Avoid consumerist carnage and enjoy the lovely lull of Twixmas
COLUMNIST
LIKE most mid-life deniers, I thought certain things were still in my future – gardening, bad backs, Woman and Home magazine.
I’m yet to get the bulb-planting bug, but as I sat in the waiting-room of the chiropractor, perusing a copy of the aforementioned periodical, becoming familiar with these two other staples of the 40-plus existence proved quite fortuitous.
Before submitting my lumbar region to muscle-pinching, spinecrunching terror, I came across an article that has transformed my attitude to this time of year.
It was on the joys of Twixmas. What’s that? you say. Something to do with a surfeit of chocolate and caramel mini logs in the Celebrations tub?
No. Twixmas is the name given to the time between Christmas and New Year – ie the period spanning Boxing Day to today.
It’s a word coined by the travel industry to flog close-to-home minibreaks in the gap between the bank holidays but it’s becoming a broader term to define a distinct phenomenon.
And approached in the right frame of mind – and with a body preferably clad in loungewear – it may just be the best bit of the whole festive season.
After all, the Yuletide activities that book-end Twixmas can be stress-filled because the template we set for them is so much more rigid.
Christmas is a consumer assault course that begins with the premiere of the John Lewis ad and ends around 5pm on Christmas Eve with one more emergency expedition to Asda to buy last-minute supplies of pickles, brandy butter and Baileys. Christmas dinner is just a Sunday roast with delusions of grandeur, yet thanks to Nigella, Jamie, Mary et al we are made to feel guilty if we don’t put a sophisticated cheffy twist on sprout preparation and place blankets on pigs.
It’s a social assault course too, as we propel ourselves through the office party season fuelled by cheap Prosecco and micro Scotch eggs and hope none of our plastered colleagues will end up being treated by the Black Friday mobile triage unit.
And trimming up has gone beyond a nice tree and tinsel to making one’s personal mark on the National Grid.
December 31, meanwhile, prompts an outbreak of dramaqueeny moaning from those who keep telling you they “hate New Year” even though it’s really just one more night out with unfeasibly expensive taxi rides. If it’s that harrowing, just stay in and be thankful those Hogmanay specials with that Scottish midget droning “Donald where’s yer troooosers?” are long gone.
But Twixmas is far more fun. In this limbo you can finally do exactly what you want – be it a bracing countryside walk or a box-set binge. All sustained by cold meat, chutneys and chocolate.
It begins with going nowhere near the Boxing Day sales. One in three of us do, apparently.
But the other two-thirds know the day after Christmas was made for pyjama-clad sloth, turkey and chips and watching rugby.
Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen, When the queues lay round about, Retail parks were heavin’. Brightly shone the Argos sale, Cheap as chips in Currys. Cut-price deals in DFS, Just make sure you hu-uh- rry!
Don’t do it. Hell is not just other people, it’s other people shopping.
Dante could have created a 10th circle to his multi-layered Inferno entitled The Sales.
Where else would you be wedged in a pit of writhing, feverish bodies covered in Christmas knitwear and consumed with greed and lust for an Instant Pot with 30% off or a reduced Nespresso machine?
You’ve already endured the purgatory of Christmas shopping, why slip deeper into the Hades of bargainhunting?
As a small child, the one true sign that Christmas Was Over – apart from the heart-sinking knowledge that Cliff Michelmore was back with a new series of The Holiday Programme – was the first advert for the sales. Being propelled across Cardiff from Allders to Mackross to David Morgan (how’s that for retro shopping?) when all you wanted was to sit at home with Girl’s World and a selection box was traumatic.
As an adult, the sales offer a different form of suffering. The pain of seeing all the presents you’ve bought at slashed prices. The hurt of spotting a relative in the returns queue in Marks brandishing the jumper you thought would be perfect.
And the dull ache of knowing that with all these fabulous deals around you could treat yourself to the ultimate spree... if you weren’t so skint from spending so much on everyone else’s Christmas gifts.
Sales also induce delusional thinking. It’s the wrong colour, it won’t be fashionable in three weeks’ time and it’s too small. Whatever – it’s reduced!
But Twixmas’ emphasis on semihibernation means you can escape all this consumerist carnage, don your onesie and hit the iPlayer to catch up on all the Christmas telly you missed while spending quality time with the folks.
For example, you could revel in the gloriously surreal sight of Mary Berry getting off a Valley Train at Ystrad Rhondda (and wonder whether she was the first passenger this decade to get a seat). And what a nice programme the Big Christmas Thank You was, celebrating community spirit and managing to avoid being sentimental or patronising. It was such a change to see a programme about my home valley that portrays its people as they actually are – witty, warm, decent.
EastEnders, conversely, inflicted its usual wretchedness. Ever since Den served Angie with festive divorce papers, it has prided itself on being quite sadistically miserable at Christmas.
And this year was no exception. If you’re on a Twixmas catch-up spree I recommend avoiding it and switching to Dawn French’s fabulous impression of Kim Kardashian, complete with comedy contouring and a backside the size of East Anglia.
So, however you choose to spend it, this in-between time can be a lovely lull, a welcome void, a week to say: “And breathe...” before we hurtle towards 2018, put the baubles in the box and get Back to Normal.
I hope you’ve had a Merry Twixmas – and here’s to a Happy New Year.