One of the Christmases that I like to remember the most is the first color television. My father’s company was starting to make money and for a couple of years we had added Santa Claus presents to the holiday program. The presents for Three Kings Day and my birthday had never been cut, not even in the roughest moments of difficulty. At that time they were the dates that I looked forward to with the most delight and the ones that most filled my imagination.
My mother set the table in the kitchen and my father ran to close the door. “I heard noises,” he said quietly, laughing with his eyes, with a mysterious face that seemed out of a Warner Bros. cartoon series. When my father did comedy, his front teeth gave him an air of magical and it seemed like they had grown out of her bizarre way for some reason. My mother came out into the hall and there was a rush.
I don’t remember what we ate, perhaps monkfish with prawns, which was a typical dish of the festivals at that time. Neus and Eila were too young to understand what was going on, and they continued eating without paying much attention to the hustle and bustle. Laia and I smiled and looked at each other saying: “Our parents are a little crazy.” My mother put us desserts, trying to hide it, but my father began to come in and out of the kitchen, more and more encouraged by his own jokes.
That day I began to understand that the Christmas holidays are a representation of the dreams and ambitions that keep us going all year long.
As every year, we get tired of laughing and, after choking on lychees, and taking the Vichy out of our noses, we stormed into the dining room. Next to the tree there was a package that was fatter than the others, with a card where it was written in handwriting: Vila Family. The window was open, there was muscat in the glasses. My father picked up a piece of paper from the floor and said with a false indignation, made of psycho-pedagogical candor: “Santa Claus will hear me, tomorrow I will call him at the Lapland office and tell him to do the favor of hiring professional pages.”
I had already resigned myself to never having a color television and when my father told me that the device had no brand because it was made with the best parts from each manufacturer, I had a moment of doubt: what would I say to my friends? If at that time there had already been talk of private labels, the choice would have seemed unfortunate to me. The device came without the remote because my parents did not want us to lean on the sofa but it had an elegant design and little orange buttons that looked very modern.
When we turned on the television, the first image we saw was a fat, bearded Santa Claus riding a sleigh across the sky. It seemed that Santa Claus was saying goodbye to us, as he passed from one side of the screen to the other, and we were a little stunned. My father was the quickest to react. He went out onto the balcony and started shouting: “Bye, bye, thank you, thank you, have a good trip, see you!” Neus and Eila ran after him, and began to look for the flying sleigh, in the black sky of Barcelona.
“Where is he, where is he?” Asked my sisters with increasing impatience. Fired by fright, and by disappointment at having missed such a special occasion, Neus burst into tears. My parents ran to comfort her. Since they couldn’t, Eila and Laia tried to help them. For a moment I too lost interest in the new television. That day I began to understand that the Christmas holidays are a representation of the dreams and ambitions that keep us going all year long, and that what the heavy people call reality always surpasses fiction in one way or another.
