What’s your Christmas like?

‘Christmas is coming! Hurrah’ shout the children.

I hate Christmas, I mumble……The build up starts with friends asking

“What are you doing for Christmas? Do you have friends and family coming”?

I desperately scramble for a picture book story line so they feel comfortable and happy about my confabulated Christmas story and I feel just a bit more sunken in the lie. I don’t have any family coming and really the one family member in the USA I wanted is now not coming because of the ‘orange man’ and his band of right wing ICE pickers.

We don’t have children so we don’t have that diversion of “Oh we are so full this year with Luke bringing his new girlfriend, Holly with her husband and adorable children and we still have Mummy with us and my old school friend Charlene is coming, so I think all it will be about 20! What about you?

I shrivel inside.

“Well, it’s just Teddy the dog, James and I. We climb into our silk pajamas and the day is ours, we have a lovely time”; which we do by the way BUT there is always the inner worry of it not being Christmassy enough. You don’t have enough people being sick from too much food, inebriated from too much drink and having a row with the sister in law and then puking in the garden. There isn’t enough tawdry wrapping paper piled on the floor and screaming children who have been in a state of hyper loopiness since 4 am. You’re not frazzled or resentful enough in the kitchen on your own whilst the rest are stuffing their faces in the sitting room. You have worked for days dressing the house and dreaming of the idyllic day in your mind and now it is here you wish you were in bed alone with a good book and a sausage sandwich.

Not being a parent means Christmas can take on another pressure; one must have lots of friends to compensate for that whirlwind love of your ‘kids’. I don’t have lots of friends and I don’t really like parties or big gatherings or drunken dinner parties or endless evenings of small talk; I was never good at it. In my younger days I drank like a fish and so I was the Queen salmon of the party, in fact you would very soon regret inviting me. I don’t drink anymore so that party persona is long gone. I can still have ‘fun’ whatever the hell that means but it has a very different hue now, without the false injection of a double gin and tonic before leaving and many bottles of wine whilst there and a stiffener to finish; I am a rather different fish at your party. Nowadays I have to gauge it carefully. I always have an espresso before I leave and I dress to impress but if after these various tricks I still don’t reach the right level of a relaxed yet noticeably interesting guest, I end up being a rather ‘sub prime’ party goer. I sneak out early, rush home and get into my pj’s. I berate myself for being a pain in my own arse and I vow to pack it in on the party front.

Christmas as a child up to 10 yrs old when my father died, was a whirlwind of volcanic sisters and their extraordinary husbands or bohemian boyfriends but they were fun to be around and kind to me. Christmas was an explosion of colour and excitement, presents galore, huge dinners and rages when ‘said husbands didn’t return from the ‘one drink down the pub’ on Christmas Eve. I was the youngest and was enveloped in the volume and noise of all these people, time was constantly filled and there was always someone to care for me. Christmas was a crisis to look forward to and luxuriate in all the glamour and pallava.

My mother was relaxed and happy during these times. This stopped when my father, the patriarch and beloved head of our huge family, died. I only really got to know and respect my mother after he died. He was a big presence, a wonderful raconteur and showman. He held onto the limelight, even though he was so ill since he was a young man of 21. My mother and indeed many visitors didn’t get the chance to outshine Daddy. He came from a line of beautifully handsome men but clever overlooked women. He was a devout catholic: not immediately obvious but the clue being my mother having 11 children, 2 of whom were miscarriages. My father could hold court, well, he was a lawyer and judge! Christmases after he died were sad affairs with the glitter and shine having gone.

These images run through my memory bank every December sparking nighttime fears of ‘OMG, how will I get through this without some kind of lobotomy’? Then nearer the big day reality kicks in and I do what I usually do which is make charitable donations, send cards far and wide (whether they want them or not), plan some favourite foods, have a few friends round for  cheery tea gatherings. On the dreaded day we don our silkies, have a posh breakfast in the dining room, walk the dog then hit the sofa and nibble our way to the big treat, ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’. It never fails and if I make it through this ‘festive season’ I’ll watch ‘The Railway Children’ on St Stephen’s Day and that’s it for another year.