A tale of two Santas - and buckets of generosity!

Many thanks to zazzle.co.uk

Snow fell onto the sodium-lit London street

 

That winter of '86 was so cold the water in the loo of my Rats Alley flat froze over. Our cracked toilet bowls lay dumped outside all the way down the narrow road.

Chris and I sat in my living room, staring at each other in silence for hours. We were hunched against those old plastic sofas, wrapped in blankets.

 

Broke.

 

Boracic and lint: skint, the pair of us, with only two days to go until Christmas.

“Hey Chas! You got any old whisky bottles?”

 

“Yeh, there’s two empties in the kitchen. Why?”

 

“Aha! Bring them to me, and get out that fan heater you hide in your bedroom. We’ll have a drink yet!”

Ten minutes later we were lying on our bellies, eyes at carpet level, watching whisky appear from nowhere. 

 

Chris had stood the two empty bottles in front of the fan heater, which was running at full blast. The heat from the fan was hitting the cold glass, condensing the holy juice out of the bottle. 

 

Where before there was nothing, we suddenly had a couple of inches of Christmas Cheer. 

 

So we did.

“Yay! Nice work mate! Happy Christmas to you and your cunning ways! You’re a bloomin’ genius!”

The phone rang. It was my landlord, who owned the shop below my flat. He was sorry to ask at such short notice, but he wondered if I wanted to earn some cash? And did I know anyone else who needed some too?

Did I?

He explained that the shop owners of the street were looking for a couple of guys to stand outside the shops on the Golders Green Road, dressed as Santa Claus. They'd be collecting money for the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.

“Sure, yeh, 'course we can do that!” I told him, “But how can you pay us if we’re collecting for a charity? We wouldn’t stoop so low.”

He explained that our presence was going to attract punters to his shop, so it was worth it to him.

Well, fair enough. More than fair, but just one more thing. This was the most Jewish suburb in North London. How kindly were the locals going to take to Father Christmas?

“Well, he was Jewish, wasn’t he, their bloke?” came the inscrutable, irrefutable reply.

Yes, Jesus was born, lived and died a Jew. 1,986 years later, in the tiny back room of a shop in frozen London, Chris and I were falling about laughing as we tried on our costumes. 

 

We were unsure if Santa was meant to be naked underneath his regalia, but the freezing air settled our minds on that issue.

Somehow, fitting the scarlet tights over our jeans felt more than a little Superman-ish, but the beard was another matter entirely. 

 

It got up my nose, tickled my lips, and after a minute or two, returned to my schnozz the less-than delightful scent of the previous night’s Rogan Josh.

 

And so, out onto the streets, followed by a gaggle of giggling shop assistants.

 

“Cor! Look at those two sex bombs!”

 

“Yeh, don’t fancy yours much!”

We asked the boss if it wasn’t a little excessive having two Santas out there, but once again, his answer was beyond reason.

“Most places they only get one, so in Golders Green, they get two!”

Chris and I started to shake our buckets, trying to catch a generous eye. People were ready and eager to give. Great Ormond Street Children’s hospital was a cause that crossed the barriers of race and religion, although I felt saddened to treat a hospital like a charity.

We'd been provided with bags of lollipops, for any sweet little kiddies who came up to us. 

 

Unfortunately, (or maybe most fortunately) children are trained to stay away from strange men bearing candy. The combination of my costume, and the ultra-deep voice I adopted for my role seemed to scare the hell out of the wee darlings.

All it took was “Hellow lickle girlie! Do you want a lollipop?” and I was instant pervert, children scurrying away to hide behind their parents, safe from the nasty red man.

Suddenly, off in the distance, we heard a bustling commotion. Two police cars were creeping slowly down the street, followed by a massive demonstration by Hassidic Jews, they who sport the long hair curls, blue raincoats and big floppy velvet hats.

Hundreds of them were marching down the Golders Green Road, carrying placards written in Hebrew. Chris and I stepped back to watch this strangest of sights unfold, and then all of a sudden, it dawned on me that each and every one of them was a potential punter.

