Atlantic Canada — From the westernmost borders of New Brunswick to the farthest-north reaches of Labrador, one question is filling conversations this week: “Are ya ready for Christmas?”
“I’m never really sure how to respond to that,” confessed Halifax native Charlene Torstburry. “Like, am I done my Christmas shopping? Am I ready to overload on carbs and calories and undo all the hard work I’ve done eating right and working out all summer?
“Am I all set to force-feed myself enough vodka to get me through two days listening to my parents tell me I need to find a nice guy to settle down with and have kids and get a ‘real’ job and stop trying to be an artist? What exactly should I be ready for?”
Torstburry claimed she actually counted how many of her conversations started with the vague question and it totalled 27 times in the course of one day.
“Granted, it was the day of my office ‘celebration party,'” she admitted. “We’re not allowed to call it a ‘Christmas party’ because not everyone is Christian, and then this year we had to stop saying ‘holiday’ because not everyone gets a holiday from it, I guess. But by that logic ‘celebration’ really doesn’t work either because I’m definitely not celebrating my mom passive-aggressively suggesting I might be gay.”
The Manatee hired a Fredericton local, Jordan Dorset, to investigate Torstburry’s claim of the question dominating conversations. He stationed himself at the Regent Mall food court for several hours and eavesdropped on strangers.
“It was close to a hundred percent,” Dorset told our reporter. “It was the oddest thing, too. Everyone used that exact wording: ‘Are ya ready for Christmas?’ Not you, but ya — every single time. For some reason, asking that question makes people forget the most basic grammar.”
Dorset went on to say that the only conversations that didn’t start with that question “were mostly grandmothers talking about so-and-so having a bad fall,” and people saying they “couldn’t believe it’s so close because it doesn’t even really feel like Christmas at all.”