Christmas now and then

Sue loves Christmas. Decorations, tree, cards, presents, the lot. She is not keen on tinsel, it’s true. But apart from that she loves the whole thing. Of course, no Christmas is complete without watching It’s a Wonderful Life, and in a normal year she likes to pack as many members of the family in as the floors will support. In fact, on one occasion I spent time in the cellar supporting the living room floor with timber props in case it gave way under the combined weight of visitors.

Me ? I don’t like Christmas. A house full of visitors is my idea of a nightmare. Being a vegetarian non-drinker completes the picture. You can see that the house is divided and Christmas is the dividing line.

‘Why are you such a misery ?’ I hear you ask.

When I was a kid, Christmas was magical.

Christmas at home was the one day in the year when we ate together at dinner-time – that’s 12 noon for families like mine. All the other days the shop was open and people were popping in and out to serve the customers who unknowingly disrupted life behind the shop.

There was always a bit of a struggle on Christmas Day. My mum would encourage my Dad not to open the shop, and he would agree. But on Christmas morning he would be in the closed shop peering disconsolately through the blinds looking for ‘passing trade’. After frequent visits, and becoming subtly agitated at the thought of losing business, he would come into the sitting room and announce that he thought he should open the shop to catch passing trade – rogue customers who had run out of things they had forgotten to buy in time.

Everyone accepted this, and the shop would open for Sunday hours only.

Christmas was also a time when there was a complete embargo on visitors. Nobody was invited, and nobody called. Even relatives were unwelcome. Especially relatives. I can’t remember anyone ever coming round on Christmas Day. It was somehow exclusively private time, punctuated by the shop bell and stray customers in search of fire-lighters, bread, tennis balls and other essential Christmas items.

We had a discouragingly moth-eaten tree which we later folded up and stored on its high shelf in the shop storeroom. There were lights, huge pear-shaped bulbs painted in matt colours and strung on cloth-insulated cables. There was an annual attempt to make them work well, followed by the ritual acceptance that they were a lost cause. There was an attractive cottonwool snow scene under the tree, where various and random small figures – Santas, shepherds, angels – cavorted in imagination under the glass balls looming in their sky.

Of course, we made sure our kids enjoyed Christmas magic, but somewhere along the way, Christmas lost its mojo for me.

But we found a solution. We now do an on-Christmas and an off-Christmas in alternating years. This is year is an on-Christmas for Sue, so the house will be packed with decorations, starts, puddings, cards, holly, tree. You name it. It will be like Santa’s grotto in here. There will be angels, stars, a nativity scene. It will be a scene straight from Charles Dickens.

Next year is my turn, and Christmas will look like any other day. There won’t be any sign of the virus next year (I hope) and there won’t be any sign of Christmas either. Ah, bliss.

However you celebrate, make sure you have a wonderful, happy, peaceful and laughter-filled time.