[Janice D. Soderling]

It is Lucia day in Sweden, which means among other things that Christmas is right around the corner. (Gasp!) When my neighbors invited me over "for a bite to eat" later this evening, I felt the Christmas panic rising and I don't even do stuff any more, no leaky trees, no hauling out baubles from the spirit of Christmases past. An accelerating sense of emergency, nonetheless.

So, I got the idea to help everyone with similar panic. If we OD on Christmas before it gets here, we will be resistant to disappointment, no longer expectant, no longer with hopes built high to collapse alongside the lemon soufflé.

This is the place to share the name and a short (very short if copyrighted) extract from your favorite Christmas- related text: poems, psalms, prose, smutty acrostic. You choose.

Since I am of a cynical nature (when I am not being overly romantic), here is my contribution. It is from Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, by Sue Townsend, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Townsend, a marvelously funny writer, if you haven't read her work, do, oh do, it will cure even the most severe case of Christmas depression.

Wednesay, December 25th
Christmas Day

Woke up with the usual adult disappointment that there was not a sack of toys at the end of my bed. The sky was grey and it was drizzling. Why can't the weather give us a break for once and snow on Christmas Day?
(…)
The atmosphere at my parents' living room was more Pinter than Dickens. There was a Christmas tree in the corner of the room but it was a scraggy affair and looked more as though it was apologizing for its almost bare branches. My mother had done her best with three sets of Christmas lights, baubles and tinsel. I was pleased to see that the 'bell' I had made out of an eggbox and a pipe-cleaner when I was seven had been hung in a prominent position at the front of the tree. I sensed that my mother was depressed.
(…)
At 11 o'clock my father put on the Russian hat with the ear flaps that he wears in the winter and said that he had to go out and fetch something. I watched him get into his second-hand camper van and drive off.

I said to my mother, "I'm surprised you let Dad wear that, Mum. He looks so weird in it.'

She said aggressively, 'Mozart, van Gogh and Einstein were not conventional men.'

I went into the kitchen and stuffed the limbless and wingless turkey. There were still som ice crystals inside the bird, but quite frankly, diary, salmonella poisoning seemed quite a welcome prospect.