This morning, in my town, Santa is riding into town. It’s the day of the Christmas Pageant. It’s billed as the largest street parade of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s only rival in the rest of the world is Macey’s Parade in New York. There are clowns, fairy tale characters, Scottish pipe bands, monsters and a haunted house. There’s a giant Christmas stocking, two gorgeous (and now antique) rocking horses and bucket-loads of marching girls. Of course, Santa (Father Christmas) and his reindeer make a grand entrance at the very end.
I think that in the last few years they’ve added a manger scene, as a concession to those who know why we have Christmas in the first place. So there are now two miracles connected to the pageant. The first is the story of Jesus’ birth and the second is the famous blue line. The authorities paint a pale blue line along each side of the street for the route of the pageant. Children are told they musn’t move past that line, and in spite of thousands of people lining up to see the show, everyone respects that blue line. It’s an invisible force field. You have to see it to believe it.
So the busy, silly, over-partied, over-stressed, can-we-fit-it-all-in, who’s-going-to-have-Aunty-Beryl-this-year, has begun. Shops are praying we’ll all be as pressured to give presents as every other year, and maybe spend even more so as not to be shown up by the in-laws. Every year we tell ourselves that this year we’ll be more organized, more relaxed, more chilled out about the whole deal and every year, the closer it gets to the big day, we find the list of things to do gets longer and the money gets harder to find. It’s nuts!
For this little editor, just when I want to be winding things down so I can join the rest of humanity in celebrating the Saviour’s birth by burying myself in tinsel, I find myself buried in manuscripts. Everyone has been working on their book all year, and they all suddenly realise it’s November. Oh no, they think, we really must get our manuscript finished and edited before Christmas. After all, editors, agents and publishers don’t celebrate the holiday like everyone else. Nooo…we all know they live with the Grinch in a cave somewhere in the Isolated Mountains of Publishing World.
Not that I’m complaining…I need the income to help pay for the annual sillliness. It’s just that it’s November and I really must get my manuscript finished before Christmas.