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