‘My mum’s breakdown taught me that the perfect Christmas is an imperfect one’
Unwrapped presents and slobbing around in pyjamas – that’s Carmen Marcus’s idea of the ideal Christmas Day. Here’s why…
christmas day 2017, it’s gone 11am, I’m still in my pyjamas holding my breastfeeding one-year-old son Magnus with one hand and trying to turn off my mobile with the other. My phone is jingling like a reindeer stampede as friends send over pictures of their perfect Christmases: trees twinkling above parcel mountains; kids dressed as elves, puddings and angels. Meanwhile, at our house there are unwrapped presents under the kitchen table. I didn’t get a tree (my boy is a climber). He does at least have his penguin jumper on but there’s little chance of me actually capturing a picture of him.
Did I plan it this way? If, by planning, you mean avoiding ‘doing’ Christmas because just the thought of it filled me with the terror most folk reserve for Halloween, then yes, this is what I planned and it was beyond wondrous. It was beautiful and handmade, like the paper snowflakes I cut out the night before and cellotaped to the walls.
I’m not a born humbug. I want to believe in the magic of Christmas, but there are ghosts. In the summer of 1984 my strong, brilliant mother had a nervous breakdown. I was seven. I watched her put her hands through a glass door. Then she was taken away. I was told she’d be better by Christmas but she had a full relapse. When Christmas came around I’d seen inside a mental institution. I’d looked up electric-shock therapy in my Collins school dictionary. I’d watched a priest give my mum the last rites. I’d thrown cat poo into the gardens of neighbours who called my mum ‘the mad Paddy’.
What I remember of that Christmas is an undocumented tangle: the click of my mum’s shoes on the aisle at church; her chin twitching to hold up her smile and hold in something so big it made her body shake. She wasn’t better but she was well enough not to let anyone see it. She’d put on her good tweed suit and her Bally shoes and marched in to show them all – the neighbours who’d called her names; the priest who gave her up for dead – that she had survived. I adore her and love her for that. But I saw what she was suppressing; a raging shadow under her skin.
Christmas magic is fuelled by innocence and that year I lost mine. Our ‘happy Christmas’ had been just for show. After that, everything to do with the season made me anxious, and the bigger the festive plan, the bigger I expected the bang to be when it broke.
So for a while I got away with low-level cheer – which is fine when you’re young or a new couple with hangovers to nurse. The one time I tried to put on my own Christmas performance was just after I’d married. I did the works: posh dress, eight foot tree, themed decorations – and ended up in A&E with an anxietyinduced rash that could only be treated with powerful steroids. My body had to cover itself in loud red
stop signs to tell me not to try to force Christmas.
But when I became a mother myself there was this whole new expectation to make this year a really special Christmas. Add to this that my son is a Christmas baby, born on 12 December, and you’ve got a perfect storm in a snow-globe. His first Christmas passed by in a blur of newborn-ness. But last year, my anxiety peaked in early December. Friends’ social media was bursting with pictures of kids stroking reindeer and riding the Christmas train that runs through some nearby woods to Santa’s grotto. Watching it happen through my phone I felt like I was depriving my son of these special memories.
My hometown’s Christmas parade goes past our house every year. I could hear the local radio station cranking out Slade’s festive summons as Christmas was literally passing us by. I wrestled my son into a snowsuit, grabbed my husband and we dashed out of the door. We were ‘doing’ Christmas, like in all the pictures. Here I was strapping on a smile as tight as parcel tape over something ripping inside me. I got home and sobbed until I shook.
The problem with ‘ better by Christmas’ is that it’s just a day, it doesn’t have that power. So I told myself that when Christmas Day itself came around, what I would take from my mum’s approach wasn’t the performance but her defiance: the courage to reject perfection and settle for pyjamas. That meant my gorgeous baby had not a clue that it was Christmas Day but he did have a cracking time running around in his pants, playing with torn paper, munching on parsnips and dancing around with his mum and dad.
Of all the Christmas card greetings, I think the most underestimated message is peace. At its root, peace means permission, and we need to give ourselves permission to not be better – or the best – at Christmas.
This Christmas we’re going to risk getting a small tree, and my son will be getting a climbing frame. We’ll be having the family over for some festive food – I’m planning on something simple – but not until 3pm, so there’ll be plenty of time for pyjama fun first. And you know what? That’s perfect enough for me.
got home and sobbed until i shook