The fog of Christmas past
This is how I remember Christmas, a dozen years’ worth distilled into one Reader’s Digest of recollections. We had the best Christmases, and that’s all there is to it, writes Phil Quin.
As a kid, as Christmas came around, I remember feeling bad for friends and classmates. For all their excited talk about the big day, I secretly knew whatever revelry they had in store would pale next to ours.
Aged 11, the sense of pity only grew once I moved from from a Catholic to a public primary school, encountering Protestants in large numbers for the first time. My family was only mildly religious but, for reasons I don’t fully grasp, I embraced an oddly sectarian world view, especially around Christmas.
Too polite to say any of this out loud but, in my mind’s eye, Anglican and Presbyterian friends of mine were consigned to formal dining rooms – Mum, Dad and the kids, maybe a stern grandparent or two – sedately going through the festive motions. If only they knew what they were missing – what the best Christmas in the world was like.
My mum is one of five sisters. Their mother, whom we knew as Gran, gently reigned as family matriarch for the duration of my childhood. For most of that time, she moved between the homes of two aunties – Judy in Wellington, Jo in Auckland – overcoming one dire cancer prognosis after another; always, it seemed to us, holding out for the next family milestone; defying the odds until she was sure we were ready to get on without her.
I revered Gran, as one might a saint. All 19 of us grandkids did, and she loved us fiercely in return. It radiated from her, enveloping us.
On Christmas Day, before the extended family got together, my parents and two brothers would wake early, rip open gifts, and head to mass. At least I assume that’s what we did, even if memory fails to elicit a single recollection of any of those things.
Inasmuch as I recall anything of those days, it begins from the moment we arrived at whichever home was playing host, excitement rising from the chest, racing from the car, not a second to waste.
We’d line up to kiss Gran hello and brag about the morning’s bounty before hitting the backyard cricket pitch in a game that would roll on into the evening, pausing briefly for lunch.
My male cousins were mostly older and invariably sportier than me. Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote an entire book insisting that anyone can master anything with 10,000 hours’ practice, has clearly never seen me play cricket. In fact, I made a virtue of my ineptitude, adopting the pseudonym ‘‘Spoony Geek’’ to explain away my tortured bowling action, a nickname that persists among cousins to this day.
It didn’t matter anyway. I can’t remember ever winning or losing, or whether we even kept score. We’re a loquacious bunch with as much kudos on offer for timing a joke as a cover drive. Points were available for impersonations, too: of Hadlee, Chatfield, Crowe and Cairns, as well as the commentary stylings of Australia’s Channel Nine.
Daniel, the youngest of the cousins and now a cricket commentator, remembers spending hours ‘‘under the house, inside hedges and over the fence’’ retrieving lost tennis balls, often taped on one side to create the illusion of swing, in the hope he might get a turn.
Once he did, he made up for lost time. It was on the cusp of Daniel’s maiden backyard century that David, an older cousin whose overs could stretch into eternity insisting the whole time there were ‘‘two to go’’, finally relinquished the ball and disappeared inside. It might have rained some years, but I don’t remember a drop.
As day wore into night, we’d move inside to find the adults in surprisingly good cheer. ‘‘Just the hilarity,’’ Daniel remembers, ‘‘laughing the whole time.’’
Crammed into the living room, we’d watch, wide eyed, as they put on a show.
Judy and Jo, who’d worked as a lounge singer in her youth, would belt out a tune or two – Black Magic was a signature number. Soon, they’d line up on the floor to perform some kind of canoe dance that made as much sense to me then as it does now (these were less politically correct times: my cousin Betsyn reminded me we once ran a contest for who could smoke a cigarette the fastest. Uncle Peter won).
But it was glorious, chaotic fun. That alcohol might have played a part only occurred to me much later. They just seemed as elated by the Christmas spirit as we were. Life often seemed so complicated for adults. It was nice to see them so relaxed.
This is how I remember Christmas, a dozen years’ worth distilled into one Reader’s Digest of recollections. Chatting with cousins over the past few weeks, I’m struck by how much their memories echo my own.
Like me, they struggle to pinpoint a particular year or specific event, but they remember like yesterday what it felt like to be part of it. We had the best Christmases, and that’s all there is to it.
Gran died while I was on an exchange programme in Japan during my final year of high school. Her last letter was to me, replying to a poem I’d sent her (aside from Spoony Geek, my other alter ego was Mitchell Baker, poet).
The morning of her funeral, I startled a Catholic priest at six in the morning so he could unlock the church for me. My brother read the poem during the funeral service. I bawled in the pews. If I had to date the passing of my childhood, that was it.
We carried on the Christmas tradition for a while, but with Gran’s passing and the older cousins having families of their own, we gravitated to something akin to the Protestant festivities I imagined as a kid. It’s not nearly as bad as I feared. That said, we still assemble each Boxing Day, the one day a year most of us see each other.
A new generation of kids tear around the backyard like nothing much has changed. For their sake, I hope it hasn’t.