Christmas Lists

“What do you want for Christmas?”

“A meteorite to just fly in from space and wipe out humanity”

Sasha’s pet hamster Jimbles had died a week ago, and he was grappling with his emotions as aggressively as possible. I had thought that making a Christmas list might improve Sasha’s mood, but he was stubbornly apocalyptic. Earlier we had listened to the angriest Eminem song that he could find, to the beat of which Sasha had smashed a chair and launched his fist into a cupboard.

I really didn’t care that the hamster had died, and I seriously suspected that he had simply forgotten to feed it, but all the same I was trying my best to console him. I asked him to consider all that he had learned from his special time with Jimbles, to be grateful for the happiness which he had enjoyed and to embrace his suffering because it builds character.

Sasha was uninterested in being comforted, and so I decided to evoke the spirit of Christmas. “I know that it’s still very early, but have you thought about getting another hamster for Christmas?” I asked.

He was sitting down at the table, smoking, and he looked at me with serious eyes. “No, I never want to see another hamster again”

“But hypothetically what if you opened a present and it was some adorable little hamster, tied up in a red ribbon?”

“I would literally take it upstairs and flush it down the toilet”. I had to laugh at that, we both laughed a little bit. “Seriously though man, I will never feel the same way again about a hamster. Like at night I just remember Jimbles and I can’t sleep. It’s fucked. I’m going completely insane”.

I was certain this was all melodrama, “what about your last hamster though?! You felt the same way about Timmy and yet you got a new hamster”.

“No but that was completely different because Timmy was just some stupid little runt and I just used him at the time because he was fun to have around when I was revising for my GCSE’s. Timmy was just a casj thing there were no emotions”. He threw his cigarette at the ashtray, spraying soot across the table. “Jimbles wasn’t just about having a hamster, there was actually like a connection. Jimbles was the whole package; I mean f****n dine in for two, Saturday film night and a relationship status on Facebook: the whole package”.

“That relationship status is not funny; it literally makes you look like you’ve decided to die alone”. He agreed that the relationship status had to go, along with the Facebook account he had created for Jimbles.

As we talked Sasha was laboriously extracting the mince from a stale mince pie. A light hung low over him; its warm glow covered the table and then receded into the surrounding darkness. “Shall we actually do a real Christmas list then?” I suggested, keenly aware of the dreamy look in Sasha’s eyes, which were growing ever more vacant. “I want lots of new clothes; I really don’t like anything that I have. I wish I had a whole new wardrobe”.

I asked him what he would like to be given for Christmas. He thought, and then said “probably…nothing”. Nothing? I wasn’t willing to accept that answer. There had to be something. Hadn’t he seen the adverts? Wasn’t he aware that Debenhams was having a half-price sale, and that Halfords was 85% off on selected brands?

“No, literally I just don’t want anything for Christmas. I just literally don’t get the point in actually having anything anymore”. I pulled the least convinced face I was capable of, at which point he said “I know it sounds stupid and obviously I probably am gonna get some stuff for Christmas that I need and like, clothes and some s**t like that, but I don’t actually really care. Do you get what I mean? It just doesn’t actually matter. If I get it then yeah I will be happy to get it, but it’s just not what I want in my life. I really don’t give a s**t about Christmas”.

We sat for a little bit in silence. I knew that he was wrong. What happens to you at Christmas is important. It’s an indicative factor; it’s like litmus paper. That’s why people get so excited about what they’re going to do for New Years, Christmas, Halloween; all the holidays are the same. How well your festivities go directly correlates to how well your life is going. If you sit at home, alone, slowly drinking yourself into oblivion, watching The Little Vampire on ITV3, contemplating what takeaways are open, then you need a rethink. You need to take salsa lessons; join Oxfam. But I didn’t say all that, I let Sasha keep the dramatic initiative. That’s what friendship is.

Eventually he continued, “I’m starting to feel like all that is actually worth having in life I can’t buy. When you actually get something that is worth having then you can’t get a refund for it or exchange it for the new model when it eventually breaks. I mean like am I gonna order the Jimbles 5S or the Jimbles 360? Like, I’m gonna get my family Christmas presents because it’s traditional, and they’re gonna open them and say thanks and we’ll probably like hug. You’re with your family on Christmas and you feel like yeah this is sick, we’re having a really nice time, but then after that nothing has changed. You’ve got some material possessions and in like a week you’ll forget who gave them to you or if it was this Christmas or like your birthday two years ago. You can look at me like you think I’m just saying this but I don’t get why you’re not agreeing with me because obviously what I’m saying is true. It’s just big businesses and advertisers brainwashing people into spending loads of money. Christmas isn’t some magical time where suddenly we sit down and write Christmas lists and eat these s****y mince pies and then Father Christmas comes down the chimney and makes all our dreams come true. Come on man, Christmas is just a time where people get drunk and forget that they’re living a pointless, insignificant existence and human life is miserable”.

“When you put it like that maybe I’ll just ask for money this year”