Leaping into the fray, I frantically shook my collection bucket. Each side of me, every which way, hats, raincoats and beards glided past, the marchers temporarily blinded by my flash of scarlet ripple in their river of dark blue.

I was sorely tempted to savour the feeling of being inside a roll of Pathé News film, but there was work to be done.

“Cough up for the kiddies! Great Ormond Street Hospital needs your help! Dig deep!’”

Dig they did. Hands reached into pockets, coppers started flying into the bucket, followed by silver coins and then notes. 

 

To my left wallets were opened, to my right a passing beard, a glance of spectacles, everywhere hands putting notes into the bucket: fivers, tenners, twenties. 

 

It was wonderful to stand there and see them give wads of cash; enough to bring a tear to my eye.

 

There was no question of Old or New Testament here, just a river of raincoats on a mission from God.

 

Two full buckets, a happy shopkeeper, and two very merry Santas in the pub that Christmas Eve.

 

May your God be with you.

 

©Charlie Adley

22.12.2024

 

 

The Power of Christmas to bring Peace!

http://www.caricatures-ireland.com/

Thanks to Allan Cavanagh for the perfect illustration.

British Expeditionary Force,
Friday December 25th, 1914.
 
My Dear Mater,
This will be the most memorable Christmas I’ve ever spent or likely to spend:since about tea time yesterday I don’t think there’s been a shot fired on either side up to now.

Last night turned a very clear frost moonlight night, so soon after dusk we had some decent fires going and had a few carols and songs.

The Germans commenced by placing lights all along the edge of their trenches and coming over to us - wishing us a happy Christmas etc.

Some of our chaps went over to their lines.I think they’ve all come back, bar one from ‘E’ Company. They no doubt kept him as a souvenir. 

There must be something in the spirit of Christmas as today we are all on top of our trenches running about.

Just before dinner I had the pleasure of shaking hands with several Germans.

I exchanged one of my balaclavas for a hat. I’ve also got a button off one of their tunics. We also exchanged smokes etc. and had a decent chat.

They say they won’t fire tomorrow if we don’t so I suppose we shall get a bit of a holiday - perhaps.

We can hardly believe that we’ve been firing at them.It all seems so strange. 

With much love from Boy.

Strange indeed, how wonderful is the human spirit. We humans have hearts the size of harvest moons. Given the choice of killing strangers or having a meal with friends, the vast majority of us pick up knives and forks.

 

I always find the Christmas Day truce of 1914 exceptionally moving, as for once, a religious festival was used to encourage exactly what it stood for.

 

As an atheist of Jewish stock, I have always loved the Nativity story. Evidently God was showing in the strongest possible way that social status meant absolutely nothing; that true power lay in the heart, mind and spirit.

 

All that matters is to be a loving human being; to shake hands with your enemy, love your neighbour and turn the other cheek.

 

Christian ethics are an admirable and glorious collection, never better illustrated than by those good men who lifted themselves out of their hellish muddy disease-ridden trenches and played a game of footie with the lads from the other side.
 

Christmas as a child was a big affair in my Jewish home. My parents felt it was important for us all to feel a part of the country that had taken us in, and so, in our own way, we assimilated the English culture of Christmas and left out the religion.
 

We had presents and decorations. Indeed, on Christmas morning my Dad would crack open a bottle of champagne and declare ‘Happy Christmas!’, and none of us felt any less Jewish. 

 

Didn’t we still light the Menorah candles and celebrate Hannukah? 

 

Didn’t we eat hot salt beef sandwiches with sweet and sour cucumbers on Christmas Eve night, feeling completely Jewish and comfortable within ourselves?
 

All wisdom and worthy religious creed is based around acceptance, a word I strongely prefer to 'tolerance', which pumps with a negative vibe.

 

Even though I cannot stand the censorial excesses and puritan overtones of wokery, I’m going to risk being accused of just that when I say that, unlike lots of Irish folk, I actually like the “Happy Holidays!” thing.

