Here we go again, the annual holiest of holies is upon us, although to this oldie last Christmas feels as though it was only yesterday. Funny how time never seemed to pass quickly during those lazy days of long ago, but now rolls off like a movie calendar showing the days, months, years flashing by.
I wrote my first Christmas column for this magazine 43 years ago, sitting in my dad’s office on Albemarle Street. I remember it well because I used every cliché known to man and then some (patter of little feet… children’s noses pressed against snowy windows). The then editor, Alexander Chancellor, said nothing to me but later told a friend that however bad it was, it was better than the Greek political stuff I had been filing. When today’s prime minister was boss of The Spectator 20 years ago, I tried real hard for dramatic effect and wrote about the worst Christmas ever — Athens 1944 during a fight to the death between royalists and communists. We won, making it possible for your intrepid correspondent to write a story about it 60 years later. Boris sent me a note praising the piece that made me feel gooey all over. They say that nostalgia is corny, but for me it’s one of the many joys of Christmas. Everyone remembers past Christmases, whether happy or sad, and mine are mostly the former. The date of our Lord’s birth made it possible for German and British soldiers to play a friendly football match during the Great War. Just imagine if the troops on both sides had refused to slaughter each other further, and demanded that the fat generals sitting on their backsides in grand country houses miles from the front duelled each other for a change. On that Christmas day in Athens in 1944, I saw a Greek commie rebel coming at us pointing a rifle, and someone (most likely my dad) shot him dead before my very eyes. I remember feeling sorry for the commie, who lay there for three days as the battle raged.
Things are more peaceful now, but only here on the Upper East Side, which lies mostly empty. The gunfire is north, south and east of here — the Bronx, the Lower East Side, and in Brooklyn-Queens. The latest craze is for straphangers using the subway to be thrown on to the tracks in front of speeding trains. The perpetrators are always described as mentally unstable, but I beg to differ. They turn incoherent once arrested, which is rare, but are pretty coherent when they are demanding money from mostly aged women riding to work. None of the four that were arrested had names that would have appeared in the Social Register, the American bible of the extinct upper class, if you catch my drift.
About The Author
Harrison Okafor
editor
Judith is a believer, a lover of Christ and a Gospel freak person. A passionate gospel blogger and press writer. I work with GospelHitsNaija.net Media, no 1 Gospel music platform.
