Rod Liddle offers a festive tour of the world at Christmas 2008: irrational fear, ignorance, stupidity, vexatious litigation, a foolish longing to abolish ‘risk’, and Christmas parties that, we are warned, have ‘absolutely nothing to do with Jesus’
In Santa’s grotto at a top London department store, Santa in his big white friendly beard sits on a bench — and there is a large ‘X’ marked on the bench a couple of feet away where the child is firmly directed to sit, allowing a wide corridor of clear and unsullied air between the child and the potential kiddie-fiddler from the North Pole, with his red cheeks, strange reindeer and unaccountable affection for children. Santa is not allowed to touch the child. The child is not allowed to touch Santa. Happy Christmas, war is over. This is where we are now.
My three-year-old daughter was taken to see a different Santa recently, a more rural Santa, who had set up base on some farm complex which at other times of the year sold bourgeois organic produce to people who have got the hell out of London recently. It was brilliant, she said, when she got back, before begging to watch Wonder Pets on TV. My wife took her. They walked through bales of hay illuminated by sparkling fairy lights and there was Santa, sitting on his sleigh, presents by his feet. My daughter clambered up on to the sleigh, stumbled a little and was caught by Santa, got spoken to, was given her present, and left very happy indeed. She’ll have good memories of the day, I would guess — but what stuck in my wife’s mind was the look on Santa’s face: that will stay with her for some time. When my daughter stumbled, clambering on to the sleigh, Santa reached out and grabbed hold of her — an instinctive reaction, something we all might do.
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