The truth about Christmas

Confessions of a festive fanatic.

This is the only bauble on my tree that has an actual name. Claudia, since you ask.

It’s almost been like Stockholm syndrome of some kind, perhaps, my fondness for Christmas. I say “fondness” in total denial of what was, for a long time, a well-meaning fanaticism that could, to the casual observer, seem like it couldn't possibly be real. No way could someone be so into Christmas – the tin-knuckled, glittering fist of capitalism that punches us all into submission – that he’d put up his tree in the first week of November, or sneak in a quick listen to ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ in July, right? Oh, sure, you know these people exist – excitable tinsel-covered zealots who celebrate Christmas all year round and have children called Holly, Robin, Joy and Pig-in-Blanket – but they’re usually paraded as freaks on talk shows for the amusement of a baying crowd as their defeated relatives slouch in their chair and ask, yet again, whether they can have a break from turkey, and eat beans on toast for lunch just once a year.

My love for Christmas started, as most romances do, with great loathing. Oh, I don’t mean I didn’t like Christmas as a child; of course I did. I enjoyed getting presents, and the snow, and waiting for Father Christmas, but there was the huge problem that my birthday was – and indeed still is – two days before the big day, immediately and eternally overshadowed by the birth of the big man himself. Never any decent cards in the shops, joint presents, complaints nobody had any money or time to celebrate with me, being away from all my friends because everyone had gone ‘home’ for Christmas. Other friends with regular birthdays had huge parties, weekends away. There were barbecues in the summer, guest lists at amazing clubs, legendary house parties that thankfully existed before the advent of social media. And for me, nothing, just the knowledge that something else very big was coming along in a moment and everyone needed to concentrate on that, thank you very much. But you can’t stay mad at Christmas for ever, because that f•cker isn’t going anywhere, no matter what hysterical tabloid headlines about things called ‘Winterval’ might tell you.

So Christmas and I called a truce. Over just eight days of the year, was my week of wonder – birthday, Christmas and New Year – and I decided to make that week work. I don’t like spinning out birthdays any longer than necessary and “just celebrate it in the summer instead” doesn’t cut it for me – your birthday is one day, and immovable – so I admitted defeat, gave myself over for Christmas. And it is wonderful. Lights. Trees. Most Christmas music is terrible, truly, but there’s something comforting about dusting it off around late October (yes that’s right, I really used to do that) and hearing those interminable bells and vocal acrobatics of the old standards. They are songs that wrap themselves around you in the friendliest of chokes.

A simpleton and his tree.

Once my deal with the devil was complete and Christmas and I became friends, I had a much better time. I know there are a great deal of people for whom it’s a painful and anxious time, who just want it to be over; the loss of loved ones and/or dark times in your personal life never feel so miserable and inescapable as they do when the streets glow with the optimism and cheerfulness of Christmas lights. Some assume that if Christmas pains you, your only options are to ignore it, or wish it over quickly, or get as far away from it as possible. Some of us spend Christmas dreaming of the ghosts of years gone by and dealing with the demons of lonely ones to come. And I guess that’s up to them; I don’t think anyone should be forced to celebrate if they feel sad or tired of it. But the biggest reason I’ve come round to the idea is that the alternative would be even worse. I find hope in Christmas. I am both lucky and unlucky enough to have seen many Christmases come and go, and I focus on the good, and the now, because they’ve not always been a celebration.

I seldom think now of the Christmas of my 18th birthday, when my grandfather collapsed on New Year’s Eve and died the next day. Every bauble I buy and lebkuchen heart I cram into my gob banishes all thoughts of my 21st, when my Irish nana was dying of cancer and I spent the entire festive period in a kind of gross limbo, torn between wanting to be free to enjoy my youth and but terrified of letting her go. Standing smoking nervously on ice-cold doorsteps thinking about the cards life had dealt me, ludicrously surmising things couldn’t get much worse. My other grandma died two weeks before Christmas years later, her funeral the day before my birthday. And the first Christmas after the loss of my best friend – the strangest, driest festive period of my life. I felt hollowed out, dulled, immune to the sparkling lights and seasonal cheer, like the one obligatory Christmas gift that needs batteries and has its instruction manual missing. That gap in my life has been harder to ignore, I must admit.

While better Christmas Days and more glorious New Years can never cancel out the bad ones, I owe it to them all to enjoy it as much as I can. If I manage to lose myself in festive reverie, I’m not thinking about how both grandmothers loved Christmas, decorating their trees, the sights and smells rushing back so hard they could wind me if I let them. Grandma’s baking. Their voices. I don’t think of carefully wrapping boxes of chocolates – tongue between teeth in bitter concentration – that my nana bought for her daughters and that only I could be trusted to wrap, because I was her favourite. I never think of the tins of Quality Street, or being allowed to use the “best room”, with the open fire, and reading the bumper editions of the TV and Radio Times. Nana’s pale, freckly, immaculate hands cutting me a slice of Mars bar. I don’t think of any of it at all. Except I do. It’s all I can do. I can smell it all now: the fire, the polish on the wood, chocolate, the mustiness clearing from an unused room and it starting to feel lived in and loved again. I can feel the imprint of the carpet as I kneel to wrap the presents and hear the tinny prattle of whatever’s on the TV, with Nana squinting at it from across the room. I don’t even have to close my eyes to be there; it’s a movie that plays on repeat, on all available screens, at every moment. But I cannot live in my memories – there’s nothing for me there.

Me and Santa having a quick chat about how it’s probably for the best if you – yes, you – don’t get any presents this year.

I create new traditions, but I have learned not to get too rooted in preserving rituals in aspic, so am unafraid to break them. My tree goes up in November – I have a realistic artificial fir to see me through the long weeks, but this year, I went for a real one, just sneaking it into the end of November. Will it survive my central heating and make it until January? Let’s find out. On 1 November, I would always listen to the same three Christmas songs first. Every year I go to the John Lewis Christmas shop as close to opening day as I can and select one or two (3 or 4) new baubles for my collection. (The pleasure I get from perusing the displays is so overwhelming and simplistic I am almost embarrassed by it. I can feel the wonderment travel from my eyes to every farthest reach of my body, so strong I can almost see light at my fingertips.) At Mum’s for Christmas, the first tin of chocolates is always opened on my birthday. Each Christmas I search for the perfect table centrepiece and never find it – it’s a running joke. My sister and I refuse to allow the rather dog-eared fairy from the top of the tree to be replaced by a shiny, modern star. She was bought in Woolworths in 1981 and is as much part of Christmas as the King’s speech might be to someone who can be bothered watching it.

The Christmas fanatic is my superhero alter ego – a security blanket, maybe, or a shield. Most years, I let myself become lost in it for two months. Deck the halls, I say; winter is long and dark enough. Let there be light – LED, warm white berries, two strings of 200 with optional flash.

MY BOOKS

Please buy one of my books for someone for Christmas. From L–R: a comedy about being too obsessed with attention on the internet to realise what’s important; a comedy about coming out later in life and the ripple effect on friends and family; a comedy about pretending to be someone you’re not because you’re scared people wont like you anymore; and a comedy about living life as a third wheel and finding yourself thrust into the spotlight for a change.

Buy Leading Man ⭐️ Buy The Last Romeo ⭐️ Buy The Magnificent Sons ⭐️ Buy The Fake-Up