Judith Woods
Last-minute present panic just won’t do
Deck the halls with boughs of holly. ’Tis the season for the following conversation.
Door opens. Husband (breezily): “So, what do you want for Christmas?”
Me (indignant): “I can’t believe this. We have been together for 28 years – that’s 18 years before the iphone was invented, and you still have no idea who I am as a person.”
Husband (baffled): “So you want another iphone?”
Me (outraged): “No! Are you mad?” Husband (grumpy): “Look, just tell me.”
Me (self-righteous): “You’ve had a whole year to think of something and you are only asking now?”
Husband (incredulous): “Why would I spend a year thinking about your Christmas present? As it happens, I can think of lots of things, like books and box sets, but I know you will reject them because they are rectangular.”
Me (querulous): “Is it really too much to ask for a gift that isn’t rectangular? Christmas is a time for special shapes… like ovals! Are you saying you don’t love me enough to buy me something oval?”
Husband (stomping off): “You are clinically insane.”
Me (calling after him): “You will like my present so much that you will feel humbled and ashamed because it’s so bloody thoughtful.”
Door slams.
See, there are so many ways to get in a seasonal mood, isn’t that right, ladies?
My girlfriends and I have often wondered where menfolk get the idea that Christmas Eve is when you are supposed to go shopping and not a moment sooner.
My theory is that they are hoping that the outbreak of war might intervene and save them from the living hell that is the high street on Dec 24.
If blokes shopped earlier – say, September – they would be utterly astonished to discover that buying gorgeous fripperies can actually be reasonably relaxed, verging on pleasant, not least because the bored sales assistants will lavish them with praise for being so clever.
But no. Despite the fact that Google claims people in the UK start thinking about Christmas far sooner than those in other nations, today remains Frantic Friday, when riots break out over the last pair of suede moccasin slippers, tempers fray and the season of goodwill becomes a right old pain in the assembled throng.
Even then, it won’t be over by nightfall. Oh no. That’s the real reason we celebrate on Dec 25 while other Europeans open their presents on the 24th.
Our menfolk need that extra day to throw money at something that wasn’t really a problem if they’d bothered to take just 10 minutes’ loving contemplation in August.
Meanwhile, early bird womenfolk like me have had to replace the kids’ selection boxes twice, because the lure of shrunken Freddie Frogs and downsized fingers of Fudge has been impossible to resist.
Yes, it would have been cheaper to put on proper shoes and go out to the corner shop for a bar of chocolate, but, you know, I wouldn’t dream of it. (So vulgar.) Ideally, I would receive it in an oval box at Christmas. But, if anyone I’m married to happens to be reading this, a Hotel Chocolat hamper will do.
The utter joy and consequent despair of Christmas comes from that knife-edge balance between reassuring ritual and refreshing novelty; you have to have both, and the skill lies in identifying the tipping point.
That’s why celebrity chefs are forever repackaging old recipes with a new twist. It’s why I like presents but only if they are impossible to wrap neatly. It’s also why Woods Towers is in chaos because Scary Santa has gone missing.
Scary Santa is a furry, two-inch figure with stumps for arms, a tall pointed hat and a little moulded face that radiates malevolence.
He used to put the frighteners on us as children, but we knew that if he wasn’t put on the tree, evil would befall us.
After my mother died, he was passed down to me, and I have taken the responsibility of pacifying him by hiding him in the furthest recesses of the tree. And now he’s disappeared from the Christmas box and we’re somewhere between terrified and bereft.
I have tried to explain to my daughters that he’s not gone-gone, because he or his malign essence is out there somewhere. Or at least his nanoparticles are, but I won’t pretend the children are much interested in my whole supramolecular take on the matter.
So to ensure our yuletide is not spoiled, I am spending every free moment rootling around the ancient baubles, drifts of tissue paper and tinselled detritus, softly incanting his name, hoping he will reappear.
Because it’s Dec 22. Because I love my children.
Because I am the custodian of their Christmas, and it’s my job to make everything is perfect for everybody, even if I turn into a screaming virago in the process.
And there we have it. Men tend to see Christmas as a straightforward matter. Food. Drink. Bit of festivity. Marvellous rectangular presents. Anything good on telly?
A woman’s vision is trapped forever in the amber of childhood, and woe betide anyone who dares trifle with her exhaustively stagemanaged, quiet family Christmas. It looks easy. It isn’t.
So, chaps, if you are out and about today, picking up a little something for the missus, make it a really big something.
And if it fits into an oval box, well, so much the better.
Merry Christmas!