The Night Before the Christmas Before I was Married by Adam Maxwell

Adam Maxwell is an author I have somehow missed in all my reading. Now I know better. The Night Before the Christmas Before I was Married & Other Festive Tales is six short stories, each taking place during the Christmas season and each involving our intrepid hero, Martin Lester.

When I read the first paragraph of The Night Before the Christmas Before I was Married, I knew I was hooked. Martin was punching a shopping mall Santa, covered in blood, with security guards in hot pursuit. Now, who hasn’t wanted to pummel a department store Santa at least once in their adult lives? The story involves a run-in with an ex-girlfriend, an unexpected engagement and, after much and varied consumption of alcohol, a plan to rectify the whole situation before his real fiancée comes home.

In Blood in the Snow, Martin spends the holidays with his wife’s family. Here is how he puts it:

This year the big guns were out. This year we weren’t visiting my family. We were visiting my wife Sonia’s family.

Hang on, that deserves capital letters. MY WIFE’S FAMILY.

WHAT A BUNCH OF LOON BAGS. Sorry. I mean what a bunch of interesting people whose take on life is slightly different to my own. And my wife’s. And pretty much anyone else I had ever met who walked upright.

Here he confronts a family of drunken fools (including his wife) and a “Papa” that throws mugs of chocolate at the nearest bystander. He deals with his wife’s family the way we would all wish we could deal with our own families at times – he pretty much ignores them. Until he can’t anymore.

For Rudolph Redux, our man attempts to install an electric Rudolph on the roof of his house. He ends up hanging from the roof, the electrical cord tied around his foot, with Rudolph “swinging and hitting me repeatedly in the face” while his wife yells at him to not put that thing on his roof. I admit I laughed all the way through this story as I remember my parents during the Christmas season (and pretty much any season where decorating was required). If you have ever decorated or watched the decorating, you will enjoy this story.

Ah, Widow Twanky’s Revenge, where Martin is out to do good deeds by delivering Meals on Wheels to the elderly shut-ins. Wonderful, isn’t he? He even takes on additional stops when another driver breaks his leg. What a guy that Martin is! One of his new stops just happens to live in a gothic-style house and collects Pantomime posters in which he has cut out the Widow Twanky on each one. But that’s okay, right? Just because he comes to the door with “rouged cheeks, a big ginger wig full of ringlets, a pair of frilly bloomers and to cap it all, completely bare-chested” that doesn’t mean anything, does it? This was one of my favorite stories in the book, probably because I actually know what British Pantomime (or Panto, as they say) is.

In the final story, The Curious Story of the Hypnotist’s Christmas Tree , Martin has to remember only two things: a gift for his girlfriend’s mother and a tree for his girlfriend’s office. However, plagued as Martin is, he loses his list and ends up battling fellow stage hypnotist the Great Gerry Spagnolo for the biggest tree on the lot. It was greatly amusing to read about men thinking they were chickens and kings and misquoting Shakespeare. And when the army came march-stepping in…

Martin is truly everyman. Terrible things happen to him at the worst times and, while he does his best to fix things, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But he keeps plugging away, year after year, not letting it get him down. I can’t wait until he has kids!

Adam Maxwell has a true talent for writing. He kept me laughing throughout this series of stories and just when I thought Martin couldn’t do anything worse or funnier, he does. Far Side and Maxwell? Neck and neck.