Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "christmas"
A Christmas Outing Review
A Christmas Outing by Jonathan HillMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I happened to be on a tram on my morning ride to work when David's mother rip-opens the parcel her daughter has sent as a gift from Australia and pulls out of it a vibrating pink penis with a gift-tag around it. David stares open-mouthed at the sight of it, his boyfriend Jamie drops the remains of the biscuit he is eating in his lap, David's dad is laughing. David's mother looks from her husband to penis and from penis to her husband and asks, confused, “What . . . What is it?!” This propels David's dad into an even louder laughter, which is followed by a sudden blare of rap music ringtone from his phone he still doesn't know how to turn off.
At this point David is really annoyed at his futile attempts and all distraction. It is all too much for him so he yells: “I’m gay and I’m going out with Jamie and I love hiiiiiiiiim!” This scene is an ultimate climax of a hilariously funny novella A Christmas Outing by Jonathan Hill.
It is Christmas market time and 19-year-old David is going to visit it with his parents. This time, though, his boyfriend Jamie is coming along. David has something very important to announce to his parents tonight and Jamie is there to support him. Coming out to his parents is too complicated and not easy at all and Jamie is going to be there to be by his side and help him in any way he can.
A Christmas Outing is teeming with funny scenes and brilliant and comic dialogues of one dysfunctional family which is trying to survive Christmas time. A dominating mother and a submissive father who keep arguing about every little thing (sounds familiar, anybody?!), David's Psycho Sister who fled as far away as possible from her family and who sends sex stuff as gifts to her parents – her mom especially, and David who is the whole evening laboriously plotting a plan to admit to his parents that he is different, that he has a boyfriend, so he can be accepted and be himself more than he ever was.
Jonathan Hill is a master of building a suspense and expectation around David's coming out. He makes us smile, giggle, snort and laugh from one situation to another throughout this whole heartwarming and honest comedy short story that will make everybody feel good despite the serious issue of coming out which it covers in order for everyone who is and feel different to become recognized and labeled within the set and acknowledged categories of our society. His characters are very functional, realistic and alive, and we have certainly met their real-life versions at some point in our lives.
After Not Just a Boy, A Christmas Outing is another smashing success by Jonathan Hill I had luck and pleasure of reading. My pleasure would be even greater if I didn't have to suppress funny sounds that were threatening to burst out of me in a hysterical laughter in a tram full of people when David from the screen of my smartphone mused: My sister is on the other side of the world, in a different time zone and season and still she manages to piss on the bonfire I haven’t yet lit.
Wonderful, simply wonderful!! Five grins as big and shiny as five stars!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
p.s. Jonathan, maybe I should come out and admit that I fell in love with your writing?! (Here comes another big grin which you can see only with your mind's eye!)
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Bernard Jan
The Hidden Faces of Holidays
This is about you: oppressed, invisible, silent. Nameless, undesired, unworthy. Unwanted. FACELESS. You – banished from your homes and you – caged into your existence.
You are turned into a burden of our society. (Not by your own will.) Because you are poor; once you had a meaningful life and now you are fading shadows crawling up and down our streets, unwashed and dirty packages stacked and locked behind razor wires with just a vision of freedom you once possessed in your vanished and broken homes, with destiny that doesn't force its smile upon you any more. The future for you is uncertain like the drops of sudden rain burned and turned into vapor on the hot desert sand.
The faces of the other you are even harder to count, harder to see. You multiply us by tens and hundreds of times. We love you from a distance. But we don't actually care about you, acknowledge you. We love the taste of you much better than the lives you were given and granted as something of yours and something that belongs to you only; we love your blood and fear on our tongue rather than the gentle pulse of your beating hearts on the soft palms of our hands.
Your babies are cute and our babies love to play with them. They relate and understand each other with the uncorrupted knowledge of innocent souls who know that they belong to and create one and the same universe. Though, that universe doesn't bring the same fate to all of them when, even at holidays and the time of universal joy, they go silently into the darkness of their lives, guided by the hands of our humanity. Their tears, their cries, pain and agony are hushed with our celebration of life and good wishes.
Something is very wrong. I look for compassion, kindness, gentleness and goodness, but they are masked behind our smiling faces. Sparkled into nothingness by the lights of fireworks and myriads of wishes. As the world sinks its teeth deeper into the soft and ripe flesh of celebration, I feel the ever thicker presence of death spilling like a fog everywhere, all over the world. Hiding both sad and smiling faces, hiding everyone and everything, like there is no single life left on this planet. Like the light is completely turned off.
Before the plates are cleaned, even before the tables are set and candles lit, I humbly beg you to consider celebrating kindness, compassion and life. Because there is so much more to it, so much more than a sparkle of champagne, clinging of glasses, smeared rouge and loosened ties after the long-hour night and tipsy heads.
Once we are back to our old selves, we realize that there is kindness in us and that there is the need for good deeds towards others. Homeless, poor, refugees, animals. Those abandoned, forgotten and faceless ones. Those we refuse to acknowledge, those whose existence we deny because they are far from our hearts.