 

Many of you believe that maniacal liberals demand the saying of “Happy Holidays!” so as to avoid offending non-Christian members of society, but they are wrong.

 

No Irish Muslim, Sikh or Jew will be offended by one Christian saying “Happy Christmas!” to another, but there are other religious festivals that occur at this time of year.

 

No immigrant is going to wait for an Irish Catholic to wish them a Happy Hannukah or Diwali, so why not cover all the religious bases, spread the love and keep everybody happy?

 

People shouldn't be protective of their own religious festivals to the detriment of others. It feels like grown-ups who never learned to share their toys.

 

“Happy Holidays!” does not preclude you celebrating your festival: it merely includes all of us who might be celebrating ours.

 

I'm thinking of the bravery, love and compassion shown by the lad who wrote that letter, back in the trenches.

 

A victim of a pointless and disgusting war, he and his equals on both sides found the true spirit of Christmas and made peace.

 

So please, as you celebrate this most important of feasts, give thanks to your God for all that you have, and love the fact that we are all beautifully different.

 

©CharlieAdley

17.12.25.

 

Christmas alone can be perfect!

Another oldie from my Christmas archive. This one was written in 2002, when I lived in a farmhouse near Killala, Co. Mayo, and felt very happy to be spending Christmas on my own...

lifehack.org

It’s the look in their eyes that gets me. They’ve asked you what you’re doing for Christmas, and you’ve said you don’t know. You might go to friends, but you might just stay in and do it on your own.

Then comes the look. The staring down the nose dewey-eyed 'you-don’t-know-what-you’re-saying-you-poor-sad-loser' look. 

Drives me crazy every time.

 

Of course it's tragic that some people will be lonely and alone on Christmas Day.

 

But the time has come for me to stand up and be counted, on behalf of the multitude out here who will be alone and doing just fine, thanks very much.

 

Well, I wanted to be counted but there’s just me, so I’ll do it myself: one.

One person who will wake up when he wants to on Christmas morning. It’s a special day, so I’ll make sure to leave a few cards and pressies to open, at my leisure, whilst lying in bed.

Then I’ll take a wonderfully peaceful walk along a deserted beach and return home to build a massive fire. 

 

Once the coal is crackling and hissing in the hearth, I’ll phone my family back in London, and chat to my nieces, sister, brother and parents as the phone is passed around their living room. Once again, I’ll reassure my folks that I am fine and happy.

Time to have a little snifter. Crack open the Jameson 12, feel the dark chewy whiskey flowing all over my far-flung bodily bits, warming my heart while cheering my soul.

Now it really feels like Christmas: time to play some music. I’m partial to the Vienna Boys Choir on Christmas morning (I hear they speak very highly of me), but I might just be tempted by ‘The Chieftains - The Bells of Dublin’ Christmas album.

Shocking behaviour.

I’ll play my music as loud as I want to, very probably do a silly little dance and nobody will complain or mock my natural sense of rhythm.

Time to warm up the oven, but what does a man cook to eat on his own for Christmas dinner? Well, exactly whatever he feels like, to be eaten whenever he wants.

 

All I know for sure at this moment is that the meal will consist solely of the most magnificently self-indulgent ingredients. 

 

Possibly a roast shank of lamb, larded with garlic, wrapped in rosemary and honey; crispy roast shpuds; steamed carrots and leeks; a braised onion and a sweet roasted parsnip.

Sound good? 

Oh, you don’t care for lamb? 

 

I don’t care. 

I’m cooking for one.

Such a feast requires a splendid bottle of French red, perchance a velvet St Emillion Grand Cru of great depth and sublime body - much like myself!

As the smells of the roasting meat inveigle their way around the house, I’ll make a few more phone calls, spreading love and good wishes to my friends, scattered around the globe.

Then it’s out the door, and up to visit the landlord farmer and his wife, drop off a bottle of whiskey and a message of thanks to them for housing me in such a happy home.

Oh, and donkeys celebrate Christmas too, so the usual carrots are out, and today it’s nothing but biccies and Golden Delicious apples for my closest ‘neigh-bours’, Kitty and her foal Molly.

