Why do the opening lines of Band-Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas" contain an unnecessary reassurance? The lines read: 'It's Christmas time/ There's no need to be afraid'. Of what? The Hound of the Baskervilles? Renewed interest in curbstomping? Okay, thank you, Messrs. Geldof, Ure, Collins, Young, Sting, Le Bon, et al. I wasn't particularly worried, but if a bunch of Brit-rockers are looking out for me, then I guess I'll just leave the front door open and sleep on the freeway.

WORDS FOR CHRISTMAS

Here are two words that I like: metaphrand and metaphier. In metaphor, the metaphier highlights some aspect of the metaphrand. In the phrase "the heart of the night," for example, the heart is the metaphier and the night is the metaphrand. That particular phrase is useful for expressing to students that the night has, somewhere, a big squishy heart that pumps out darkness. Even though no one has yet found this heart, scientists have deduced its presence by the regular emissions of "dark air" that occupy 9-15 hours of every 24 hour cycle. Given the sheer volume of dark air that this heart produces, it must be formidable in size. Moreover, since this heart has not been found in any populated areas of the earth, it stands to reason that the heart must occupy an unpopulated area. Surely the presence of human beings is anathema to this wiley dark heart, or it would have been found years ago. It naturally follows that once the earth is entirely populated, the heart of the night will not exist, the circulation of black air will cease, and night will perforce also cease its operations. This will be a great leap forward for human beings, who by then will have developed the necessary technologies to overcome all forseeable problems (invisibile fireworks, disoriented owls, unsleeping flowers, etc.). I predict great advances in lasers and LED lights.

WHAT ALL HAPPENED WHEN THE LIGHTS OF THE WORLD SPELLED CHRISTMAS

Since all of you experienced Christmas and know the basic template of holiday experience, I won't go on at great length about my vacation, except to tell you what I got. And I won't do that either. I'm more than happy to offer you a story based around what I ate, though.

The Office Party - a buffet dinner at the Windsor Castle restaurant, one of those bizarre frozen-in-time places that saw its peak when taking a girl out for a nice porterhouse steak was considered classy. The building was mocked up to look like a castle, with turrets at the corners and Gothic script above the entrance, but for some reason the pillars and the awning were painted a cheap purple and pink. In the upper dining room a huge glass case held a brace of ribbons, certificates and commendations for outstanding cuisine, but a close look revealed that the well of awards had dried up by 1991, and now there was nothing in the well but dust and grease and a coating of MSG.

Coming Home - At 7:00 PM my dad and my brother picked us up at our apartment. The Lotus and I rode in the back. We decided to take the rabbit with us, so we slid the cage onto our laps for the trip. The rabbit sat in his box. We were pinned by the cage's bulk, unable to move anything but our hands. Every time my brother shifted his position in the front passenger seat the cage pressed itself further into my chest. Somehow The Lotus ate a bag of Doritos in that position, which makes me think that she'd do better than me with building collapses or Japanese POW camps. We arrived in Saskatoon at ten o'clock. My mother had thawed out a lamb shoulder for us.

Christmas Eve - dinner with my immediate family at the Tsui King Lau , perhaps the only restaurant open in Saskatoon on the evening of the 24th. Barbecue duck (which caused me to cry out "Argh! I've been five-spiced!" and collapse like a sack of grain), a pile of shrimp-studded Singapore noodles, rock cod spilled in corn chowder, a soup of items in clear broth, tenderloin beef pounded into cowering submission and smothered in black bean sauce. We ate until we were stuffed. Mom took the barbecue duck home and contrived a soup out of it with pine nuts and pesto heavily involved.

Christmas/Boxing Day - The 25th and 26th were the two days that The Lotus had doled out to her own family, so her mother was balancing the limited quantity of time with an astounding amount of calories. It would probably have been easier on my system to have been fed a constant stream of nourishment through a hose for 48 hours instead of having it concentrated in clot-forming bursts. Mashed potatoes with cream cheese, a salad that was somehow creamy, a lasagna that was somehow creamy, a neutron turkey from some higher-gravity planet. Crab stick, smoked oysters, antipasto, hummus. All of it obscenely gratifying to the tongue and tummy. We refused dessert on the first night - a chocolate trifle that felt light on the spoon but weighed like a brick in the stomach - but that only increased the portion of dessert given out on the second day. Like a culinary Dame Fortune, The Lotus' mother had apportioned us each an allotted caloric intake. It was like death: you could swerve this way or that to avoid it, but eventually you had to face the food. I'm fairly sure that anything I ate over the next seven days was completely superfluous.

parode - exode