Malicious rumours

Santa Claus has once again had to quash the constant rumours that he doesn't exist. In a statement today, he insists that he is very much alive and the claims of his non-existence are malicious and upsetting.

"Of course I exist" he said, as he poured me a generous glass of prosecco at his luxurious home, Santa Towers in Reindeer City, Lapland. "Here I am, as large as life, as you can see, working hard on the production of this year's Christmas presents. These mischief-makers should shut up and stop distressing all those children who're looking forward to Santa's annual visit.

"Every year I have to deny these absurd rumours that I'm just a fantasy figure who doesn't exist in real life. I may be extremely old, I may have had one too many on occasion, and I may be a little too plump for the smaller chimneys (I leave those to the elves). But I haven't yet kicked the bucket.

"My lawyers are dealing with the most persistent offenders, and they can expect to pay substantial damages to the Exhausted Elves Benevolent Fund."

Children everywhere have been devastated by the claims that he doesn't really exist. Five-year-old Lucy Gristle of Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, cried non-stop for a week after hearing the rumours. "She was inconsolable" said her mother, Melanie. "I tried everything to stop the tears but nothing worked. I don't know how people can bring themselves to start such pernicious tittle-tattle, knowing full well it will break so many children's hearts. They should be ashamed of themselves."

After watching Santa's TV interview, little Lucy is now over the moon and eagerly awaiting his visit. "He's so clever, he always knows exactly what I want" she said. "I only show my present list to mummy, but he finds out somehow and there they all are under the Christmas tree. I love Santa so much."

Unbearable loss

These three children - Evie, Mo and Otis Maslin - were all killed, together with their grandfather Nick, when Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over the Ukraine.

The three children were flown back to Perth in Australia on Thursday to be returned to their parents.

I can't begin to imagine the bottomless grief their parents must be suffering as a result of this utterly stupid attack on a commercial plane whose passengers had nothing whatever to do with the conflict.

Anthony Maslin and Marite Norris say they are living in a hell beyond hell, that their pain is intense and relentless. "No one deserves what we are going through, not even the people who shot our whole family out of the sky."

The loss of one child is bad enough, but the loss of all three must be an unbearable agony. How can they ever recover from it? How can they have anything like a normal life ever again?

Do the fanatics who shot down the plane have even a flicker of guilt or remorse over what they did? Do they grasp in any way the massive suffering they've caused? Probably not. Probably they see the dead plane passengers as simply unfortunate casualties of war, not to be dwelt on.

Gaining territory is more important than broken hearts.
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And in a related news item, an Australian company has developed a water-based alternative to cremation that avoids the 200 kilogrammes of greenhouse gas emissions from a traditional cremation. It simply speeds up the natural decomposition process, taking about four hours in all. Stew instead of roast, as one of my Facebook friends put it. Brilliant.

Heartbreak

People are fond of saying they're heart-broken, but isn't the word grossly misused? I mean, how often are we really that traumatised, that bereft? If people were truly heartbroken that frequently, they'd be basket cases.

Can we really be heartbroken by a celebrity dying? A cancelled holiday? Not winning the lottery? A shop closing or a tree being cut down? Disappointed maybe, or saddened, or surprised. But brokenhearted? An exaggeration, surely?

We've probably never met the celebrity. All we know about them is what we've seen in the media. We have no actual relationship with them beyond personal appreciation. How can we seriously say we're emotionally shattered because they died?

Shops closing, trees coming down, green fields being built on - disturbing certainly, not what we expected, a blow to our nice little neighbourhood. A tarnish on our perfect vision of life. But hardly something to tear our psyche to bits.

The truest heartbreak is the disruption of close relationships, ones that involve our whole being and our deepest emotions. Relationships so strong that when anything fractures them the repercussions shake us to the core.

That is heartbreak proper. Our most basic hopes and expectations are confounded and we have to pick up the pieces and rebuild. It's not just a passing event that skims the surface of our lives.

There's genuine heartbreak too in the loss of precious possessions, things that express our identity and sense of self. Which is why burglaries can be so distressing, out of all proportion to the physical damage, when something very personal is taken from us.

But using the word too casually trivialises those situations where we're truly heartbroken and in real need of comfort and support. Coming to terms with a chopped-down tree is hardly in that league. Let's not pretend it is.