With their unique pen and their own sensitivity, artists take turns presenting their vision of the world around us. This week, we are giving carte blanche to Serge Denoncourt.
1967.
Shawinigan.
I’m 5 years old.
I already know that Santa Claus does not exist because I recognized the glass eye of Mr. Ferron under the red and white suit and the cotton beard last week in kindergarten.
Christmas is approaching and I am not particularly happy. My parents, especially my mother, like to say over and over again that we are poor. Which is wrong. We are not rich, but we lack nothing thanks to my father who has three jobs.
As Christmas approaches, my mother, queen of passive-aggressive, likes to remind us that we will have a beautiful Christmas Eve because she and my father have “tightened their belts” to give us what we want. That they “have made enormous sacrifices, but that is normal when you love your children.”
At home the tension is rising. Will my family be missing out on the essentials because I requested a Hot Wheels race track? Will my requests throw us out on the streets? And this “belt tightening” that I do not understand haunts me and provokes in me images of parents who die slowly asphyxiated by a belt tightening, the image of which pursues me even in my sleep. My life is a hell of guilt.
On December 24, when I am in my bed and I await midnight with fear, my sister sleeps soundly the sleep of the just, since she knows that she will receive her “Kenner stove”, so desired and that she has discovered a month earlier in my parents’ wardrobe while making the whole family believe that she hadn’t seen anything.
Me, during this time, I repeat. I put myself on the scene.
I practice expressions of joy and exclamations of happiness. This happiness is obliged since I do not have the right to be disappointed in front of all the sacrifices of my family to have a beautiful Christmas.
I must be happy. No choice. If I don’t want to spoil the adults’ Christmas. The last one before we all slept under bridges because of my demands as a rich kid.
My heart is beating too fast. I feel sick. I want to vomit. I want to cry but I control myself. I’ll play the game. I’ll pretend. I will claim happiness when I would simply like to disappear from the face of the Earth. Me, selfish, heartless, unforgivable.
Midnight.
My mother comes to wake us up very slowly.
“Merry Christmas,” she whispers. Anguish.
In my pajamas, my sister and I make our way to the living room. Under the sparkling tree are some gifts.
Anguish.
Sitting on the floor, eyes a little puffy, I look under the tree and wonder what is hidden in the boxes wrapped in green and red paper. My sister feigns surprise. Yet she is delighted. She now owns the coveted “Kenner Stove”.
In turn, I develop a huge gift. Surprise. My parents couldn’t file for bankruptcy for two still-painted tractor-trailers. They belonged to my brothers 10 years ago. I am disappointed but relieved. I don’t want these trucks, but I know I’m not responsible for the famous “belt tightening”. My sister would therefore be responsible with her little turquoise plastic oven which, in my little mind, must have cost a fortune. Our life will be hell, but at least it won’t be my fault.
But, twist, my mother leans towards me with a second gift. I do not want it. I want to offer it to the real poor. We don’t have the means. I open and I discover a game “Ker Plunk” that I never asked for, which I do not want, which despairs me. My parents look at me tenderly … So I explode with joy. A feigned joy, of course, but a joy which means to them that I am so happy, so ecstatic that it was worth losing everything, not to eat three times a day, to wear clothes. clothes patched for the joy of owning a … “Ker Plunk”? !
Everyone heads for the kitchen. We’re going to eat pie and turkey at 1 a.m. It’s party. I announce in a small, uncertain voice that I am not hungry. That I’m not feeling well and I’m going to go to bed. Everyone looks at me with a loving smile and wishes me “good night and merry Christmas”. From the bottom of my bed, I cry in silence.
I know that Christmas is a holiday which is and always will be a sad holiday. The saddest in the world. It is known, it is known and archi known: I don’t like Christmas. I have said it over and over again on all the TV shows; in all radio studios. We believe that it is a posture, a character, a business. But no. You know it now. It’s honest, felt, suffered. I don’t like Christmas.
To be honest, I don’t like parties in general which too often come with this tyranny of happiness.
We talk a lot about this invisible weight, this seasonal spleen that emerges with the holiday season. It is believed that this condition belongs to adults. That Christmas is for children and their joy is matched only by our exhaustion.
I believe, however, that we are wrong. Those who are under the most holiday pressure are the children.
Expectations too high. The inordinate excitement. The disappointment of the gifts. New Year’s Eve and parents’ fatigue gorlots. Christmas causes unsuspected stress and anguish in our little darlings … Believe me, I know it.
So, if your child, like me, doesn’t like Christmas or New Years, then accept it. Make yourself a reason. Do not force joy and false pleasure. Leave him alone, what!
It is with a little sadness that I write this last paper for The Press. The call of the directing being felt and my schedule becoming more theatrical than literary. Thank you to Stéphanie Grammond for having believed in it when I had all the doubts of the impostor.
In closing, I wish you all a wonderful holiday season. And if ever, during this time of year, you wanted to be grumpy, surly, taciturn, lonely, obnoxious, killjoy … well! do yourself a favor and don’t shy away from me.