MY VERY BLENDED XMAS
Since her parents split, Christmas has always meant divided loyalties. But here, Ulrika, newly single and with four children by four men, tells how she solved a conundrum that affects millions of families . . .
sAYING goodbye to my exhusband, Brian, on Christmas night, I felt a strange pang of sadness. Nothing maudlin, I was just sorry to see him leave because we’d enjoyed such a lovely family day together with our kids.
What a difference a year makes. This time 12 months ago, I’d have been glad to see the back of him. We were still living together, but our marriage was over.
I remember spending this quiet time in the days before New Year feeling the deep anguish of knowing 2019 would almost certainly contain my third divorce.
Last Christmas had been something to get through: a time for gritting teeth and putting on brave faces as Brian and I placed our mutual love for the children above our insurmountable relationship problems to keep it special for their sakes.
Boy, what a stressful time of year this can be! Even seemingly uncomplicated relationships come under a spotlight that can feel harsh and unforgiving as families come together under huge pressure to get on.
Throw a divorce, separation and children into the mix and the festivities can so easily end in disaster. I wonder how many people reading this are currently reeling from the emotional fallout of a difficult Christmas.
But actually, if anyone knows it’s possible to put aside heartache and recrimination in order to allow your children — and yourself — some peace and joy, it’s surely me. afTEr
all, I’ve been making broken family Christmases work all my life: first as a child, after my parents split up; then in adulthood as, over 25 years, my relationships with the fathers of my four children, for various reasons, all broke down.
It’s hard to think of a variant on the ‘difficult Christmas’ theme I haven’t only encountered, but also, crucially, overcome.
I was born in Sweden, where Christmas Eve is traditionally the big day of celebrashould tion when the greater families all come together and everyone dresses up.
When I was little, we always went first to my dad’s parents for a smorgasbord of Christmas food, then to Stockholm to my maternal grandparents for a second feast.
One of the adults would dress up as Santa, handing out gifts. Then, from 3pm onwards, the nation would sit down to watch cartoons — adults and children alike.
On that day, there seemed to be an unspoken rule everyone adhered to, including my parents whose relationship had started to break down: that you put your worries and differences to one side — a true break from reality.
It’s a message I must have deeply internalised, because I’ve strived to recreate that sense of harmony ever since.
Sadly, in 1985, when I was eight, my parents divorced. Mum moved first to Holland then England, meaning everything changed as Christmas had to be alternated between them.
What an impossible position that felt for me as a young child: the happiness of being with one parent tainted by the sorrow of missing the other. But I found solace in the form of the new traditions born from these changed arrangements, which meant I began to experience English Christmases. I was ten when I had my first of those, spent with Mum and my stepfather’s extremely welcoming family.
Of course, it felt strange, suddenly ignoring Christmas Eve and concentrating on Christmas Day —waiting until then to open the presents under a tree planted in a sand-filled bucket in the front room. Instead of meatballs, several kinds of pickled herring and cartoons, we ate turkey and played parlour games.
I embraced it all, with that great flexibility children so often possess. But a part of me still felt desperately torn because my dad was missing from it all.
In adulthood, this was a pattern that could easily have been repeated with my own children. But I was determined that my childhood sorrow — that sense of feeling torn on a day synonymous with families coming together — would not also become theirs.
My eldest child, Cameron, was a 14- month- old toddler when I experienced my first Christmas as a separated parent. It was a wretched day, landing just four months after I was famously unfaithful to my first husband, the TV cameraman John Turnbull, bringing our five-year marriage to an abrupt end.
I remember how the very onset of that Christmas — seeing the festive paraphernalia appearing in shop windows as the cheesy adverts started to run on the TV — sent a shiver down my spine.
I felt so guilty. I’d behaved appallingly and to be entering what was meant to be such a happy, family time only compounded my misery.
Then came the thorny issue of how this day, so joyful the previous year when we’d celebrated Cameron’s first Christmas, would play out.
‘You must do the decent thing and let John have Cameron,’ my mum told me. My heart sank, but I agreed immediately. Of course, he be the one to have our son — a toddler now, who’d be so fascinated by it all, adding to the poignancy of the situation. I didn’t deserve to enjoy the day with him; John was the injured party, so if anyone was to be deprived of their child it had to be me.
Things were far too raw and acrimonious back then for it to occur to either of us that we could spend it together. Anyway, being apart from my child on Christmas Day felt an entirely appropriate punishment after what I’d done. So I bought myself a ready meal, planning to spend the day alone in my castigation. Thankfully, some friends insisted I spend it with them — but I can still recall the loneliness I felt, in a room full of happy people, because all I wanted was to be with my son.
God, the misery of it, all so far removed from the wonderful traditions of Christmas that I’d anchored myself to since childhood. I was so unhappy I couldn’t even taste the food — something so integral to the occasion for me — as I forced it down. That was the year it felt as though every
convention of Christmas had been smashed to pieces.
Even now, revisiting it conjures feelings of misery. Not least because six days later, on New Year’s Eve, my younger sister, Linda, called from Sweden to say our dad had died unexpectedly, from a brain haemorrhage aged just 53.
I screamed down the phone in despair, my punishment complete.
Enough years have now passed for me to be able to look back and rationalise that my father’s death was unconnected to my infidelity, but at the time the two horrible events felt inextricably linked; a terrible justice for what I’d done to the father of my own child.
Thankfully, there’s truth in the cliche that time heals. Things could never be the same again between John and me, but the pain became softer and less raw.