Except, they don't have to be. Not now. Not ever. Particularly not in the days of celebration. They can be celebrated and celebrating with us, by our decisions and resolutions that will last for a long lifetime. Ours and theirs.
Thank you for choosing compassion, kindness, goodwill and empathy. Thank you for opening your hearts to human and animal suffering. And thank you for doing something about it.
Happy holidays!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan
You are turned into a burden of our society. (Not by your own will.) Because you are poor; once you had a meaningful life and now you are fading shadows crawling up and down our streets, unwashed and dirty packages stacked and locked behind razor wires with just a vision of freedom you once possessed in your vanished and broken homes, with destiny that doesn't force its smile upon you any more. The future for you is uncertain like the drops of sudden rain burned and turned into vapor on the hot desert sand.
The faces of the other you are even harder to count, harder to see. You multiply us by tens and hundreds of times. We love you from a distance. But we don't actually care about you, acknowledge you. We love the taste of you much better than the lives you were given and granted as something of yours and something that belongs to you only; we love your blood and fear on our tongue rather than the gentle pulse of your beating hearts on the soft palms of our hands.
Your babies are cute and our babies love to play with them. They relate and understand each other with the uncorrupted knowledge of innocent souls who know that they belong to and create one and the same universe. Though, that universe doesn't bring the same fate to all of them when, even at holidays and the time of universal joy, they go silently into the darkness of their lives, guided by the hands of our humanity. Their tears, their cries, pain and agony are hushed with our celebration of life and good wishes.
Something is very wrong. I look for compassion, kindness, gentleness and goodness, but they are masked behind our smiling faces. Sparkled into nothingness by the lights of fireworks and myriads of wishes. As the world sinks its teeth deeper into the soft and ripe flesh of celebration, I feel the ever thicker presence of death spilling like a fog everywhere, all over the world. Hiding both sad and smiling faces, hiding everyone and everything, like there is no single life left on this planet. Like the light is completely turned off.
Before the plates are cleaned, even before the tables are set and candles lit, I humbly beg you to consider celebrating kindness, compassion and life. Because there is so much more to it, so much more than a sparkle of champagne, clinging of glasses, smeared rouge and loosened ties after the long-hour night and tipsy heads.
Once we are back to our old selves, we realize that there is kindness in us and that there is the need for good deeds towards others. Homeless, poor, refugees, animals. Those abandoned, forgotten and faceless ones. Those we refuse to acknowledge, those whose existence we deny because they are far from our hearts.
Except, they don't have to be. Not now. Not ever. Particularly not in the days of celebration. They can be celebrated and celebrating with us, by our decisions and resolutions that will last for a long lifetime. Ours and theirs.
Thank you for choosing compassion, kindness, goodwill and empathy. Thank you for opening your hearts to human and animal suffering. And thank you for doing something about it.
Happy holidays!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan
Peace, Love, Empathy
These are the days when we are full of love and show more kindness than anytime during the year.
These are the days when we want peace and happiness to everyone, when we are ready to give getting nothing in return.
But these are also the days when we take the most. When we deprive others of their happiness and peace, when out of ignorance or lack of care we sit at the family table and take their lives.
Opening our hearts—to everyone—is important. We are so capable of grand and beautiful things and, truth is, we can live and be happy without taking from our animal families.
Please think before you choose your meal and show them mercy. Join me in honoring life and fill this world with kindness and love for everyone. Don’t let any animal be killed for our celebrations and festivities, we are all entitled to freedom and happiness.
My love to you and your beloved ones and every single creature that swims, flies, crawls and walks the earth.
Best wishes and happy holy-and-every-day!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan
These are the days when we want peace and happiness to everyone, when we are ready to give getting nothing in return.
But these are also the days when we take the most. When we deprive others of their happiness and peace, when out of ignorance or lack of care we sit at the family table and take their lives.
Opening our hearts—to everyone—is important. We are so capable of grand and beautiful things and, truth is, we can live and be happy without taking from our animal families.
Please think before you choose your meal and show them mercy. Join me in honoring life and fill this world with kindness and love for everyone. Don’t let any animal be killed for our celebrations and festivities, we are all entitled to freedom and happiness.
My love to you and your beloved ones and every single creature that swims, flies, crawls and walks the earth.
Best wishes and happy holy-and-every-day!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan
Mo Mo Mo! Merry Christmas, Maureen! Book Review
Mo Mo Mo! Merry Christmas, Maureen! by Jonathan HillMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
If I’ve read this novella during the Xmas time, I would be less depressed than I was on that day.
Jonathan Hill is again brilliant in making me laugh with his natural sense of humor. Throughout the whole story you grin at Maureen’s wickedness and silliness, and then he makes your eye shine with a stranded tear of her kindness.
Even if Xmas is not your favorite time of the year, you will like the warmth and find joy in reading Mo Mo Mo! Merry Christmas, Maureen! story.
Thanks, J, for your gift!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
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Bernard Jan
