Look, I know I ent going to be popular after what I have to say.  But I ent paying license for my mouth yet, so I going  to get this off my chest once and for all!

            My neighbour have the sort of old-fashioned friendliness you don’t see much again.  And that is a good thing, because he sort of old-fashioned friendliness go lead to all kinda quarrel and fight.  Take the stereo, for instance.  He have this big fancy stereo, and I ent have none.  I don’t want none.  I don’t like loud music.  But my neighbour so sorry for me, and so full of kindness, he does make sure that everytime he play he stereo, I have the full benefit of the music.  In fact, the old lady quarter mile down the street does have the full benefit of the music too. That is friendliness, oui!

            Is the Christian people that start the fete for Christmas.  But the way this thing catch on, they lose all control over it.  In fact, a lotta them does complain that they go do plenty better if they take back their thing and keep it private.  But if they try that, you go see all kinda people go up in arms!  Christmas is all-a-we thing now, and nobody could claim it back.  I myself used to enjoy the excitement when I was small.  In fact, old as I is now, the Santa Claus fever does still shake my bones, and if my friends and family forget to wrap a present with my name on it, I does get blasted vex.  So you can’t really say I against the thing.  But what happen last Saturday morning was just too much.

            For once in a long time, I didn’t have to report for work on a Saturday.  We supposed to work Monday-to-Friday, with the weekend off, but that don’t stop the boss from passing through on a Friday afternoon and saying, in a pleading sort of threatening way, “Too much loose ends this week, yes.  We can’t face Monday morning like this.”  And bam! You out to work on Saturday morning.

            But that Friday had no unfinished business, so I get a Saturday to myself.  Luxury!  A Saturday morning to sleep late.  No hustle and bustle and cold-water bath courtesy WASA.  You ever wonder why, early in the morning when you breaksing from a bathe it always have water, but late in the evening when you reach home stink and sweaty it ent have none?

            I roll over in the bed and pull the blanket and my spouse closer, and settle down for my second sleep.  The warmth of the bed was just beginning to win the fight with the morning cold, when the Spirit of Christmas make his entrance.  “JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS ...”  I try to bury my head deeper in the pillow, but that didn’t help.  The better half stupsed.  “I could go over there and jingle that damn man bells!” I grumble.  I sneak a peep at the clock.  6:30.  By seven o’clock we give up the fight and get up.  I had as much chance of late-morning sleep was as I had of dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh.

            We start making breakfast to the tune of a scrunting Mexican who begging Santa Claus for some cash so he could go and tie up he own foot with a chick.  By the time we sit down to eat, my neighbour done dance a Christmas Polka, dream of a white Christmas, and pull off a spectacular colour change to a Blue Christmas.  But I have to give the man this - when he like something he don’t hold back.  So he play that Jim Reeves album over and over again.

            It take a strong effort not to go over there and give the man a piece of my mind, but just when I thought I couldn’t take it no more, he pack up in he car and pull out.  I watch in gratitude as he drive down the road, tape deck screaming about the silent night he didn’t see fit to let me have.

            Now I know a lot of all-you siding with my neighbour, and ready to call me Scrooge.  And I done make my case that it ent Christmas itself that I against.  But everything have it own time and place, as the saying go.  I mean to say, last Saturday was the twenty-seventh of October!