A Christmas Message From The Joker

Hello, people of cyberspace.  How does the impending Christmas season find you?  Huh?  Are ya… are ya happy?  Excited, perhaps?  Why?  Y’see… that’s what I’ve never really understood about people.  People like me, a… guy like me, as you’ll probably guess, doesn’t attend mass on a Sunday.  They’d never let me in with this suit, hahahahahaha.

I digress.

Christmas.  What are you all… what are you all… celebrating?  I… I don’t get it.   Nope.  Not at all.

Atheists – they celebrate Christmas, right?  They’re celebrating, in essence, the birth of a guy, born two thousand and twelve years ago.  That they may or may not believe existed.  God doesn’t though, right?  Agnostics – maybe they celebrate the possibility of this guy being born and whatever.  Or, are you not celebrating it at all?  What is ‘Christmas’, anyway?  It’s a bunch of people dancing around to the musical equivalent of having people stand either side of you, pushing a rancid sponge into each ear with a sharp pencil.  It’s about braving the elements on a high street, negotiating a slalom of carol singers, musicians, vendors; a whirlwind of impatience and greed amongst the masses for gifts that have to be bought and given on this oh so special day.  We sit around a table wearing silly little paper hats, ostensibly for fun, but really mimicking Three Wise Men who may or may not have bought gifts for this guy who may or may not have existed. *Lets off party popper*

Jesus.

And people say I’m crazy…

“Peace and goodwill to all men” – now, for the warm-hearted of you, shouldn’t that be… every day?  Not seasonal?  It’s a slogan, a sentimental seasonal slogan.  People should be nice all the time, right?  Right?  “Oh, hi… you.  Yeaaahhh, I haven’t seen you in 364 days.  It’s Christmas, so let’s have an uncomfortable thirty-second exchange where we pretend to like each other.”  Now that, dear people, is honesty.  Good ooooooooollllllll’ honesty.  Let’s not delude ourselves any longer.  Okay?  Forced.  Forced.  It’s all forced.

I have a proposal.  How about we turn Christmas on its head?  Roll the dice and see if we can get a couple of sevens?

Now, heh heh heh heh heh, the plan.  It’s simple.  Christmas is all about giving, right?  NOT receiving.  So, on 24th December, everybody go to the store and give.  Everything you have.  From toothpaste to life savings.  From iPads to house deeds.  Give.  Give, give, give.  Let’s set the counter back to zero.  Let’s see how the spirit of Christmas tides us over then.  All the goodwill.  All the laughter.  How will we function without any of our possessions on which we place such precious emphasis?  I reaaaalllllly want this for Christmas.  If I had a girlfriend, hahaha, I’d buy her her favourite perfume not to coincide with the inception of a deity.  I’d buy it because, awwwwwwwww, I hadn’t seen her since that morning.  Nothing exceeds like spontaneity.  Spontaneity, not deity.  Hahahaha, ya… y’see what I did there?  Heh heh heh.

I know, I know what you’re thinking: ‘What about the kids, Joker?  Won’t they be upset?’

But I thought Christmas was not about receiving?

Or is it just me?

So put your Santa hats where your mouths are and let’s get ready to rumble.

And If there is a God… whatever the Devil that is… don’t worry.

He’ll take care of us.

That’s what he does.

Right?

Don’t Lose Sleep Over it…

Good evening/morning/afternoon.

Something important occurred to me the other day.  Something I wanted to share with everyone.  It’s about dreams.

In our dreams, we can soar over the highest mountains, hug loved ones since lost, win the World Cup, kiss (etc.) celebrities.  Dreams are truly one of our richest possessions, that don’t possess us.  We dream whilst we sleep.  We are at peace (okay, maybe the odd nightmare).  We know no pain.  The thoughts and cares of the world are locked away in the pocket of consciousness we call reality.  It’s great.  In reality we cry, we squabble, we shout, we get sad; we laugh, we love, we play.  When you wake someone, always remember they are being dragged from their dreams.  Speak softly.  Kindly.  Know they are weak for those first few blinking, disorientated moments.  Allow them their dreams.

I’ll leave you with a poem by William Butler Yeats which I came across in a film several years ago, of which the final line in particular struck a chord with me.  It defies the celebrity-obsessed, consumer-driven vacuousness that attempts to overshadow what is most important in our lives.  It comes down to not what you own or the things you claim, but that all we have are the people in our lives.  When the lights go off, and all goes dark, we’re all the same.  Except for our dreams.

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

– W.B. Yeats

Bye for now.