'Father Christmas'

 It's a surreal feeling, is incredulity; the stilling of the air and the fading away of surroundings as a person is confronted with a shocking reality.

The ostensibly emaciated Father Christmas sat before me, his back turned and his spindly legs draped in crimson, extending from the stool on which he was perched, to the gently dying fire. The sound of teeth biting into shortcrust pastry and of booted feet tapping oak-tiled floor reverberated throughout the bourgeois living room. I could also decipher strains of "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" amalgamated with, oddly enough, "Bat out of Hell". Father Christmas' hair was shamefully reduced to a stubble; a black stubble. Had Father Christmas done something wrong?

"Hello" I mumbled feebly.

Spluttering.

"Father Christmas, are you alright?" I asked. My little heart breaking at the thought of my Nordic hero falling prey to sickness.

The head erratically moved up and down.

"Did you get my pony?" I inquired.

The head shook.

"Why not?" I gawped.

There came a moment of absolute silence before the large figure rose from his stool and slowly,ever so slowly, began to turn towards me. I caught sight of his leathery skin, his dark complexion and large spectacles and in that moment, Father Christmas died.

From the cradle, a belief had been instilled and nurtured in me of a sort of avuncular and benign friend living in the outer reaches; whom had devoted his life to materialistically fulfilling the wants of children every Christmas. This completely selfless figure was so highly thought of within our household, that with a monk-like self-discipline, I would glean extensively from television programmes, novels, films and the Internet on this revered sovereignty. The subsequent discovery of the non-existence of Father Christmas and the wintry Elysium fields that I thought I had found; coupled with the deception of my parents (whom I decided to hold as renegades), altered my trusting nature so much that I regard that fateful night as the loss of my innocence.

Indeed, from that moment on, I realized that I was completely alone to fend for myself in a treacherous and belligerent world that I had never known before. As an eight year old, it was now my obligation to identify honesty from deceit so to protect my heart that had been so pitilessly broken.

So, as I gazed with outrage into the eyes of my father, listening to him floundering; it does, on reflection, seem fitting that I should have acquired this understanding. It came almost by gift from Father Christmas.


With thanks to http://webclipart.about.com for the image.