So, Christmas day 2005…
Because I am still limping around like my great Aunt Helen when her artificial hips seize up, I can’t be in any of the major shows for another couple of weeks yet. The policy here is, if you can’t work, you can’t sail, so I have to keep up my hours of work and still be useful if I want to finish out my contract. (And although all I can do these days is fantasize about leaving here, I need the rest of my contract’s pay to enable that.)
So, to keep me as a useful employee during the day, they decided to make me the main contact for all the “special” guests that come on board. Every week we have an adult enrichment series that has three sections to it and I am looking after what they call the “Behind the Scenes” section. The first couple of weeks were fun. Imagineers, animators, Disney entertainment heads came on board and I accompanied them through lunches, forums and seminars… it’s a nice way to spend my days (and a welcome break from damn pirate shows) and then I go and do all the shows at night that involve little or no dancing.
However… Christmas day was a little different. This Christmas officially marked the longest working day of my life. Oh yeah… what better way to spend Christmas than working 14hours.
Not only was I still being the “Disney face of Christmas” with all the enhancement shows, but being in charge of the special guests, meant I also had to help our Christmas VIP’s. And by VIP’s… I mean “spiritual leaders.”
Here at Disney we cater for everyone from all walks of life, which meant not only was I looking after four old men, but had to attend and manage the services of four different denominations!
Oh yes… on this most holy of days, the spiritual well being of 3000 souls fell on the shoulders of this non committal, limping agnostic.
In a nutshell, my Christmas morning read like a bad joke:
It was 7am and a Priest, a Rabbai, a Chaplain and Santa all met in a bar.
I kid you not… there I was standing with three spiritual leaders and fat guy in a red suit. Unfortunately this was not a peaceful meeting of theologians. In fact, it was closer to an episode of Jerry Springer.
The Rabbai didn’t want to be in a room with Santa because he didn’t believe in him.
Santa got offended and actually said “If you don’t believe in me, then I don’t believe in you and you’re so called festival of lights.”
The priest and the reverend were arguing over who got the better vintage of wine and all of them were complaining that their services overlapped each other, therefore diminishing their “crowds”. (Because Jewish people are obviously running from temple to go straight to confession…)
I took a deep breath, spun my new Hanukkah dreidle, sorted out their issues as best I could and assumed things would run smoothly for the rest of my day. WRONG! For future reference, it’s hard to get through four religious ceremonies on a ship when the Rabbai refuses to go within a twenty meters of a Christmas tree, Santa refuses to go within twenty meters of the Rabbai and Father O’riley refuses to go twenty meters away from the wine. Meanwhile the Reverend Perves-a-lot decides to use his Christmas Day Sermon as a platform for spouting evangelical, right wing extremist values. (“On the third day the lord created the shot gun so he could kill the blacks and the homosexuals…”)
And this was all before lunch.
The next week brings with it the final Christmas enhancement, our new year’s eve extravaganza and the one month mark until I leave! This is always the part where I begin to panic. What happens next? Where will I live? Am I making the right decision? Do I actually want to leave? Have I saved enough? (probably not… but I love my new ipod nano)
Enjoy the remaining days of 2005 everyone… here’s to 2006 and whatever it holds for us all!!!