Even an atheist Jew such as myself can be a hoary old Christmas traditionalist, so I put the Christmas pud on the steamer and glaze my home-made mince pies, to be snarfed later with brandy butter.

Most important of all, I take the cheeses out of the fridge to let them breathe. A friend in West Yorkshire once described me as 'a pathetic slave to cheese.' 

 

I took it as a compliment. 

 

At Christmas it has to be stinky creamy Stilton on digestive biscuits, and a pungent nutty cheddar on oatcakes, washed down with a healthy dose of vintage port. 

After the meal, a stroll down by the river, enjoying the unique tranquility of the day that’s in it, and back home to watch a movie.  

 

As a child in England, there was comfort to be found in the Christmas morning Beatles film on the box, and in the afternoon the Beeb always used to run Bridge Over The River Kwai. 

 

Some traditions are best left unwrapped, so to be on the safe side I’ll make sure to rent a couple of vids - one new release and one old fave ,something epic like Goodfellas or Dr. Zhivago.

By the time darkness has fallen on my solitary Christmas Day, I will have exercised twice, been well fed and over-watered, ready to snooze a while in front of the fire. 

 

I will not be woken up by any upsetting family rows, or Uncle George needing urgent medical attention after overdoing the brandy.

After my snooze, there’ll be an energetic walk to the bathroom, followed by a decadent soak, and then a bit of a wash and brush up to see if I feel like visiting friends, or prefer simply to stare at the goggle box and drift off into my own private Yuletide nirvana.

How bad does that sound?

 

I will spend money I don’t have; eat and drink as if I were immortal; enjoy my own company, and enjoy feeling eager to step into the pub at noon on Stephen’s Day, to quaff pints of black, whilst listening to tales of woe from sad souls who had to endure the Christmas everyone else wanted.

 

Whether on your own or in the company of others, enjoy a peaceful happy Christmas, and whatever your faith, may your god go with you.

 

 

 

©Charlie Adley

17.12.2002

 

We Blame Dumbo the Elephant!

Alternative Christmas by the excellent Allan Cavanagh of caricatures-ireland.com/blog/

(All names have been changed to protect the guilty.)

Decades before anyone had heard of burning bondholders, we burned the banker's lawn on Christmas morning.

I blame Dumbo.

Peter’s dad was a bigwig banker, whose friend had a timeshare cottage in Somerset. Clinging to the tatty shreds of youth and hedonism, our family of lifetime friends booked it for Christmas, and headed off to what we thought might be the Tudor-beamed thatch of our dreams, in a picturesque English country village.

The 'cottage' turned out to be a crushingly unremarkable suburban house, at the end of a cookie cutter cul-de-sac.

Bland and taste-free, it was white outside and wall-to-wall grey inside; nothing of character, history or colour.

Banker Daddy’s daughter Little Princess met us on arrival, and oh boy, she made sure we’d been warned.

“Look, like, this place has to be respected, like. Nothing bad must happen, okay? Rilly, now, because it’s just not on for one to damage other people’s homes, yah? And that goes for the garden too, okay? Daddy loves his lawn, yah? Super!”

She handed over the keys.

Loaded with drink and a wide range of nefarious recreationals, we crossed the threshold.

By Christmas morning domestic bliss had descended on the non-cottage. All of us, save for Sarah, were draped over chairs, sofas and each other, every eye sucked into the TV screen, where Dumbo’s mother was locked up in a cage.

The baddies claimed she was a mad dangerous animal. We knew she was a pure sweetheart of an elephant.

Sailing blissfully on oceans of mind-altering consumption, we allowed our emotions to undergo full Disney manipulation.

Poor baby Dumbo was losing his mum. Oh look, now he was putting his trunk through the bars of his mumma’s cage, and oh, so sad, look, Mummy and Baby Dumbo were linking trunks.

Sarah’s smiling face appeared around the door.

"Er guys - the kitchen’s on fire.

Collectively gone in the cerebrals, we ignored her as one.

