age of 10 or 11. He noticed too that that age seemed to be falling as the “real” world crept in more to the lives of kids that wanted to believe. He found it odd that the adults that wanted to believe both lotto tickets or got scammed by Nigerian emails.

He walked back through the kitchen and past the unconscious dog in her basket. Doggie treats and knockout pills. Another trick he learned from years in the business. They leave a treat out supposedly for the big man, then set a growling mutt to welcome him. Logic. One more house in this estate to go. He was almost disappointed his bag was about to be empty.

It’s December 25th, 8.07am
The work phone rings. It keeps ringing. He knows who’s at the other end and knows he won’t stop til he picks it up. Go on. Are you awake. You need to be awake for this. The tone is different. They’ve got a pattern, a routine, this isn’t fitting. He wakes a bit more. Yes. What I’m about to tell you is real, it’s happened, I’m not winding you up. Right. The man on the phone tells him. He gets goosebumps. He doesn’t get goosebumps. You don’t in a job like this. No we’ll go to the estate later.

It’s December 25th, 8.59am
He walks into a scene of controlled panic. Alarms, screeching, screaming, shouting, ordering. The A&E is overflowing. Porters are running all over the place. Two of the dead bodies are left in the resuss room while they are tending to two still live bodies. 3 are undergoing surgery in operation theatres. There are more children than adults hurt or dead.

It’s December 25th, 10.19am
Fire brigades, army bomb disposal people and a sea of Garda cars are there. The whole estate has been sealed off. Some press are about. Some are sober, some are still drunk and some are still coked up. One of the press office people talks to a crime correspondent for a tabloid. Prick he says to himself. First house, blood spatter on the wall. He’ll survive he gets told. The second house he had to walk back out of. He’s seen death but death has mostly discriminated against being so savage to a child up to now.

After the tour of the scenes they do a run-through. So at first we thought it was some gang thing, despite the estate. This is a good area, upper middle class. While the odd drug dealer might own a gaff here, they don’t carry out feuds here. It looks like a rampage with the way the grenades went off in number 23 over there and number 47 up there but in number 13 and 29 a kid and a parent were shot. Kids pulled the triggers. In number 33 a girl had her arm ripped off my a crossbow. There are unexploded grenades in two more houses

It’s December 27th, 7.19am
They now know where the weapons came from. Same types and issue as weapons used by local Dublin gangs. Word has already leaked to the gangs and they are lying low. Another child died during the night. He is giving hourly briefings to the Commissioner and representatives from the Minister. The country is scared.

It’s December 31st, 3.31pm
Emergency legislation is passed through the Dáil.

It’s December 31st, 5.03pm
The President signs the legislation into law.

It’s December 31st, 5.41pm
Gardai raid 70 locations in Dublin and arrest over 200 people. Serious criminals are now in the same league as terrorists.

January 22nd, 3.11pm
Special courts hand down the first of the life sentences. He and his colleagues are now in therapy.

May something
Every few weeks he wakes after seeing the child’s arm being put into the yellow surgical bag in the house. Once more he sees her note to Santa, burnt and dirty under his foot. Serious crime has plummeted in Ireland. The vacuum gets filled for a short while by additional laws are so harsh that it isn’t worth it.

It’s December 23rd, 4.10am
The girl in the black bag with her arm beside her in a yellow bag asks him was it worth it. He wakes. He frowns not at the dream but the fact he is so used to it now and he goes back to sleep.