Mr Winter

I hate Christmas and the reason for this is that my belief in everything ended when I was seven.

Two of the worst things that could happen in a seven year olds life, happened to me within the same month. My parents split up and I found out that Santa didn’t actually exist. These two events, both connected to each other, destroyed my faith in general and any idea of love that I may have possessed before hand.

My aim in life from the age of five had always been the white picket fenced house, with blue shutters, two children and a cat, and or a hamster. We used to have a white picket fenced house but I ended up living with my dad and we lived in an apartment that must at some point have been white, but any trace of that had vanished long ago.

The death of Santa was crucial to the way I lived my life, my therapist told me when I was twenty. Apparently since the death of Santa everything in my life went downhill. I despised Christmas because I no longer had anything to believe in. Christmas cheer relied on love, all the Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra songs sung about love and belonging, none of that existed in my family life. Santa always brought us together. As a young child my Dad would leave the house pretending he had forgotten something and then seconds later there was Santa. My mother would play along and when my dad ‘came back’, she would lament at his missing Santa again this year.

Those were the happiest days of my life.

People always act surprised when I tell them of my deep hatred for the festive season. Half the time I am labelled as a grinch, or people shout ‘Bah humbug!’ after me thinking they are original, or in any way witty. I never bother to explain because my nonchalance feels better than the pain that tends to flare up in the pit of my stomach. Everything about Christmas is designed to make you buy in; the cards, the presents, the decorations, the romantic Christmas movies, the faux family board games and personalized e-mails, everything is based on the perfect family and the perfect happiness but no one takes into account that you may be lonely on Christmas Eve and crying on the floor on Christmas morning.

I avoid having the television on the closer to gets to Christmas, I avoid shops, I avoid cold cities and so, just like every Christmas season I find myself back home in my tiny grey apartment in Tempe. The sun ignores the fact that it is December and shines anyway. It is warm and not a real snowflake in sight.

In fact today I was sweating.

The ten steps from my car to the run down coffee shop seemed like miles. The sun was cruel today, as if it knew how much I hated the twenty fifth of December; it wanted to make my day even worse by giving a sunburn. I fled to this coffee shop ever since I was allowed to move out from my Dad’s. The coffee had no sugar and no milk in; it always hit the right nerve. They refused to play Christmas songs the minute it was December twenty fifth, especially the one that says ‘the weather outside is frightful’, because out of principle the weather in Arizona is never really that frightful.

I always have the same seat, right by the window. The shop is on the main road and so it’s usually comparatively busy, but never on a day like this. Normally the shop is shut, but for the past years Phil knows to expect me. For this reason it’s probably why I never pay for the coffee.

It’s only really at this moment when the loneliness hits me like a bullet. I try not to feel vulnerable, but if I dwell on the messy divorce, the endless to-ing and for-ing of me like a yoyo between my parents, or the different schools I always ended up going to, then I feel the ache of hating Christmas and love in my bones. No one ever sticks around any more, all the boys who said ‘we can still be friends’ never call, never text. All the girls find better people who will listen to their problems and make them feel better. It seems irrational to hate love; everyone loves something. I love black coffee and second hand books, but love between two people doesn’t exist, no matter how many more rom-coms Jennifer Aniston makes telling us the opposite.

The need for two people to come together surprises me, what’s wrong with wanting to be by yourself and not believing in love? At least not believing in love is still a belief. Even if everybody else thinks it’s wrong.

I am jealous of those who do love and appreciate Christmas, who can enjoy each other’s company and who still have children that believe in Santa. As a child anything is possible, the tooth fairy, the monster under the bed but best of all Santa Claus always knows what you want and he never misses your house, even though your parents warn you about that all the time.

The naivety is what I miss the most; it seems that when Santa stops being real, the rest of the world starts to be real.

My thoughts always get caught up with each other on days like this, and nothing ever normally happens to pull me out of my deep brooding, but this Christmas Day was different.

The tiny and weak sliver bell of the coffee shop tinkled and a lanky guy walked in. He slapped a five-dollar bill on the counter and in return got a black coffee and his change. There was an air of resignation and anger surrounding him. He sat down at the window table behind me, and I could feel his emotions radiating over towards me.

We were the only two people in the shop and I almost wanted to turn around and look at him to gauge his facial expression. His eyes had been hidden behind Ray Bans as he walked in so it was difficult to tell. The silence in the shop had changed from my moody solitude to awkwardness. Clearly neither of us had expected anyone to be here.

After ten minutes the tall guy stood up and got himself another coffee, but instead of walking back to his table his course was set for mine.

Without even asking he pulled a chair out, sat down, wiped off his sunglasses and placed them on the table in between us.

“My name is John and I hate Christmas,” he said looking me straight in the eye.

“My name is Ali and I hate Christmas too.”

We shook hands, and smiled at each other. The start of something out of the blue, and it reconfirmed the faith in humanity that I had lost such a long time ago.