Guy Rundle’s Christmas Chrestomathy

Christmas Lore

Do you know Mariah Carey’s song “All I Want For Christmas Is You”? It’s great, isn’t it? Is it playing in your head now?

The Yule Log: The Yule Log follows 24 hours of eating to excess. It usually makes its appearance on Boxing Day.

The Great Escape: In the UK, it’s a tradition for families who have spent the day together in cramped quarters eating terrible food to watch WWII POW movie The Great Escape, because its conclusion — death by machine gun for all the British — counts as a happy ending. In Germany, the movie is called “Brexit“. 

Worst Sweater: In the US, it’s a popular Christmas pastime to see who can wear the most garish Christmas-themed sweater. The tradition dates from a 1996 Christmas movie, and thus counts as America’s most hallowed surviving tradition.

Worst Sweat: In Australia it’s traditional to see who can get the worst sweat from eating a roast dinner in the summer heat. Last year Aunt Evelyn’s thick wet beads around her neck backfat won the day. This year Uncle Trevor is wearing a white 5XL cotton polo shirt, aiming for a three-flop ring. It’s great how the aircon picks it up and moves it around. God bless us, one and all.  

New Hallmark Christmas Movies this year: Crystal’s Crispy Cringly Christmas, Her Happy Sappy Christmas Sugar Daddy Pappy Christmas, Shoved in the Trunk and Dumped in the Forest For Christmas, I’m Shitting Red and Green, Syph for Christmas, Die Hards I-XXVIV, All I Want For Christmas Is You “I don’t want a lot for Christmas”.

Australian Christmas Movies: Their Foetid Uncomfortable McMansion Christmas; Christmas in Penrith; Bush Christmas; Bush Murder Christmas; Bush Cooker Murder Siege Christmas; Bush Cooker Murder Siege Christmas II; A Very Passive Aggressive Castlemaine Christmas; and The Lucy Guerin Dance Ensemble.

Big Fun!

Turn off the screens and play these Christmas games from the Victorian era!

Cobblers’ Knock: Nine jacks are distributed between a maximum of six or seven players in Welsh Rules. Tam O’Shanters count double and there is no fine for clerisy. All odd players can go cribbins but there is no barnstabling on leap years. Winner is the first player to subjugate India and drain it of resources for two centuries.

All Shall Win ‘Cept Mabel!: All players receive a golightly or a pyx if played on Thursdays, except Mabel. Every player with a golightly or a pyx wins! Mabel dies of diptheria.

Shunter’s Promissory: For 17 players, or opposing teams of 29 and 2 at Rogationtide. Golightlies are wild and Tam O’Shanters trade for smikkins in the “charabanc”. Second to go “shunter” gets the tontine. The winner is the first to dispossess the Scots peasantry and create a landless urban proletariat. 

Where’s Mabel?: A guessing game for small children.

Still No Mabel: A Boxing Day game.

All I Want For Christmas Is You: “I don’t want a lot for Christmas, there is just one thing I need…” Haha, got you again.

Screeeeeeeen!

Or turn on the screen for some classic Christmas programming.

The Queen’s Christmas Message From Beyond the Grave (all networks): With Madame Sosostris at the Ouija board, her late majesty shares her impressions of the bardo with her Commonwealth subjects. 

Christmas with Nine Gem: 8.45am Strike Force Canada; 10.15am Wyzbierska Szeczelka, a 1973 Polish children’s cartoon about mathematics and the destruction of Warsaw; 12pm Santa Claus Versus the Martians, the old kitsch favourite; 1.30pm Live Symposium on Santa Claus Versus the Martians with Nikos Paperstigiadis, Mal Meninga, Alison Croggan, Kochie and Agro; 2.30 Strike Force Canada (B&W) repeat; 4pm 29 minutes of Matlock, for some reason, among other things; 6pm Parkinson Classic, from 1974, Michael Parkinson interviews Jimmy Saville, Phil Spector and Klaus Barbie; 7pm One hour of blank videotape; 8pm Strike Force Canada (B&W).

Streaming: That Thing You Actually Wanted To Watch — episodes 1-3 now streaming (Netflix), episode 4 (Prime Video), episode 5 odd-numbered scenes (Stan), episode 5 even scenes (RKO, a different Prime Video channel — are you shitting me?), episode 6 camera left (Stan’s mate Trevor, a Stan channel), episode 6 camera right (also Stan’s mate Trevor, you will need two subscriptions), episode 7 (Netflix Gold Class: you have just ordered our $900 armchair), episode 8 will feature in the Bollywood thriller A Dance with Inspector Munjit, episode 9 (Strike Force Canada, B&W).

Spooooooore!

Tips For Talking To Your Brother-in-Law About the Footy.

