The classic, much-loved/hated holiday movie Love Actually features many wildly unrealistic scenarios: the British Prime Minister publicly admonishing the US President; the speed with which Liam Neeson's son masters the drums; the whole creepy card thing with the guy from The Walking Dead; but there is one scene that leaves all others in the dust for its sheer laughable implausibility.
Nothing else in the movie comes close to the absurd unbelievability of the school Christmas concert near the end, a concert that is depicted – in the face of all recorded history and known laws of physics – as both entertaining and professionally staged.
Everyone who has ever guided a child through school knows the likelihood of a slick, expertly-produced show at a Christmas concert is roughly on par with the likelihood of Santa Claus himself riding to earth on a shooting star and revealing the solution to global warming. I've just been to this year's version at our kids' school – marking the sixth year that a combination of guilt and inability to think of decent excuses has pushed me into the festivities – and it's getting to the point where I don't know how many more Christmases I can stand without getting a medal or strong drugs, or both.
The entertainment value of modern school Christmas concerts are not enhanced by the fact that school authorities have apparently decided the greatest upholder of beloved Christmas traditions in western culture is Hi-5.
It falls under cruel and unusual punishment to have to endure not only children singing, but Hi-5 as well; yet class after class stumbled out on stage to sing listlessly along with a Hi-5 CD, and the audience just sat there daydreaming about Bing Crosby with tears in their eyes.
It's amazing that even in the cleanest, most wholesome genre of music yet devised, Hi-5 can somehow make the songs sound even more sanitised – as if they took the classic Christmas songbook and scrubbed it with steel wool until there were no survivors. The overall effect is like being surrounded by a gang of extremely well-groomed checkout operators who poke at you with sharpened candy canes until you agree to buy a charity advent calendar.
And if it's not bad enough that Hi-5 ruins The Night Before Christmas, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Sleigh Ride et al, they also come up with their own original abominations. Like Santa Wear Your Shorts, an offence to the ears whose mutilation of the concepts of lyric and melody is made more disgraceful by its inclusion in the most heinous of Yuletide traditions: the "Australianisation" of Christmas traditions.
The school concert embraces this variety of musical perversion as well: when the kids aren't swaying and mumbling along to Hi-5, they're accompanying someone called "Bucko" on that version of Jingle Bells that goes, "Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden ute". But the thing is, it isn't. Riding in a one-horse open sleigh sounds brilliant: riding in a rusty Holden ute sounds depressing. What are we going to do in our Holden ute this Christmas? Go scavenging on nature strips? Shoot a few feral pigs?
Speaking of depressing, the next song after the rusty ute one kicked off with "Once a jolly Santa camped by a billabong" and my blood ran cold. Does "Bucko" know what that song is about? This is not a fun tale to adapt for festive purposes!
And take note that all these songs are played in full through the PA system while the kids try to follow along. In real life there's no Love Actually scenario where a freakishly talented 10-year-old belts out a Mariah Carey song to the accompaniment of a red-hot student band (featuring a suspiciously accomplished drummer) and a group of teachers singing professional-standard backup. What we get is Hi-5 and "Bucko" echoing throughout the gym, their voices not so much melding as competing with the semi-organised droning from the adorable little tykes being held hostage onstage.
It's not just singing, of course: there are also actions to go with each song, hand movements denoting concepts such as jingling bells and bowls full of jelly. In the really well-drilled classes, there can be as many as three or four children who remember the actions – they're the ones everyone else is looking at to copy. Every now and then you'll see a student really throw themselves into the motions, standing out for the sheer vigour and extravagance with which their hands flail about. These students will learn soon enough the key lesson of their school years: enthusiasm doesn't pay.
Frankly, the whole Christmas concert experience would be an intolerable ordeal if it weren't for the one saving grace: my kids. Oh lord, they were great this year. Their voices, strong and clear as the fabled nightingale's, rang out like silver bells across the hall. They overwhelmed the feeble murmurs of their classmates, and even the tortured trills of Hi-5. To be honest I felt a little bit embarrassed for the other parents: seeing how talented my children were must have made them feel just a little bit like failures. And while the other kids' actions veered between absurd over-acting and dispirited near-catatonia, somehow mine struck that tiny sweet spot that made simple hand movements seem fresh and evocative. It was wonderful to see, though I did recognise the unfairness of the situation: should amateurs like the rest of the school really be forced to show themselves up by appearing alongside performers like my offspring, who are practically professionals?
But the couple of minutes of joy gained from my children was scant compensation for the forty-plus minutes that the parent community was subjected to, of bad versions of popular tunes, and awful versions of woefully unpopular ones, clumsily mashed up with the hauntingly ominous barking of the typical under-rehearsed primary schooler.
I know that parents around the country, and around the world, are suffering the same agonies as I at this time of year, and believe me, my heart bleeds for you all. If only our school communities would heed the classic showbiz warning: "Children are terrible at almost everything."
Just know: you're not alone, and we can get through this Christmas together, as parents have throughout history.
