Santa's Little Helper
The Xmas Party Rules
People underestimate the influence of annoyance on the easily-influenced human brain. There are no “don’t sulk and drive” campaigns, no roadside tests to see the level of anger present in your blood, no rules about not being able to use heavy machinery while you’re frustrated at something. But it leads to stupid actions the same as anything else. So maybe someone should have stopped me that night, the minute they saw me throw my phone into my bag and glare down at the ground while heading for the door, and just asked if I really wanted to go. Because I could have avoided being stupidly annoyed, and I might not have missed much. Apart from the elf.
The best place to start this would be years before, when my family started the tradition of always being somewhere else at Christmas time. Not that we were a family that went on holidays to avoid Christmas. In fact, we were the opposite. We stayed with relatives as much as we could, we got involved in local Christmas customs, and we always chose a country that got snow on Christmas Day. The point wasn’t to have a non-traditional Christmas in a sunny tourist resort, but just to have the kind of traditional, family-centred, snowy Christmas that only exists in films.
Another important Christmas tradition, though it was more important to everyone else than it was to me, was my friend Katy’s Christmas party, always three nights before Christmas itself. She saw the talent of organising parties as one of the most important skills anyone could have, and you could see that in the amount of care she took in making decorations, invitations and, most importantly to Katy, costumes for every sort of party that could possibly be organised. But as a result of my family’s Christmas tradition, I had made a tradition of never being able to go the Christmas party. Which I always felt was just as well because of the “Xmas Party Rules”.
These were written on the invitations, and even though I would usually be fine with “1) wear something Christmassy!” and “3) nobody can be in a bad mood at this party!” it was number 2 that I was glad I didn’t have to worry about. Underlined and in a different colour to the rest of the rules, this was apparently the most important rule despite not being number 1. “2) everybody has to have a date!” Katy always made sure to explain that these weren’t suggestions, they were rules, and apart from people whose boyfriends/girlfriends had a very good excuse for not coming to the party, the second rule had no exceptions.
It wasn’t until December that my parents found out that it would be too expensive for us to go on our Christmas holiday, which meant that I suddenly had to worry about the party and Rule 2 much more than I ever wanted to. Seeing as I wasn’t going out with anyone and most of my friends who I could ask to go with me as a favour were already going, I had to find someone, and the only person I could think of was my friend Thomas (only one or two of my friends would know that it was odd for me to be there with a boy, and Katy wasn’t one of them, so I could get away with it). But that plan ended up the same way as the plan for the holiday; cancelled at the last minute.
It was literally only half an hour before the party and I was dressed in a homemade Christmas tree costume when I got a text from Thomas saying that he couldn’t go to the party after all because he was going to another Christmas party, with his real girlfriend. I wrote a long, annoyed text about how it’s well known amongst my friends that Katy takes her rules seriously enough that if you don’t have a date at the party like she said, you can’t have food, and with the mood I was in, party food was one of the few reasons I still wanted to go. This was when the moment happened where I flung my phone into my bag and stormed out of the house, the moment someone should have told me not to bother going. With hindsight, if I had told Katy I was sick, she would have accepted the excuse, but that didn’t occur to me until too late.
I arrived early to the party. A few people were inside the house, a guy was sitting at the picnic table in the garden (based on the fact that he looked miserable and it was too cold to be sitting outside, I decided he had been forced to sit there because he hadn’t followed Katy’s orders) and Katy was at the door greeting everyone. She had a fake red nose, reindeer ears and a long brown silk dress, as usual managing to look as much like someone going to a party as someone in costume. My outfit, on the other hand, was more like children’s fancy-dress. I was wearing a long green top over jeans, and the top had real bits of Christmas tree stuck to it, plus tinsel, and even two baubles.
“May! Heya!” Katy said when she saw me walking up to the door. “Glad you could make it, your costume is brilliant! You said that Thomas is coming with you, right?” I shook my head and told her that Thomas had something incredibly important to go to. She looked disappointed. “Well that’s ok then, just don’t let me see you break any other rules.” She laughed and I walked past her into the house.
I spent the next while standing around, eating and making small conversations with people. I was still annoyed, but I didn’t properly notice how annoyed I was until the girl came in. I tried to stop myself judging her by her costume, but my first impression of her was still terrible; she was one of those girls who, no matter whether the theme is Hallowe’en, Christmas or Dress Up As Your Favourite Cartoon Character, manages to find the costume with the shortest skirt, the one with a prefix like “Bad”. I assumed she was “Bad Elf”.