"Oh cool!"

"Nice, nice!"

“Oh, poor lickel nellyphant’s mumma being taken away.!"

“Yeh, but it’ll be alright in the end.”

"No... er... guys, the KITCHEN is on FIRE!"

“Lovely! Be with you in a tick, sweetheart!"

Confronted by our overwhelmingly abject apathy, Sarah finally lost it.

"Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire in the kitchen! Turn off the bloody TV you morons! There’s a FIRE IN THE KITCHEN!"

From under a cushion to my left I heard a distant quasi-Rasta voice bravely offer in whispering song:

“...there’s a fire in my kitchen, what am I gonna do!”

By the time we eventually got off our arses and made it into the kitchen, Sarah had rushed upstairs and was, rather superbly, dunking bath towels in water.

Flames were licking out of the oven, smoke billowing all over the place. It was dramatic and confusing.

Unable to drift becalmed, our feeble heads were suddenly tossed about on raging seas of impending disaster.

“Maybe we should we open the oven door and throw water in it?”

“Dunno. Think opening doors make fires get worse, dunnit?”

Immobilised by fear and mental incapacity, we stood at odd angles and frantically chewed our cuticles for a few minutes, hoping the bad scene might go away.

We ooo-ed, errr-ed and yelled “Don’t panic Captain Mainwaring!”, giggling like infants nicking cake mix behind Mummy’s back.

Sarah appeared with soaking towels, opened the oven door, and threw one over the flames in the roasting tin.

Gone.

Wow! Fire gone bye-byes!

We all stood and stared, while Sarah came to terms with saving the day.

Suddenly Paul spurred into action. Before any of us could stop him, he’d picked up the other towel and lifted the smouldering disaster of a dinner out of the oven, yelling:

“Open the front door!"

A man on a singular mission, he stormed out into the garden, carefully lowering the smoking dish down onto the velvet front lawn.

We all looked and verily, we knew this was not good.

Forget the smoke-stained kitchen. Black can be made white again. We could clean that damage, no problem.

But at some point, preferably as soon as possible, someone had to lift that dish.

All around, neighbours’ net curtains twitched in bourgeois ecstasy.

It had to be Paul. We tried not to laugh as he bent over the slightly-cooled dish.

As he lifted it, stuck to the tin’s underside, there also came up a layer of verdant turf, the exact size and shape of a large roasting pan.

 In silence we stared down at the burnt hole below.

"Daddy loves his lawn!" offered some bright spark.

“Drink!” Sarah was inspired. “Drink! We need drink, lads! It’s Christmas Day! We need a drink!"

This time we all heard her, and I have to admit, from that moment on I remember nothing.

Not one wall-cleaning, oven-scrubbing moment.

A fine time was had by all, and that, my patient colyoomistas, is what I wish for you.

May this Season bring you, and those you love, Shalom peace and intact lawns.


©Charlie Adley
22.12.2018.

There really is no such thing as free beer!

Artwork by the excellent caricatures-ireland.com

More than any other time of the year, when we sit around our dinner tables on Christmas Day, we are aware of who is there and who is not.

At the age of 17, having performed impressive acrobatics with my Yamaha 250, a saloon car, a ditch and a barbed wire fence, I spent six weeks in hospital, over Christmas and New Year.

My femur was snapped in two, which is no mean feat with thighs like mine, and my tibia had a crack or two as well. Bed-bound, with my leg in traction, I developed a bronchial chest infection after an emergency operation.

So every two seconds I coughed in hacking spasms, thus shaking my smashed leg, which was hung in a sling, supported by a metal pole they had driven through me, just below the knee.

Then came the discovery that orthopaedics is a brutal art. In our part of the ward, there were four beds and three bikers with broken bones.

To my left was Kev, who'd fallen off his sleek and mean Suzuki GT750.

Opposite us two was brick shithouse Yorkshireman Gary, ex-SAS, and mighty embarrassed, having survived several covert tours of duty in Northern Ireland, to admit to falling off a Honda 125.