The next Christmas we split having Cameron, which was better but still nothing like the family occasion I wanted for my son. And, of course, the shadow of the anniversary of Dad’s death hung over it. But then, the year after, we decided to spend Christmas together, as a family of sorts, for Cameron’s sake.
I don’t recall who first broached the idea, but I know I jumped at it, relishing the chance to return to my old role of cook and homemaker, just for those couple of days.
There’s no pretending the scenes we created were chocolate box perfect — the bond between us felt like one of practicality — but it was surprisingly easy to be in each other’s company.
Spending Christmas Eve together, sharing the Swedish food I’d lovingly prepared, helped ease the pain of not being able to speak to my dad the next day. The following morning, we opened presents under the tree, drinking hot chocolate with Frank Sinatra duets playing in the background.
We ate lunch together, before John took Cameron off to spend some time with his mum and dad. When we parted, it was with great warmth — we’d found a new way to make Christmas work; more new traditions that we could continue for the next couple of years. Indeed, the fact that John stepped in to help me when my eldest daughter, Bo, was born in 2000 is testament to the friendship doing so helped us to forge.
Bo, now 19, was born with a congenital heart condition. Shockingly, her biological father, the hotelier Markus Kempen, told me he was leaving us the day we were discharged from hospital, at the end of November. He moved out four days later.
Thankfully, knowing how vulnerable I was feeling, John stayed with us over the whole of that Christmas, taking over so it would still feel like a celebration of sorts.
Thank goodness he did so. On Christmas Day, Bo developed breathing problems. It was John who drove us to the hospital, which undoubtedly saved her life. Then he looked after Cameron until she was discharged a week later.
That was another terrible Christmas, and yet recalling it doesn’t feel bleak. It fills me with pride at the way John and I, in putting Cameron first, had found a way to be together that benefited us, too.
Of course, as time moved on so did we, both forming new relationships. John met his wife just before I met my second husband, Lance Gerrard-Wright, in 2002. Christmas needed some adjustments.
That didn’t cause any problems. We simply reached a lovely, unspoken and generous compromise. John, understanding the great significance of Christmas Eve to me, began to collect Cameron after lunch on Christmas Day. Cam’s 25 now, and that arrangement remains — although he drives himself over to his dad’s these days.
With Lance came another baby — our daughter Martha was born in 2004 — and more new traditions, with a husband who truly relished Christmas, which became a huge, two-day affair. My relatives came over on Christmas Eve, while his large and very close extended family all landed the next day. This was a time spent cooking, eating and celebrating in earnest.
But in September 2005, my relationship with Lance sadly ended. He spent that next Christmas with just the children and me, to try to give them some normality in the aftermath of our break-up.
It felt strange and subdued, cooking for just us when we’d had so many relatives the previous year. I channel so many of my feelings of love and my desire to nurture into my cooking, and I love preparing food for big numbers. Losing that felt sad, but there was no tension.
It felt natural and appropriate, because the children were getting what they needed — us, together, being kind to each other at this special time of year. That night Lance stayed over, taking Martha home with him the next day.
I wish I could say that after that year, Lance and I fell into the same Christmas routine that had worked so well for John and me. But that’s the problem when you have more than one ex — it’s perfectly reasonable for them to want to do things differently
Lance felt that having Martha, now 15, for alternate Christmases was better. His family live far away and it would be a logistical nightmare to split the day with her.
The first Christmas without Martha here was hard, but it got easier with time. What helped was to remind myself that in such emotionally charged situations as this, there’s always going to be a winner and a loser; that every time Martha was with me, Lance would feel the same pain I experienced when she was with him.
There was fairness to the sorrow. That’s the thing about broken families: when you strive for compromise — even when you can’t mend them — you can find new ways to stick them back together.
Then we come to last Christmas, at the end of an incredibly tough year, because it was the one where my marriage to my third husband, Brian Monet, had unraveled after nearly 14 years together.
We’d always enjoyed such great family Christmases. Brian used to live in Sweden, so was on the same page as me regarding Christmas Eve being the main event.
I loved cooking and stressing and he loved eating and helping. And that sense of family was reassuring for the two of us, as we’d both come from broken homes.
But last year things felt beyond different — the decision had already been made that our marriage was over, he just hadn’t yet moved out.
For me, that Christmas was about keeping myself so busy that I didn’t have time or space in my head to think about the demise of my marriage. The dining room table heaved with all the food I’d prepared; every room of the house was decked with fresh flowers and decorations. buT
even all that activity couldn’t completely quell the mix of sadness and anger that churned inside me. I spent the day feeling sad, heartbroken and angry. But I love my children more than I disliked him and swallowed it all for them. It felt fake, though — how could it not? Thankfully, this year it wasn’t.
You might imagine, post-divorce, an enjoyable family Christmas would have been more difficult to achieve.
But I’m not the angry person I was last year. This year I didn’t have any hold over Brian or him over me. And actually, with nothing left to try to fix, it ended up one of the nicest we’ve ever shared.
Brian was brilliant, slipping into the role he always played before things went awry between us: flitting between helping our son, Malcolm, who’s 11 now, set up his new games console, and washingup around Cameron and me as we cooked the lunch.
When we sat down to eat at 2.30pm, Bo and Martha at the table, too, along with Cameron’s girlfriend, Lily, the atmosphere felt lovely, special, hopeful even. The laughing and the non-stop chatter felt like testament to the true bond Brian and I share: our love for the family we created together.
And now, as another New Year approaches, I find myself looking forward with intrigue. After all, who knows what the dynamics of this family of mine will be when we start planning the arrangements for next Christmas.
The one thing I do know is that whatever it looks like, I’ll find a way to make it work again, as I somehow always have.