I love my family. In fact, I love them so much that at this time each year I pop 15 Valium, board a cheap flight from Cape Town and try to not clutch the nipples of the man sitting next to me as we bump our way towards Durban. See, I’m aviophobic - terrified of flying. It’s so bad that I once tried to distract myself by spending the entire trip drawing my life in pictures on my arms with a ballpoint pen. When we landed, my mother asked if I’d joined a prison gang.
But no matter the severity of my fear of flying, it’s always overshadowed by a slew of other phobias that express themselves only at Christmas. We’re not talking the usual Yuletide anxieties that can be assuaged by half a bottle of chardonnay and four mince pies: the dread of socks and underpants; the fear of Auntie Lolly’s trifle; the aversion to conversations about rugby. We’re talking deep-seated phobias that require three months of shock therapy and a subscription to Heat magazine.
Forget agoraphobia - that nasty fear of open spaces that obviously doesn’t affect cowboys, Paris Hilton’s brain cells or Namibians. At this time of year, I’m always struck by a crippling bout of angoraphobia. Ever since I proclaimed a proclivity for fluffy jumpers back in 1982, my family believes I still like to wear rabbits - even though I’m a strict vegetarian and look like Bette Midler at a petting zoo when I’m encased in anything hairy (or harey). Worse than the angora assaults is the fact that my father is fond of not only bequeathing leporidae-based casual wear at Christmas time, but he likes to gift cardigans featuring pottery buttons in the Peter Rabbit genre. Dad, I’m 39. I like perfume.
When it comes to gifts, there are a myriad other phobias. I’m severely aurophobic. I’ve told my sister this a zillion times, yet each year she insists on buying me something so shiny, so blingy… so gold, that I no longer find it possible to feign gratitude and surprise. “Wow! A gold charm bracelet featuring lots of monkeys!” I exclaim. “You shouldn’t have! Like, really! Gold makes me look like a Romanian hooker and makes my skin fall off!” Sarah, I’m a summer. I wear silver.
There’s also my xanthophobia (fear of yellow). Put me in anything this colour and I resemble an egg on legs. Then there’s my microphobia (fear of small things). A 30ml bottle of Eternity never lasts beyond March.
I’m also generally cacophobic (fearful of ugliness) - known in South Africa as kakophobia - and this includes gifts of anything written by Dan Brown, anything sung by Celine Dion and anything featuring dried flowers as its centrepiece.
Weirdly, while I have general Claustrophobia (fear of Santa) at this time of year, I don’t experience pogonophobia (fear of beards). Instead, thanks to my ageing uncle who visits from England every Christmas, I suffer from geniophobia (fear of chins). Somehow, he has forgotten that I’m an adult woman with a husband, a mortgage and a herd of grown-up dogs. As soon as I walk in the door, he mauls me with his unshaved chin, rubbing it on my neck like he did when I was three. Uncle John, I wear bras now. I even drive my own car. I’m not ticklish.
Of course, the festive season wouldn’t be complete without food anxieties. Besides being obesophobic (fearful of gaining weight) for the three months preceding Christmas, I become maniacally mageirocophobic at about 5.30pm on December 25, when the rest of the family is either too tipsy or too full of Toblerone to head into the kitchen.
Under normal circumstances, I like cooking. I do a mean lentil and flatulence curry and have been known to produce edible nut roasts, but violating the cavities of dead birds is beyond my culinary and moral scope. As is glazing bits of pig and grilling bits of pig made into tiny sausages. Mum, I’ll help with the carrots, but I draw the line at swine.
There are other festive phobias: proctophobia (fear of rectums), which involves my niece and her nappies; melophobia (fear of music), specifically the King’s Singers and my brother’s vocal talents; oenophobia (fear of wine) and the headaches it brings; cherophobia (fear of gaiety) and the way my sister-in-law expresses it through the medium of belly-dancing; and clinophobia (fear of going to bed), because sleeping on three couch cushions on the lounge floor next to a chiming grandfather clock is enough to turn me from Rip Van Winkle into Jack the Ripper.
But the worst fear of all is swayzephobia. Even though many DVDs are bequeathed at Christmas and my parents have the Nasa equivalent of satellite TV, we always end up drooling into the scatter cushions, watching old Patrick Piggy Eyes (may he rest in peace) doing extremely clean dirty dancing with Jennifer Also Piggy Eyes.
So think of me on Saturday. I’ll be having the time of my li-hi-hife. And I’ll owe it all to them.
In the meantime, may the rest of you not have a scary, scary Christmas. - Sunday Tribune