I didn’t really mean for the tinsel hanging off my dress to trip her as she came in; to be honest, my mistake was less that she had tripped and more that I accidentally smiled about it before helping her up. I don’t remember there being a rule about it, but I was sent outside into the cold anyway, sitting with a guy wearing a Hallowe’en costume and a girl who hadn’t even been invited to the party but sat outside every year.
I wasn’t expecting it, but the elf girl came out and sat next to us. I wondered what she had been sent out for. “Told Katy I had forgotten about the Christmas theme. This costume’s just a green dress, I lied that I was Peter Pan. It’s funny how gullible Katy can be sometimes, right?” she said, I nodded. My annoyance had somehow melted in the cold, so I nodded and said the first thing that came into my head.
“You know Peter Pan’s enemy was a pirate? Someone told me that that’s because he’s a green ninja… you prefer ninjas or pirates?” I got only a fraction of the blank stare I was expecting, and then I realised that she was actually thinking of an answer and not just ignoring me.
“Definitely pirates.”
It was that second that it started to snow, the first snow we’d had in the area for years; there were little flakes gathering on the head of the guy dressed as a pumpkin. It was proper snow, landing on the ground without melting. I imagined it building up around the table and everyone in the house being snowed in, but even after a few minutes that passed with us talking about pirates, it had only made a small layer on the ground. But even that was magical; I had only ever seen slush, and sleet, and hail, and all the other things that aren’t rain but could never compare to snow.
And the best part was, the people in the party didn’t notice any of it. They didn’t notice the mini snowball fight, or the shivering elf and the tree feeling bad and giving her a totally useless tinsel scarf, or the pumpkin guy dancing slowly with the uninvited girl. Even I managed to miss the story of the last one; I never heard either of them talk, but I get the impression they had sat together in the cold at Katy’s party every year. They disappeared before the party ended.
I wish there could have been a mistletoe moment, some snowflake-sprinkled kiss to mark that day without a doubt as my perfect, magical Christmas. But I appreciated the Christmas hug from Cathy I got instead (I would still always think of her as "the elf") who held my hand while we walked in the snow until the point came where our houses were in different directions. I might not have missed much about the party if I hadn’t gone. But I twouldn't like to have missed the last thing she said to me afterwards.
“Next year I’ll dress up as a pirate. If it’s ok with you, get your best ninja costume and we’ll sit in the cold.”
The best place to start this would be years before, when my family started the tradition of always being somewhere else at Christmas time. Not that we were a family that went on holidays to avoid Christmas. In fact, we were the opposite. We stayed with relatives as much as we could, we got involved in local Christmas customs, and we always chose a country that got snow on Christmas Day. The point wasn’t to have a non-traditional Christmas in a sunny tourist resort, but just to have the kind of traditional, family-centred, snowy Christmas that only exists in films.
Another important Christmas tradition, though it was more important to everyone else than it was to me, was my friend Katy’s Christmas party, always three nights before Christmas itself. She saw the talent of organising parties as one of the most important skills anyone could have, and you could see that in the amount of care she took in making decorations, invitations and, most importantly to Katy, costumes for every sort of party that could possibly be organised. But as a result of my family’s Christmas tradition, I had made a tradition of never being able to go the Christmas party. Which I always felt was just as well because of the “Xmas Party Rules”.
These were written on the invitations, and even though I would usually be fine with “1) wear something Christmassy!” and “3) nobody can be in a bad mood at this party!” it was number 2 that I was glad I didn’t have to worry about. Underlined and in a different colour to the rest of the rules, this was apparently the most important rule despite not being number 1. “2) everybody has to have a date!” Katy always made sure to explain that these weren’t suggestions, they were rules, and apart from people whose boyfriends/girlfriends had a very good excuse for not coming to the party, the second rule had no exceptions.
It wasn’t until December that my parents found out that it would be too expensive for us to go on our Christmas holiday, which meant that I suddenly had to worry about the party and Rule 2 much more than I ever wanted to. Seeing as I wasn’t going out with anyone and most of my friends who I could ask to go with me as a favour were already going, I had to find someone, and the only person I could think of was my friend Thomas (only one or two of my friends would know that it was odd for me to be there with a boy, and Katy wasn’t one of them, so I could get away with it). But that plan ended up the same way as the plan for the holiday; cancelled at the last minute.
