Did the Americans Eat All The Turkeys?

On October 1st, I declared Christmas cancelled due to lack of interest.  Mine. You would have done the same if you weren't going to be home for the damn thing, your kids had other plans anyway and your home, newly placed in a holiday rental pool, due to be occupied by strangers.

My titanium inner strength grew a pair...of super strong shoulders to shrug off Him Outdoors' ceaseless requests to put up the tree and a few decorations. There are no half measure Christmas's in my house - it's all or nothing and frankly, I've lost the energy and interest in going hell for leather just because the calendar ticked over into December.

A few weeks ago Number 2 son announced his plans to visit for a week just before we leave.  OK, always delighted to have him home.  But no, still no Christmas happening in this house.

"Hello, are you cooking Christmas Dinner?" enquired Number 1 son last week. "Good question," I parried, wanting to see where this was leading, although my ears pricked up and I had a good tail wag going.  He had a December weekend free and thought he would come home too.  Nice.  Absolutely everything to do with a perk of his new job - free air travel, and wondering who he could visit on one of the airline's routes - rather than a sudden desire after 5 years to spend Christmas with us.  He, too, was given the constrained dates and now apparently has to manipulate some training hours in order to get here.  So nothing confirmed from that side yet.

But the deed was done and I've tipped over into the Dark Side.  The perfect Christmas meal has to be planned, shopped for and prepared on a few days notice.  With the house packed up ready for tenants and the thought of spending three hours putting up two huge boxes of decorations up just to take them down the following day brought on a fit of the vapours.  

Improvisation is key.


Find a dead branch thingie and spray it silver as a pop up Christmas tree (original plan white but no white paint in the shop. New spontaneous, calm me improvised.  Silver.)

Write copious lists.  Drive to nearest city twice in two days.  Spend a total of 5 hours seeking a turkey. And Christmas napkins.  

Hold on.  We are 20 days before Christmas and the grocers don't have turkey in stock yet?  Responses ranged from "We apologise but this branch of Woolworths won't carry turkey this year.  Please visit another branch." Except the ginormous Woolies Food store down the road isn't getting stock this year either. 

Plan B. Visit large branches of Pick n Pay, Makro and Checkers.  Nope.  No turkey to be had.  

Super Spar.  They tout themselves as local versions of Harrod's Food Store and we have two branches.  First branch - "Sorry mam, our turkeys haven't arrived yet.  Soon."   This is not happening - did we have an influx of Americans in town for Thanksgiving?  Did they eat all the turkeys?

Shoulders drooping with fatigue, I enquire at the meat counter in the 2nd Super Spar.  Blank looks.  No turkey.  Disconsolately staring at two chickens, knowing full well none of us actually like turkey and would prefer chicken anyway, it was hard to accept defeat.  Today's Grand Turkey Hunt had fruitlessly gobbled two hours I can ill afford to lose.  

Something stopped the passing manager in his tracks.  "Can I help you with anything?" "Turkey?" I whimper.  "Not in my section.  But lets check the freezers."

And there it lay.  One solitary Baby Turkey (who knew they were an option? Now I'm a child killer!) lay in icy splendour.  Mine.  

Now to make choc chip cookies, trifle and dig out enough of the packed crockery and Christmas decor to make a passable effort at former seasonal magnificence. I never did find Christmas themed napkins but red ones will do.  See how I'm mastering control of rampant OCD!

For someone who always had the entire Christmas meal, decor and gifts long sorted by 1st December, doing a 180 degree U-turn on events and throwing it all together in less than a week is spectacular.  And joyous.  The Christmas CD's are  playing and that wonderful spirit of Christmas, when family are close together, in mind if not always in body, surges through my veins.  I adore this time of year - comfortable family tradition brings warm memories and love and a reminder that no matter how old my children are, a thread of what we created when they were young continues to pull at us all.

Whoosh!

And in the blink of an eye, September melted into December and here we are, confronted by another Christmas and end of year rush when the memory of clearing up after last Christmas is still fresh.

Funny, I can't remember what I was doing last Tuesday but packing away the seasonal decor, always an awful chore, resonates like a pulsing headache.

Why are we always surprised when the year end creeps up on us?  Honestly, December happens with singular regularity.  Every year.  On cue.  Yet every one a coconut, we greet the month with exclamations of how the year has flown, it can't be Christmas again and we generally behave like ostriches who've pulled their heads out of the sandpit and are totally amazed by what they see.

Nah.  I think every month slips past as quickly but the point of difference is the immutableness (yes, I made that word up) of the 25th December.  And summer holiday bookings have fixed dates.  So if the 5th August is just a day gone by with the usual frustrations of not getting everything done, things slide over to the 6th. Or 16th.  Or maybe even September.

But Christmas Day stubbornly refuses to move out to a more convenient time slot. And those annual business and school shut down dates stick to their guns - their time, not yours.   

Adding to the overcrowded diary is the sudden inrush of invitations and commitments as the whole world realises that days are min and the year is on the final approach to ending.  So 365 days worth of social, school, business and celebratory invitations are crunched into about 35 days.  Commitment overload of the best, and worst, kind.

Minutes, days, weeks and months flow by like the Zambezi River approaching the Kariba Dam wall.  Increasingly funneled towards the inevitable end point, the water smacks the wall and is literally stopped in it's tracks.

And so it is with our year as it reaches December.

Wishing you all strength, patience and fortitude over the next four weeks.  You'll need it!