Christmas has crept up on me this year without a warning. It’s suddenly here. It feels like the kids have only just gone back to school after half-term, so I find it very hard to get my head around that it is Christmas Day one week from now. I feel like I have overslept an important meeting and am now playing catch up.
The closure of non-essential retail shops and the lack of Christmas street fairs during yet another recent lockdown has meant the subtle build up we normally experience hasn’t happened. I am not talking about the crudity of supermarkets, who have always stocked Christmas chocolates even before the Halloween sweets have been sold and have blasted out Slade the instant the clocks go back. It’s the anticipation of what Christmas may bring that you get from the twinkly lights, mulled wine and mince pies offered throughout December when you visit Christmas Fayres (why, even spelling it that way evokes a yuletide feeling), or the excited chit chat of Christmas plans when you talk to friends over coffee. I never really had a busy social calendar but this year’s December diary pages, normally dotted with drinks with friends, Christmas parties and festive lunches, looks more dire than usual, contributing nothing to the Christmas vibe I expected to feel by now.
I look back to the magic of Christmases past. Having children, we would start Christmas early in December, draping fairy lights over every possible surface and would begin the strategic planning required to keep two little boys believing. It is a weird concept thinking back – parents buy into the Father Christmas story and go to huge lengths to lie to their children. My sons are intelligent souls but somehow accepted that a magic Santa managed to zip around the whole world and deliver millions of presents to millions of children on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. We had answers prepared for all the inevitable questions. How he managed to come into the house, how he was able to stay invisible, how he was able to stay awake, how the reindeer flew. And the pure illusion we created when they were little kept them believing year after year, probably longer than was healthy. And do I feel bad about lying to my sons? Hell no! I relished in it. I bulk bought red robin Christmas wrapping paper one year and stashed it away to be used by the Big Man only. Year after year the same wrapping paper came out and was used by him and him only. And I didn’t write labels. My handwriting would be a giveaway. And we learned very early that Father Christmas must not take the credit for the big stuff. Hardworking mum and dad bought the bikes and expensive Lego. The Big Man bought silly games, and silly toys, whoopie cushions and marshmallow guns. He left glittery footprints and knocked baubles from the tree. He munched the mince pies and one year his reindeer left tracks on the lawn. And I was great at intercepting the Father Christmas letters, written in secret, just before the boys posted them, or burned them on the fire so the ‘magic smoke’ would reach the North Pole quicker. How-did-he-know, mummy? How-did-he-know? I am amazed we got away with creating the far away sound of sleighbells, standing shivering outside, or how we managed to sneak into their rooms as they slept, to fill their stockings dangling by their headboards – just so they would be able to reach out on waking to give those old socks a satisfying squeeze, relishing the familiar crinkly sound of a Christmas morning. We played on their innocence and bought into the whole story. But woah – lying was hard work. We didn’t want to spoil their magic so spent the whole of December on tenterhooks hoping no-one put their foot in it, or that the postman didn’t deliver the give-away noisy stuff when the boys were there. Year after year I would collapse finally into bed way after midnight on Christmas Eve – relieved we’d managed to keep the presents secret, now wrapped and safely delivered for another year- astounded each time we didn’t wake them at the crucial moment as we tiptoed into their rooms after consuming the Big Man’s sherry.
The build-up to Christmas during Christmases past was also helped by their schools. Starting, as far as I remember way back in November, with letters sent home from the primary school with a check list for weird and wonderful costumes required for the obligatory end of term production. When they were really small it would be easy - they were either shepherds (tea-towel) or wise-men (gold-crowns) or Joseph (different coloured tea-towel). But as they graduated up all the way into High School, the more inventive the Christmas plays became. My two between them have played a sheep, a gold ring, a space traveller, a pirate, a knight in shining armour, a member of the mafia and King John, each one seriously testing my non-existent seamstress skills. Thank goodness for a Grandma who would delight in each project, sending the finished creation up by mail ready to be paraded to the envy of all. And as well as the end of term performances, we have been summoned to carol concerts, school orchestra productions, musical evenings and Chapel services - and shame on you if you can’t make it as you have something called work commitments. Add in school bazaars, the Christmas tombola, Christmas discos, Secret Santa, Christmas school fetes, collecting worthwhile presents for the shoeboxes and all of those Christmas cards - it doesn’t stop. Not surprised Christmases past seem to go on and on and on and on, ending in a collapsed pile on the bed on Boxing Day with a Baileys.
So, what about Christmas this year? This year we have been cheated of all we believe Christmas is. But perhaps stripping back all of the hype and all of the commercialisation that has become a Typical British Christmas we may be forced to look at what really matters. We can’t visit our family this year – our parents live too far away to just ‘pop in’ and I don’t think it responsible to travel hundreds of miles to visit for the sake of a day, stopping at service stations, taking our secondary school age children riddled with germs to visit their grandparents.
This year we are looking at what we CAN do – which is spending some quality time with each other, lining up some cheesy films, hoping to baton down the hatches and unwind from this awful year. Perhaps spending more time at home rather than zipping around the country visiting people or going for a beach walk rather than cleaning the house top to bottom in preparation for visitors, will do us some good. Taking time to appreciate each other and get around to catching up with the boys properly without school getting in the way. Putting the brake on routine and trying to practice what I preach. Take in the moment, stare at the fire, tune into our inner child as we focus on the magic of Christmas. We still do stockings. And the Big Man still visits although I don’t have to tiptoe around now.
I wonder whether we will all be celebrating Christmas next year in a more familiar fashion? This time last year we had no idea what 2020 had in store for us. If we had a crystal ball back then, I wonder whether we would have changed anything? Appreciated those around us we weren’t going to see more? Taken more time to stop and chat and give out a few more hugs? Perhaps I would have taken time to enjoy Christmas more, instead of waking up each day in a blind panic to try and make things perfect for those around me or scrabbling to remember what we were cooking for whoever was due to visit. This year, I am going to take advantage of the fact we are going to have a quiet one and do a couple of things for me. Slob out and watch all that Christmas TV I always mean to but never do. Take a bath in the afternoon. Eat chocolate. Watch Die Hard. Turn off my email notifications.
I am going to have a break from blogging for two weeks, just until the New Year - so I can recharge and see what 2021 brings. To all of you that have stuck with me this year – thank you for reading. Although I started in earnest to help my anxiety earlier this year - I am enjoying seeing where my blog is taking me.
Be safe, be kind, hug who you are allowed to, take five minutes to appreciate the now and drink some bloody good wine.
@ The Real Tilly Fairfax
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