“The footy was better this year than last year. That’s evidence-based.” 

“This year, the footy had a vaguely strawberry air. Last year, it had more chocolatey notes.”

“My team? My team’s University Reds! They exited the league in 1916 but I still feel their presence! You can’t hit me, you’re married to my sister!”

“I don’t think that one team whose name escapes me should have played that chap whose name escapes me in that position I’m not sure of, and possibly should have chosen that other chap whose name escapes me in the draft pick from that other team whose name escapes me. What do you think? More eggnog? You can’t hit me, you’re married to my sister!”

“Collingwood is essentially Milton’s Lucifer in the AFL matrix, progenerative of action yet excluded from agape by that very fact. And did you see the second semi? A latter-day Absolam and Architopel. I said Absolam and Architopel. You can’t hi-“

Reaaaaaaaad!

Christmas books.

Troy Bramston, The Days Are For Killing, The Nights Are For Love: a biography of Ralph Willis.

Paul Kelly, How To Make Gravy: The Australian’s editor-at-large spends 300 pages explaining, for a changing world, the methods, risks and rewards of composing meat-derived sauces, and lays out the benefits and demerits of two gravy strategies before a round-up of each of the two gravy strategies’ risks, rewards and methods in a changing world, where-

Liane Moriarty, Half a Million Thirsty Divorcees.

Peter FitzSimons, If Your Dad Doesn’t Like This, Frankly He Can Go Fuck Himself: How a footy star you’ve never heard of fought the Nazis/Japanese/Turks — we fought the Turks? wild — and won some medal at Jallipilli or somewhere. Size of a paving stone.  

The Sad Years Diaries: Decades of recollection by the author of prize-winning novel The Sad Lady Who Had a Saddie, of the events that formed the basis for The Sad Lady Who Had a Saddie.

Young Saddie: Prize-winning novella by a young sad woman who many say may be capable of great saddies.

Matthew Reilly, Wham Bam Teen Space Time Cops Ban Wham Space! Teens!

Di Morrissey, The Next Di Morrissey One.

All I Want For Christmas Is You: Lyrics of the song. Do you know it? Oh, you do…

Crime books.

So Dark A Night: Barry Travis is back! The deaf-blind detective with no sense of touch is in a small town with a big secret but never finds out what it is — or, in fact, realises that he is in the town. 

Dave Prentice, Death Is A Collectible: The 19th outing from Bellarine Peninsula detective Prinko Boberic, written by Bellarine Peninsula resident Dave Prentice. While returning a ratchet to Drysdale Bunnings, Prinko realises that Evelyn who stole the zeppelin in Book 9 (Indented Heads) as payback to Prinko’s ex Matilda who was married to drowned male netballer Stewie “Stew” Stewson (Portarggghlington, Portarggghlington Book 12), after he was cheated out of the Ocean Grove IGA franchise because he bought a coach lamp from the Colac Antique Shed (Point Blank Lonsdale) — gah, this blurb is going to need its own blurb. In a thrilling conclusion, Prinko makes the mortgage payment and pays off the youngest’s grommets, but my God it was close this time.

Means of Estoppel Time Travel: Thriller in which lawyers for the copyright holders of 1983 film The Philadelphia Experiment travel forward in time and read John Birmingham’s Weapons of Choice (2004) very, very carefully.

Pictorial.

Round the Yule Log: The Don Lane Christmas Coffee Table Book

Envoi

A Fairytale of New Work.

He: 

It was Christmas Eve babe

At the office do

The senior manager said to me

I’ll be on harassment leave soon…

And then he sang a song

All I Want For Christmas Is You

I turned my face away 

And thought about you…

(music swells)

She:

This song’s eighty bars

It’s made rivers of gold

How weird Kirsty died

But Shane McGowan got old

When we first sang this tune

At some share house party 

It blew us away

Now it’s Mariah Carey

All:

The gang at the Harold Park 

Were Singing Old Khe Sanh

Screw the attitude

I’m still a fan…

She: You’re a hack

He: You’re a chancer 

She: A cheap wordy prancer

Grinding out Christmas gags as you crawl to year’s end

You plagiarist

Loser 

Schlock TV producer

Christmas Humour, my arse

I pray God it’s your last

All:

The Boys at Breakfast Creek 

Sing Shook Me All Night Long

Editing as they go

Because they’ve got their kids along

(Slow bridge)

He: This could have been something

She: Well so could anything

He: I used all my old jokes

She: Yes, we noticed

He: Well I did my best

Can’t find a final twist 

This song still makes me weep

Will it do, this?

All: The gang at the Standard Hotel

Were gathered for the do

And the music playing

Was….

All I Want For Christmas Is…