Putting the E in Christmas

What are you doing on Christ­mas Day? Avoid­ing Christ­mas, yes, that’s the right answer. But, while it’s unusual of me to sug­gest a dif­fer­ent approach, this year I recom­mend that you embrace the Yuletide fest­iv­it­ies in a small way by wak­ing up on Christ­mas morn­ing and — after you’ve paused to mourn­fully won­der why you’re no longer eight years old and thus excited that the big day has finally arrived — going online to donate a mod­est sum for the pleas­ure of down­load­ing a sea­sonal char­ity e-book, the cover of which you can see to the right (click for a big­ger picture).

Put together by Frank Hin­ton at Metazen, it con­tains a fant­astic selec­tion of Christmas-related fic­tion and poetry by too many excel­lent writers to men­tion here, a num­ber of whom I have openly drooled over in the past. In a lit­er­ary rather than salivary sense, I dis­ap­poin­tedly hasten to add. Oh, and there’s some­thing by me in there, too — though if my pres­ence puts you off and makes you think of that Christ­mas gift you got from your grand­par­ents in 1989 which you didn’t want and found hideously embar­rass­ing to even be seen with, remem­ber that this is all for char­ity and there are plenty of other pieces to read.

So don’t for­get. Christ­mas Day. Bring your mistle­toe, your Santa hat and your Paypal login. I prom­ise it’ll be bet­ter than stand­ing in a corner of the kit­chen and sweat­ing pro­fusely while you’re fist­ing the bird. (Fist­ing? Did I say fist­ing? I meant stuff­ing. Stuff­ing the tur­key. Obvi­ously. And a tur­key is a bird, isn’t it? Oh God, this is all going hor­ribly wrong and very, very polit­ic­ally incor­rect. The baby Jesus is going to fire his laser eyes at me again. No baby Jesus, please no. Not the eyes. I’m hav­ing trau­matic school Nativ­ity play flash­backs now. Why are Billy and Jane mak­ing slurp­ing and groan­ing noises in that don­key cos­tume, Miss? Why is Brian play­ing an angel when he’s got an ASBO, Miss? Miss? WHY CAN’T I BE THE ANGEL GABRIEL, MISS? IT’S NOT FAIR. I MADE MY OWN HALO AND EVERYTHING. I HATE YOU.)