Then Gary was told that because his bone had set at a bad angle, they would need to re-fracture it, to re-set it, so that he might walk again.

Wishing him luck, myself and Kev waited in hushed anticipation for just under three hours, when finally the big guy was wheeled back onto the ward, writhing in agony, swearing profusely.

“How’d it go, mate?”

“Yeh, Gaz, all sorted, is it, eh?”

Gary was a hard man who could really take pain. He’d already told us how he hated himself for flinching after being stabbed in a bar in Belfast, but now he was hurting so much, it took him an age to form words.

“ ...they couldn’t ... break the bloody ... bone, lads ... they banged me with hammers ... smashed and chipped with chisels ... jumped on my leg ... couldn’t re-fracture it....”

Kev looked at me and then we both looked at Gary.

“But but but mate, you’ve been gone for two and a half hours! They can’t have been trying to break your leg for two and a half bloody hours!?!”

“Aye, but that’s what they did, lads. They tried, but it wouldn’t break. So I’m a bit sore now, like!”

So no, a fine and precise art it is not, but compared to the other patients in the hospital the three of us were well off.

We were not sick. We had all had our operations, and apart from antibiotics for wounds, and pain killers for broken bones, we needed very little medical attention.

We were young, male and bored, and allowed to drink beer.

Naturally, we tried to attract the attention of the student nurses as much as possible, and equally, they were happy to have a bit of a laugh with lads who were not ill, physically, at least!

By the time Christmas came around, the three of us were well aquatinted with all the student nurses, and then we were told we would be allowed to drink spirits during the Christmas period.

So we did.

We got plastered, if you’ll pardon the pun, and so did the student nurses. We told them that by having a tipple or three with us they were really doing their jobs, because they were helping us through a difficult time.

On Christmas morning, the Consultant Surgeons came around the wards, carving the turkeys at our besides, and general merriment was had by all.

Karen, my favourite student nurse, had had a lickle ickle bit too much to drink. She pulled the curtains around my bed, produced a half bottle of vodka from under her skirt, and taking some lemonade and a clean specimen bottle from my bedside cabinet, mixed us up a festive cocktail, after which she gave me a lovely snog, and left me feeling a million dollars.

Looking back now, I think how wonderful she was, because not only was I away from my family Christmas table, but so was she.

After the Christmas pud, we were all wheeled out of the ward in our beds, and taken to a large and crowded area, where the staff were putting on a Panto for the patients.

Gary’s wife, (a woman of such substantial proportions and brooding menace that she clearly put the fear of god into our man of iron) had turned up with several cases of brown ale, and so we sat up in our beds, enjoying the show, drinking frothing foaming pints of beer from plastic glasses.

Half way through the performance, I realised I needed to pee. I’d done precious little but drink all day, and now I really really needed to go, all of a sudden, with the fiercely demanding urgency of someone who knows that he cannot go.

There was no way I could ask anybody to wheel me to the loo. To get me and my bed out of that area would have meant interrupting the show, and causing a kerfuffle that would spoil everything for everybody.

So I did all I could do.

Uttlerly failing to understand Archimedes' Principle of Liquid Volume Displacement, I figured I'd drunk just under a pint of beer, so I should refill my glass to the same volume.

To my drunky head it made perfect mathematical sense.

Reaching out of my bed, I placed the foaming frothing pint onto a shelf, and watched the rest of the show, making a mental note to remember to pick it up afterwards and dispose of it myself.

Trouble was, when the lights went up, it was no longer there, and to this day I do not know whether some unfortunate alcoholic scrumper thought his luck was in.

Free beer! Whoopee!

Best not think about that too long.

But on Christmas Day, please, let’s all for a minute think of those who have given up their day to work: to serve us with safety in our homes, at sea and overseas; those who comfort and care, and those who volunteer to help others without a home to go to.

If you spare them a thought and give thanks, you won’t be far off pleasing whichever God you might worship! 

Happy Christmas, Diwali, Hannukah and Solstice, and may your God go with you.

 

17.12.25.