Teresa Garratty: 15 steps to being a Deaf Christmas Scrooge!

Posted on December 21, 2014 by



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Ah, Christmas! The “Marmite” of all seasons, you either love it or you spit it out in disgust.

So for all the anti-festive readers out there, here’s how to boycott Christmas in glorious Deaf style!

Step 1 – Open the door to carollers but then point at your hearing aids and slam the door in their faces.

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Step 2 – Avoid wearing any festive head gear e.g. Santa hats, reindeer antlers, party hats etc, by complaining about how they interfere with your hearing aids.

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Step 3 – Remove all decorations. They are visual distractions that, as a lip reader, you could quite frankly do without!

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Step 4 – Sit on Father Christmas’s lap, sign your Christmas list for him and wait for the awkward confusion to unfold.

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Step 5 – Make it clear to him that you only want one thing this year, “the ability to hear.”

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Step 6 – When he makes his excuses, pull off his beard, stating that you need to lip read him. If he puts it back on, threaten to “do” him for discrimination.

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Step 7 – Don’t let anyone watch Raymond Briggs; The Snowman. It’s not subtitled. (there isn’t any dialogue but that’s beside the point!)

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Step 8 – Avoid all nativity plays unless STAGETEXT captioning is provided. They always end the same anyway; Jesus is born etc…

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Step 9 – At the dinner table, no one is allowed to tell Christmas cracker jokes unless they can sign them fluently. If you can’t laugh, no one can!

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Step 10 – Guilt trip an interpreter into working on Christmas day (maybe not that Mandela funeral guy). It’s not like they have lives or anything…

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Step 11 – Invite a Deaf friend to a party and win every single round of charades with BSL. It’s not cheating, you said noting, NOTHING! If any one complains, call them a “deafist”.

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Step 12 – If anyone asks what the sign for “Happy Christmas” is, respond with an offensive alternative, preferably including at least one swear word.

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Step 13 – Make a CD compilation of the most irritating Christmas songs available. Remove your hearing aids then play this for the entire day, at maximum volume and on repeat.

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Step 14 – Wait for someone to play “bop it” (an annoying audio based toy), then throw it out the window when it comes to your go. When they ask why… hold up a sign calling them a “Deafist”.

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Step 15 – Accept all gifts but provide only one; the valuable life lesson that ‘one should not give to receive’. If they’re still angry, blame the government for cutting your benefits.

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And if all else fails, you can always do the ultimate Scrooge-move. Emigrate to a far-flung country where they don’t celebrate Christmas at all. Which is what you want really, you great Deaf Christmas Scrooge.

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If you enjoyed that, you may also enjoy Teresa’s Top 10 misheard song lyrics!

Teresa Garratty is a freelance film maker, photographer and full time cynic. At school, she was voted “Most likely to end up in a lunatic asylum”, a fate which has thus far been avoided. Her pet hates are telephones, intercoms and all living things.

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