Christmas should never be perfect, so embrace the hitches
COLUMNIST
EACH year on December 26 I promise myself I’ll do Christmas right next year. I’ll ask people want they want and buy presents in November.
I’ll save up so I don’t get nasty messages from the cashpoint machine and I’ll start stocking the cupboards with food in July.
Rather than having a panic-stricken night at the laptop clicking on Amazon, I’ll have everything wrapped and ready to go by December 1 and will have posted cards by December 2.
Hang on. Cards? Does anyone still send them? Taking a look at the queues in the Post Office and price of stamps, I may just forget cards.
As for e-cards, I’d rather have a poke in the eye with a sharp stick than receive a message on screen which basically says ‘all you’re worth is a tap of my finger tip and this cheesy picture I selected at random from some website’.
In my perfect festive universe a magic Christmas spirit would organise the entire holiday from presents to food to decorations so I can get on and enjoy it without worrying whether I have enough mince pies or if a relative really wanted a book token rather than a bottle of aftershave in their stocking. The answer’s no, but it’s too late.
Given there is no parallel universe where I can just sit back and hoover up tins of Quality Street while humming Silent Night, I promise myself I’ll order the turkey in early December and bake fruit cake in August so it is perfectly moist by Christmas Eve.
One of the laws of Christmas is that nobody ever eats the cake but that’s not the point. Fruit cake with icing and marzipan is obligatory even if you’d rather eat Oreos.
And it’s not just the fruit cake and sprouts that aren’t popular at Christmas.
Every Boxing Day I tell myself that next time I won’t make the mistake of asking guests for their dietary requirements – vegetarians excluded.
I don’t mind bunging on a nut roast, but there was one year when we made 10 different types of vegetables to accommodate people who did eat carrots, but wouldn’t countenance parsnips, had a penchant for bread sauce but didn’t like cranberry. So we bought it all – only for most of it to be left uneaten.
I can never forget the Christmas lunch served to a nephew which returned exactly as it left the kitchen with the exception of two sausageshaped holes where the chipolatas had been.
We may as well have just grilled a pack of bangers – but if we had he’d have wanted turkey.
Then there’s the tricky business of visiting older relatives wanting to go to church on Christmas morning at the exact time teenagers want to lie in bed.
Should we draw up a timetable and discuss people’s religious preferences in August so as not to offend anyone on the big day? Somehow it never happens and each year we fret.
I know my promises and resolutions will never take shape as each year I approach the season in the same spirit of last-minute fun sprinkled with mild panic.
The whole point of Christmas is that it is traditional and part of that means following the ancient ritual of worrying about it.
There are the age-old customs of having to untangle tree lights, swapping presents for different sizes as soon as shops re-open, arguing about who is watching what on the TV, and negotiating whose turn it is to cook. It is customary to leave the compulsory serving of sprouts uneaten, to sing Fairytale of New York off key, and do all the harmonies to Gloria in excelsis Deo on your own, in the kitchen, while wrestling with a turkey at 6am on December 25.
An organised, perfect Christmas would be as unsettling as eating fish and chips for lunch or singing Summer Holiday instead of Mistletoe and Wine.
So I’m not going to care that the tree is leaning to one side as if it’s had one too many ports, worry that the food won’t be perfect, or that we’ll run out of Sellotape on Christmas Eve.
I’m going to immerse myself in the kitsch and the sparkle. I’ll walk past the house with the inflatable lit-up reindeer without laughing, I’ll nibble chocolate log and buy advent calendars, and no one – no one – is allowed to tell me they hate Christ- mas. You only have to look around to see that, although it is a commercial season of buying, there’s plenty of giving too.
The Shoebox appeal for women’s refuges in Cardiff and the Santa Appeal for presents for disadvantaged children in Rhondda Cynon Taf are just two local examples of how people are using the season to get people to give.
It’s easy to be cynical about Christmas, so I’m going to do it the hard way and enjoy it – even if it means eating sprouts, wearing a paper hat, and having to pretend that, yes, I really do love the jumper and it was just what I wanted.