Christmas pared down...

IT’S just the four of us again this year for Christmas. I used to view Christmas as a big social occasion — feeding the whole of our extended family and friends — an opportunity to show off.

Past Christmases have included up to 20 people around the table. I made canapés and held musical entertainment evenings, drinks and sushi parties.

The season would pass in a whirl of mince pies and mulled wine, with me at the centre of it in my red-pinny spinning the Christmas carousel. After a few years of this I began to ask myself — was this fun?

The day itself was always fraught with stress and heightened emotion. Having thought I was on the homestretch by ensuring that the turkey fitted in my oven, and that I had a baking tray big enough to hold it, I’d soon be frantically searching the house for bits of leftover foil with which to cover it. By mid-morning I was topping and tailing sprouts, trying to find a way of making them not resemble cabbage for the one day of the year we eat them. Having spent three weeks arranging fronds of fresh holly and candles in our ‘good room’ — I’d be overcome with fear that one of the kids would smear the Mars Bar from their 7am selection box on the posh sofa.

Instead of enjoying the gift giving, I’d be glowering miserably at the piles of packaging and wrapping paper, fretting over the next recycling bin collection date. Then there was the gift stress. My husband always buys me some wonderful trinket which makes the novelty mug and M&S jumper I get him look even more dreadful than they are.

Generally the stress of trying to make the perfect Christmas had fuelled me with such wild expectation that the day itself could only, at best fall short and at worst, disintegrate into a toxic state of exhaustion and regret.

THEN we had ‘The Christmas From Hell’ and everything changed. In 2009, I ended the year having lost a brother and a brother-in-law — with my father-in-law in intensive care. I spent Christmas trapped in the house with a newborn while my husband and in-laws travelled the two-hour round trip to the hospital every day in the treacherous snow and ice.

There was no time to source fancy gifts or glittery cardigans or throw themed drinks parties. Christmas got pared right down to a big fire, comforting roast dinners and plenty of TV. It was a terrible year but it changed my priorities overnight — for the better.

This year, I know we will enjoy every glorious moment of our intimate, casual Christmas. This is possible because of what we have learned from the frantic and tragic Christmases that have gone before. The essentials are in place. The house is bursting is at the seams with tinsel and glittery froth and has been for the last three weeks. It’s not ‘themed’ or fancy. I like it, the kids love it and that’s all that matters.

Between Santa and ourselves the two kids are well looked after and I’ve quit fretting about trying to make my husband happy with presents because, frankly, I can’t make him happy with my paltry efforts — any more than he can make me happy with his fantastic, well-thought out gifts.

Stuff is nice, but what makes a Happy Christmas is the stuff that we do for each other; playing Cluedo when you’d rather be watching Eastenders or producing a roast dinner. What’s making me happy in the run-up to Christmas is sitting with my laptop, next to a fire, in a pair of pyjamas surrounded by tacky decorations gathered over my 50-odd years and just knowing that I am part of this quirky little family of men; the artist I’m still in love with and our two charming, funny, sons.

That’s my early gift to myself this Christmas; a good dose of old-fashioned gratitude.

÷THE #Blessed collection is available at katekerrigan.ie