It was literally only half an hour before the party and I was dressed in a homemade Christmas tree costume when I got a text from Thomas saying that he couldn’t go to the party after all because he was going to another Christmas party, with his real girlfriend. I wrote a long, annoyed text about how it’s well known amongst my friends that Katy takes her rules seriously enough that if you don’t have a date at the party like she said, you can’t have food, and with the mood I was in, party food was one of the few reasons I still wanted to go. This was when the moment happened where I flung my phone into my bag and stormed out of the house, the moment someone should have told me not to bother going. With hindsight, if I had told Katy I was sick, she would have accepted the excuse, but that didn’t occur to me until too late.
I arrived early to the party. A few people were inside the house, a guy was sitting at the picnic table in the garden (based on the fact that he looked miserable and it was too cold to be sitting outside, I decided he had been forced to sit there because he hadn’t followed Katy’s orders) and Katy was at the door greeting everyone. She had a fake red nose, reindeer ears and a long brown silk dress, as usual managing to look as much like someone going to a party as someone in costume. My outfit, on the other hand, was more like children’s fancy-dress. I was wearing a long green top over jeans, and the top had real bits of Christmas tree stuck to it, plus tinsel, and even two baubles.
“May! Heya!” Katy said when she saw me walking up to the door. “Glad you could make it, your costume is brilliant! You said that Thomas is coming with you, right?” I shook my head and told her that Thomas had something incredibly important to go to. She looked disappointed. “Well that’s ok then, just don’t let me see you break any other rules.” She laughed and I walked past her into the house.
I spent the next while standing around, eating and making small conversations with people. I was still annoyed, but I didn’t properly notice how annoyed I was until the girl came in. I tried to stop myself judging her by her costume, but my first impression of her was still terrible; she was one of those girls who, no matter whether the theme is Hallowe’en, Christmas or Dress Up As Your Favourite Cartoon Character, manages to find the costume with the shortest skirt, the one with a prefix like “Bad”. I assumed she was “Bad Elf”.
I didn’t really mean for the tinsel hanging off my dress to trip her as she came in; to be honest, my mistake was less that she had tripped and more that I accidentally smiled about it before helping her up. I don’t remember there being a rule about it, but I was sent outside into the cold anyway, sitting with a guy wearing a Hallowe’en costume and a girl who hadn’t even been invited to the party but sat outside every year.
I wasn’t expecting it, but the elf girl came out and sat next to us. I wondered what she had been sent out for. “Told Katy I had forgotten about the Christmas theme. This costume’s just a green dress, I lied that I was Peter Pan. It’s funny how gullible Katy can be sometimes, right?” she said, I nodded. My annoyance had somehow melted in the cold, so I nodded and said the first thing that came into my head.
“You know Peter Pan’s enemy was a pirate? Someone told me that that’s because he’s a green ninja… you prefer ninjas or pirates?” I got only a fraction of the blank stare I was expecting, and then I realised that she was actually thinking of an answer and not just ignoring me.
“Definitely pirates.”
It was that second that it started to snow, the first snow we’d had in the area for years; there were little flakes gathering on the head of the guy dressed as a pumpkin. It was proper snow, landing on the ground without melting. I imagined it building up around the table and everyone in the house being snowed in, but even after a few minutes that passed with us talking about pirates, it had only made a small layer on the ground. But even that was magical; I had only ever seen slush, and sleet, and hail, and all the other things that aren’t rain but could never compare to snow.
And the best part was, the people in the party didn’t notice any of it. They didn’t notice the mini snowball fight, or the shivering elf and the tree feeling bad and giving her a totally useless tinsel scarf, or the pumpkin guy dancing slowly with the uninvited girl. Even I managed to miss the story of the last one; I never heard either of them talk, but I get the impression they had sat together in the cold at Katy’s party every year. They disappeared before the party ended.
I wish there could have been a mistletoe moment, some snowflake-sprinkled kiss to mark that day without a doubt as my perfect, magical Christmas. But I appreciated the Christmas hug from Cathy I got instead (I would still always think of her as "the elf") who held my hand while we walked in the snow until the point came where our houses were in different directions. I might not have missed much about the party if I hadn’t gone. But I twouldn't like to have missed the last thing she said to me afterwards.
“Next year I’ll dress up as a pirate. If it’s ok with you, get your best ninja costume and we’ll sit in the cold.”