High life
Christmases past
Taki
A s everyone who has spent Christmas in Beverly Hills, Acapulco or St Moritz knows, the grander the Yule party, the nouveau-er the host. There is no better. excuse for a party than the birthday of Our Lord Jesus, and climbers the world over take full advantage of it. In places like New York, as well as the ones I just mentioned, Christmas is the perfect occasion for land- ing big fish in one's drawing-room, as the Christmas spirit infects just about every- one, including those who avoid the climb- ers and nouveaux the other 364 days of the year.
For the reasons I've just mentioned, I have rarely attended a fun party on the holiest of Christian days. In fact, I have tried to avoid them. I used to spend 25 December in Gstaad, a then small — now, alas, extremely social — Alpine village. My friends and I would take the ski lift up the Wassengrat as it got dark, spend the evening eating fondue and drinking white wine with the locals, and then ski down by torchlight. To me that's what Christmas is all about, drinking with peasants and skiing with one's friends.
Recently I've been going up to South- ampton, in Long Island, with my two young children, their mother and a few close friends. Christmas is for children, not adults, certainly not for those of us who tend to get depressed on holidays, as I do, probably because I'm no longer a child, despite feeling and acting like one most of the time. And speaking of childhood, I can easily remember the worst Christmas I ever spent, whereas the best one is harder to pinpoint. Well, last year was no great shakes: I was in Pentonville doing penance for a bad habit and even worse judgment, and passed the day in a 10ft x 13ft cell in the company of Tony the Loon, a bank robber whose driving skills (he got nicked while driving away from a job) turned out to be on a par with my ability to go through Customs unnoticed.
Worse than last year, however, was 25 December 1944. That was the day Uncle Joe Stalin's Greek minions tried to take over Athens by force of arms. Their methods were perhaps a bit un-Christian, but simple and direct: Anyone known not to be a commie sympathiser had his throat cut, anyone they could get their hands on, that is. Their prime targets as always were teachers, priests, civil servants, and the rich (ironically, the very people that tend to apologise for them today). After killing thousands of poor, unarmed, and helpless people, and laying siege and blowing up most of the police stations of the capital, they decided to put an end to capitalism for ever by invading Kolonaki, the chic section of the city — within which the Taki family were rather prominent residents. Teams of bearded cut-throats, with bullet belts criss- crossing their chests, slowly infiltrated the hill where the Takis of this world lay about enjoying the blessings of free enterprise. Rumour has it that the red berets that were defending that certain section of Athens knew they were coming because of the stink. And 41 years later I can confirm that the rumour was true. Although only seven years of age I knew something dirty was about to happen.
My father, too, knew it. Unlike Roosevelt and the fellow travellers that were advising him at the time, Taki Senior had no illusions where communists were concerned. He had requisitioned an Italian armoured personnel carrier when the Ita- lians had surrendered the previous year and had hidden it in one of his abandoned factories. On Christmas Day he drove it through embattled Athens and installed it in front of our house. Whenever he spotted a smelly one he let a burst go. It sent some of them to that sauna-like place below, and kept my mother, brother, and Taki alive and able to talk and write about it That night we got word that our factories had been blown up, and that we had overnight joined the proletariat. (Typically, the reds had blown up factories that had been closed since the start of the war against the axis powers. They figured anyone who didn't collaborate with the Nazis would not collaborate with them either, and for once they were right.)
Any Christmas after that is bound to be the happiest of one's life. And they did keep improving, especially after I came out of prep school and entered Palm Beach and Gstaad universities. Some, of course, have been happier than others, but on the whole they've been far more fun than that of 41 years ago, and the one last year. 1985 will probably be the last one I spend in my New York house, but even that thought won't dampen the holiday spirit. After all, New York matrimonial lawyers do bathe quite regularly, although the one who's after me does wear a beard. I do not wish him a Happy Christmas, but I do wish it for all the rest of you.
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