An Elf To An Other
He had come close to banishing Christmas for himself. As he had stopped eating ice cream, stopped drinking alcohol, it was not that far fetched that he would be cancelling Christmas as well. Unsurprisingly, as his parents’ behaviour had changed in accordance with rich people's habit of disregarding seasonal changes other than by choosing a vacation-spot, and as they had read an increasing amount of magazines not featuring children and shaming ageing, it seemed something that they might be about to do for him. It was funny that they were cancelling Christmas, yet he played the Grinch. That was about class, he had come to, to a certain degree, understand. Although he could not as openly show on himself being of a “lower” class as people who had family-relations more traditionally visible in the ranks of middle rather than upper class, his family had started treating him with the same sort of sternness as rich people to poor in a Dickens novel. Or as towards a barking dog in the street, independent on his being quiet or not. They did not shoot dogs, themselves, likely because it would be frowned upon or they would have difficulty getting the permits. For they were quite openly lazy in regards of resisting the urge of hiring people to do jobs for them, and could rarely be stopped from not cancelling something other than a trip to an Italian beach resort. Cancelling things seemed a dear past time to them, he snarled to himself. They had read the magazines, and so they knew what they mistook for their rights. And they were furious for not getting them. If there is something for rich people to get out of dutifully watching coverage of poor people’s misery, it is their ecxpected rights. As a middle aged bureaucrat at a sooth-sayer they watched the reporters tread on in awesome silence.
And so he hesitated going there for Christmas, which had not been cancelled. Yet, despite, despite, despite… he was going, hesitating as a pastime on his walk over. He had long since stopped - another pastime of his (stopping) - regarding his wants and needs in regards to larger issues as something to care that much about, since TV would blurt out the usual stuff no matter what he did, no matter what he said. Christmas seemed to him as a sort of hostage-situation between classes highlighted in memorabilia designed to lure kids into metallic arms. It was also a moment to draw a breath and sigh “humbug”, that he somewhat enjoyed.
He knocked on the door since they had taken away his keys. Even when he was staying there, they had refused to hand him a pair. The humiliation was so heavy he had to increase his efforts of reversed hospitality and gratitude – he laid his own cards as theirs on the table and wished himself a merry Christmas with an increasingly guilty sigh.