The Mallorcans simply don't get the whole deal with Christmas. How can they be expected to when, as with so many other things, like cricket and queuing, the British invented it? Well, Charles Dickens invented it. Had it not been for the Cratchit family Christmas there would never have been a whole industry devoted to red wrapping paper with pictures of holly and Yuletide logs nor a Far-Eastern sweatshop turning out by the yarn load socks with Santa on them. Nor would we ever have had Noddy Holder, Noel Edmonds, re-releases of Wham or cards highlighting the Miliband family dental care.
There is only type of Christmas. One of getting totally slaughtered on Christmas Eve, having spent the preceding months schlepping around Arndale centres in search of gift-wrapped boxes of soaps and shower gels, and of spending Christmas Day attempting to devour a pudding the weight of a house brick and vomiting after too much Harvey's Bristol Cream and Stone's Ginger Wine. Dickens was a great visionary. He saw the potential for Christmas, and the potential came in the form of Tesco's drinks section.
Another of Dickens' great visions was to sideline any interruptions to the true meaning of Christmas that involved hanging around in a freezing church getting chilblains and mumbling the words of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful". It's this, the church bit, that the Mallorcans don't truly understand. Rather than spend Christmas Eve in determined and undistracted praise of the brewing, wine and spirits industries, they pitch up at church in order to hear some old bird warble on about the imminent arrival of the Apocalypse. (And UNESCO call this humanity!?). Some Christmas spirit I call that, threatening the local populace with the image of the Four Horsemen of Rajoy, Bauzá, Montoro and Aguiló crashing through the front door and having away with what few coins they haven't already managed to lift and, for good measure, the meagre collection of presents that the average Mallorcan family will have been able to scrape together from the local Chinese shop and car-boot sale.
Not of course that there are Christmas presents. Not at Christmas. Whoever heard of this? How can there be Christmas presents and they are not given at Christmas? The Mallorcans should be investigated for mental cruelty to their children by making them wait twelve days for their new iPhones (those privileged few who can afford them, that is). Mañana is all very well, but by the time the Mallorcans get round to handing out the pressies, Santa is long gone, has his feet up in Lapland and Rudolph is out to pasture for another year, doing nothing more taxing than keeping a wary eye out for a passing tourism minister with a high-powered hunting rifle.
The trouble with the Mallorcans is that they've got all their dates and timings to cock. And there is nothing more wrong than with those who insist on eating turkey on Christmas Eve. The British have never fallen for this flouting of tradition, despite the best attempts of the royals who keep up the pretence that they are still really German and good mates with the Kaiser, tucking into entire herds of Norfolk livestock on Christmas Eve and then jackbooting across the Sandringham estate for some fresh air on Christmas Day. And if they were true to their German roots, on Christmas Eve they would be eating the most revolting fish known to man, or other fish, the carp. Maybe they do, for all I know.
At least the Queen gets her Christmas message spot-on, as in it is on Christmas Day, unlike the Spanish King who does his when the Mallorcan faithful are back from or going to church to be warned about the Apocalypse. How on earth he's going to manage this year to skate around the little matter of the elephant I've no idea. And then there are the other Kings, the Black and White Minstrels whose arrival heralds, finally, the moment when Christmas really kicks in, albeit twelve days too late. But when one says arrival, where, in Bethlehem, was there any mention of a dockside for the Kings to pull into? Or indeed any tourist pleasure boat for them to arrive on? Sorry, but the Mallorcans have got this totally wrong. It's no use anyone claiming that the fountain out of the field, moor and mountain that the Kings had to traverse afar while bearing gifts means the sea, as I'm not having it.
The Mallorcans are getting there. Slowly, but they are getting there. They are beginning to understand that there is more to Christmas than a Gregorian chant and a bar of nougat. But there's one thing they'll never manage. There will never be a Mallorcan Noddy Holder. "IT'S CHRISSSTMAS!".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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