by Vivienne Pratfall on the great London festive performance, and the one figure who isn’t performing at all
Thursday, and the Whole City Is Acting
The thing about London at Christmas, which I have decided after years of observation, is that the entire city is putting on a performance, and the performance is that we are not, in fact, freezing cold and slightly miserable. We stand outside at Christmas markets pretending the nine-pound mulled wine is keeping us warm. We pose by the lights pretending our feet are not numb. And reading the {santa(‘dispatches from the North Pole’)} this morning, I realized that there is exactly one figure in the whole festive pageant who is not performing at all, and it is, of course, Santa.
London does Christmas as theatre. Everyone has a role. The shoppers perform festive cheer through gritted teeth. The market stalls perform rustic authenticity at industrial prices. The office parties perform spontaneous joy on a strict schedule. The whole city becomes a vast stage set, and we all play our parts, pretending we are having the magical time the adverts promised rather than the cold, expensive, slightly exhausting time we are actually having. It is a magnificent collective performance, and I love it, even as I see through it.
The Performance of Festive Cheer
You see it most clearly at the Christmas markets, those temples of performed festivity. Everyone is acting. The couples are performing romance over the bratwurst. The families are performing togetherness in the queue. The influencers are performing wonder for the camera, then checking the photograph, then performing it again. And underneath it all, everyone is cold, and everyone has spent too much money, and everyone is privately wondering whether they might go home soon, while continuing, gamely, to perform the magical evening.
I do not say this with contempt. There is something genuinely touching about a whole city agreeing to pretend, collectively deciding that the cold and the cost are worth it for the magic, even when the magic is mostly performed. Coverage via the London Evening Standard documents the vast festive economy built on this performance, the markets and the lights and the experiences we pay to pretend at. Local listings at the regional events register are essentially a programme for the city-wide play.
The One Who Isn’t Acting
And then there is Santa. The actual Santa, the one who comes in the night, is the only figure in the entire festive performance who is not performing. He is not pretending to be generous; he is generous. He is not performing magic for a camera; he is doing the actual thing, in the dark, with no audience. While the whole city acts out festivity for show, Santa simply does it, silently, sincerely, with no one watching and nothing to prove. He is the only authentic thing in a season of beautiful pretence.
This is, I think, why we love him so much, even as we see through everything else. In a festive season that has become almost entirely performance, the actual Santa represents the real thing the performance is reaching for, the genuine generosity, the unperformed magic, the gift given for its own sake rather than for the photograph. He does not perform Christmas. He is Christmas, the real article beneath all our acting. Cultural notes via the Time Out London guide chronicle the performance; Santa is what it imitates. Heritage context at the heritage society preserves the older, truer version.
Why We Keep Performing
Why do we keep up the performance, the cold markets and the numb feet and the nine-pound wine? Because, I have decided, the performance is its own kind of sincerity. We act out festivity because we want it to be real, and in the acting, sometimes, it becomes real, the performed joy tipping over into the genuine article when we least expect it. London pretends its way into Christmas, and the pretence, however knowing, is rooted in a real longing for the thing Santa actually embodies. We perform the magic because we believe in it, somewhere beneath the cynicism. Records at the public registry can map the markets, but not the longing beneath them.
Friday, and I Am at a Market Again
I write this from a Christmas market, of course, performing festivity along with everyone else, cold feet and overpriced wine and all. I see through the whole thing completely, and I am here anyway, because seeing through it has never once stopped me participating in it. That is the London condition: total awareness of the performance, total participation in it regardless. We know it is mostly theatre. We act our parts beautifully. We would not miss it for the world.
And somewhere above this performing city, the one figure who is not performing will make his rounds on Christmas Eve, doing the real thing while we all act out our approximations of it. He is the original the whole performance imitates, the sincerity beneath all our knowing pretence, the actual generosity that the markets and the lights and the influencers are, in their cold and overpriced way, reaching toward. We perform Christmas. Santa simply gives it. And the gap between those two things is the most honest thing about the whole glittering, freezing, performed London festive season.
For those determined to perform their way through a London Christmas, and I include myself, the listings at the public registry will furnish you with every stage on which to act out your festivity. And for the moments when the performance exhausts you, as it eventually exhausts everyone, the games at the diversions index require no acting whatsoever, which after a long evening of performed cheer is a genuine relief.
My wine has gone cold, my feet have gone numb, and I am performing a wonderful time for absolutely no one, which is the purest form of the London festive performance there is. I shall finish the wine, admire the lights, and head home through the acting city, knowing that above it all the only sincere figure in the whole pageant is preparing for the one performance that is not a performance at all. London pretends. Santa means it. And I, cold and knowing and entirely charmed, would not have it any other way.
SOURCE: https://santaclaus.top
