The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

For a wonderful four weeks in October we had a veritable feast of freakiness. There were witch’s hats, bats, black cats and cauldrons galore gracing the shelves of the mainstream supermarkets and department stores as well as the usual suspects such as the cheap and nasty Red Dot and the Reject Shop.

Of course there were many complaints about importing all these awful traditions from the evil and satanic United States. Lamentations that they are corrupting our children and the rest of it. Izzie likes to inform such folk that it was not in fact the Americans who had invented Halloween (although the Mexicans definitely have the copyright on Dia de los Muertos which is also a big thing here in Oz over the last few years)

It was in fact an Irish pagan holiday from the old days before St Patrick converted them all into cute and cuddly Christians. The Christian Church cleverly co-opted such customs by introducing All Souls and All Saints Days at the beginning of November devoted to the memory of the dead ancestors.

The Americans replaced the turnips with pumpkins which are much bigger and prettier.
The one point of contention where I do agree with the wowsers and naysayers is the fact that Halloween is supposed to be in Autumn as the nights get longer and darker and the realms of the undead loom larger in the mind. It is simply silly to just take such rituals and transplant them without regard to the spirit of the law rather than the letter.

Then came the First of November and the race that stops a nation where many folks got very debauched and disorderly and we all woke up next day to an invasion of elves and reindeer and big fat bearded men in red suits. Not a spook to be seen. It was as if they were all banished into outer space and a bright shiny new era of fluffiness had dawned with the new month
It was just ghastly.

As bad and all as it is to transplant Halloween to the southern hemisphere without regard to the season, for Christmas it is down right ridiculous. Even without all the silly Santa, sleighs, snow and reindeer stuff, the festival is still a celebration of the return of the light after a long dark winter.

Then there’s all the so called born again Christians screaming that the evil Muslims want to ban Christmas. Lots of them also happen to be fans of the Trump who has also jumped on this particular bandwagon.



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Any walk down the main street of the city centre or any one of the ghastly big box suburban shopping centres would quickly reveal that the biggest threat to Real Christmas are not those nasty evil Muslims but the devotees of the Great God Mammon.
Next time I encounter one of these ranters, I will innocently ask just where in the city it is possible to find a store display of a baby Jesus in a manger. If this was a drinking game, they would die of thirst.

And then of course, the Sad South Brits still living in their White Christmas fantasy land still insist on roast turkey and ham with roast potatoes and usually brussels sprouts, peas or pumpkin on the side followed by slabs of Christmas pudding covered in brandy sauce. All of this in the sizzling stinking hot summer where it often gets to 35 celsius on the big day and the last thing anyone wants to do is eat huge amounts of heavy, fattening and very rich food.
Such rich winter fare doesn’t even taste good in the middle of summer, it is very expensive, heats up the house and is just a wasteful and stressful way to fill the day.

This sick and twisted serpent cannot even use the occasion to celebrate the summer solstice and the return of Darkness. For it is at the time of Christmas and the following two months that the summer is at its hottest and most horrible and the solstice serves as a marker for the start of the stinking sizzling burning times. It’s going to be especially tricky this year trying to keep the Rudolf red nose out of the sun. Even with wearing a hat and sunscreen and lurking in the shadows as much as possible, it is still tricky trying to keep the big bad yellow blob in the sky at bay.

The only relief in sight is the first week of January. That’s when the Hot Cross Buns make their first appearance in the shops and Christmas is officially over. Last year there were rumours that such buns had been sighted in supermarkets in Darwin on the day after Boxing Day.