The Ghost of Christmas Revenge

Enough of all that Christmas spirit and being charitable. Let’s talk about the girl – now identified as Annie Wagner – sitting in the bleachers at the Bears vs. Packers Christmas Day football game. My husband was on the sofa in a post-turkey torpor as I walked in to hand him a Christmas beer. The camera just happened to zoom in on a girl in the crowd grinning ear to ear and madly waving a sign that read: “My cheating EX-boyfriend is watching from his couch instead!” Woe betide a woman scorned at Christmas-time, but especially a Green Bay Packers fan with playoff tickets. Apparently her boyfriend learned the hard way and hadn’t managed to postpone his dalliances until after the drafts. Now here she was at the Christmas Day game, a beaming little slip of a thing, all fired up with the pleasure of Christmas revenge and the national outing of a two-timing cad. I’m sure we’ve all harboured such a wicked thought, so let me just say: ‘Merry Christmas, Annie Wagner! You go girl!’

My parents joined us from the UK for the holidays and after discussing Annie Wagner’s tale of recompense at the dinner table, my mother revealed a friend of hers once chopped all the sleeves off her gambling husband’s expensive suits in a furious attempt to break him of his casino habit. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this stroke of genius applied in a movie. Perhaps it’s a common knee-jerk reaction. Another of her friends tired of her husband spending excessively on (and no doubt drinking) expensive wine. When her patience finally ran out she drove around the neighbourhood leaving bottles of wine next to the milk delivery on every doorstep. Seems a lot more charitable than pouring it down the drain. And what colourful friends to keep you company. The third tale was of a woman who caught her philandering husband in flagrante in the their marital home. After he agreed to leave for the night, she rounded up all his televisions, expensive electronics and gadgets and left them on the front lawn with a helpful sign saying, “Free”. Surely nothing says Christmas like giving away all your earthly possessions, voluntarily or not. He must still be reaping the karmic rewards to this day.

With Christmas now behind us, we have less than a week to ready ourselves for the New Year and host of life-improving resolutions we’re supposed to make publicly and privately. It’s like a perverse two-finger salute to the gluttony of Christmas: the heedless over-eating, the demolition of boxed chocolates one soft center at a time, and all those glasses of pinot noir and prosecco. Perhaps New Year’s resolutions are not so much about purifying and bettering ourselves for an ever fitter, healthier and over-productive year ahead, but a sort of Victorian horrified flashback to a week of over-indulgent sins of the palate.

For me, my most successful resolution ever was a commitment several years ago to Wear More Hats. And I have. Frankly, anything that adds to your life and happiness rather than eliminating and mandating, is going to be a more efficient arbiter of change in my book. So what if I have a pathetic weakness for my secret stash of Cadbury’s chocolate buttons? There are beneficiaries to the mood-restoring power of half-a-dozen little buttons stuffed in my mouth during the daily 4 o’clock meltdown. If two pre-schoolers and a husband can be saved daily by my personal failing (and simultaneously protect me from booze, Valium and therapy), then it’s a crutch I’m willing to hang on to, size 2 pants be damned.

On that note, with 2012 nipping at our heels, may I wish you, and Annie Wagner, the very best for the New Year. May you eat delicious things, drink whatever takes your fancy, be merry and in good company. Rejoice if you’re gleefully leaving a cheating Green Bay Packers fan in your wake. Failing that, dig into a copy of Gretchen Rubin’s amusing book, The Happiness Project, and hunt down your own brand of zen-happy. And if nothing else: Wear More Hats.