Perhaps the Northern climes, Decembers cold with snow
show lesser conflict in their celebrations
but in our nations, our Southerbrations
(how’s that for a portmanteau!)
are odd,
with songs not so apropos
to the, well, you know…
the general theme
of sweating on the beaches
that, while sing-song jingling,
post-church caroling,
we’re
sand-castling, skin ting-tingling –
beneath kite-strings and a glaring, singly-ringed sun.
With song-streams of Lapland winter wonderlands,
we’ve
sand in our mandibles,
and a grand blue watergleam offland
which washes waves which wet the strand and
tumble the black, white and red festive resters under.
Yet all the while,
we are dashing through the snow,
deep and crisp and even over scorching pan-hot sand and
it feels like snow & bells and sun & sand
lose their ampersands. Yet we withstand
and still sing, because – you must understand, that –
stripping, baking, fire-skipping to the freezing surf,
amphibians in the crashing cool,
singing fa-la-la-la-la and riding waves, ah! This
is how we do it.
What holly or ivy have we?
Yet jolly and merry, we join the triumph of
steamed-up windows with hot roast potatoes and chestnuts by the fire,
while we peck at charcuterie, and chill the juice as best we can.
There is no comfort in our yule logs:
just a second front of burning,
which wins the brave braaimaster the frostiest drink.
Our drooping heat-wave plastic trees
like dusty flapping ostrich wings,
hang heavy, like a brandy pud,
though here the thing to do is put
the Klippies in the coke instead.
We jostle our posse across the hot plateau;
no cosy hygge in the Kruger, we’ve more kudu
and beers than reindeer in this hemisphere.
Our holiday is sincerely weird.
Joe Spring writes 