it's over.
Christmas and its overindulgent, overcrowded, overspent, overeaten glory. I wish I could enjoy it more without the constant shadow of Christmas past looming over me. Not only the bittersweet nostalgia of lost years and once happy memories with a sting in the tail, but with the resonance of the more recent events that clang in my ears, sometimes all too familiarly.
And then there's the family. Real families, lest there be anyone, anywhere, still left in any doubt about it, are messier than their Hallmark Channel counterparts (and after my winter of madness when Christmas 24 kept me company through the wee small hours, I am something of an expert on this). They are a blessing that takes you for granted, and seem to generate a Linus-like miasma of 'stuff' around them as they move through the house, sorry 'their' house, whilst still managing to make you feel like they'd rather be almost anywhere else in the world.
Despite, or possibly as the cause of my own stressful time, I still have this imagined rosy glow of Christmas with the family, where we all sit around toasting marshmallows and each others like we're re-enacting Little Women, and I'm the beloved Marmee, but it never turns out like that. It's still pretty marvellous, and an all too fleeting, precious, time that I know is borrowed from an uncertain future, but let no-one say it is easy. Four, five, six personalities all crammed into two over-furnished, over-heated rooms, burdened by the idiosyncrasies of a lifetime of bickering and real and imagined slights, fanned by the undercurrents of the things nobody says to anyones faces (he always uses my mouthwash, she always wears my pants, she's nicer to the cat than me, the house smells of bum), and it's a wonder that I've only landed in the nuthouse once.
This year, for the first time since we decided to get married, Christmas of too-long-ago to remember - 31, 31 years? - I did not spend the holiday season with my husband. Instead, he and his new partner took their new baby off to introduce her to her non-Christmas celebrating Jewish relatives in New York where the little mite can be inducted into the schizophrenic world she has been born into; the world of rewritten history:
Husband: Well we never really celebrated Christmas
We have celebrated Christmas enthusiastically with all the trimmings for the past thirty years and his mother, celebrated Christmas with more pomp than Mrs Claus, with a bigger tree than Harrods, a turkey and canned Cranberry sauce, despite being Muslim.
But, no, now we don't and never have really celebrated, he maintains as his new partner lights her Hanukkah minorah which, presumably, they're not really celebrating either.
And whoosh, thirty years of my life, conveniently forgotten to make way for the new reality.
So he didn't come.
And what a relief it was.
I'm not going to say I didn't miss him a little, for a fleeting moment, since he's been as much part of the tradition as the hijabi woman at the top of the tree, and the Mexican creche, both of which he outdoes in terms of silence, but I didn't miss the itching to get away, the suffering through the three, four, five hours as though it was some sort of ordeal to be endured, like dental surgery, and the false jollity of everyone else trying to make up for his unease.
On Christmas day we watched an old DVD of my parents Golden Wedding Anniversary, shot when my now thirty year old daughter was six, and her brothers four and two respectively. And everytime the cine camera caught him, he was sitting in the same place, either by himself or with the children, talking to nobody.
How could I have been married to him for all those years and not notice he didn't interact?
Anyway, presumably he's off sitting in someone else's house not talking this holiday season, though the baby as the specialist subject du jour, at least provides a focal point - like a fire in a cold room. She is adorable, and her every movement is commented on like a sign from an oracle.
We were probably like that too with our first little baby. It seems odd that those days are long behind me now and he's reliving them all again with someone else at the ripe old ago of 65. God. Life is funny and full of unimaginable surprises. What's scary is at my age, some of those unimaginable surprises are likely to be of the ominous variety!
So, we broke with tradition. Halleluyah. What a blessed, blessed relief. Never, ever again will we spend Christmas together and it's okay. It's fine. It's better than fine.
Soon the kids will have families of their own and drift away - already one son has a quasi-wife and hasn't been home for two years, or incidentally sent a card or a present in that time either. Next year the 'kids' as they still insist on behaving, may be scattered across the world. Last year my other son was in Brazil. My eldest daughter will run like the wind, the first time she finds a crack in the door to escape from. It surely can't be long when it's me and the cats, the BBC, and I don't bother putting up the tree any more because there's no point, and I start volunteering for Crisis at Christmas to give myself something to do.
Doesn't sound that bad.
Glad it's over.
Bah Humbug.
But I'll still treasure the memories, and fold them all away in tissue paper and cotton wool with the tree decorations and store them carefully.
And throw out all the silly annoyances with the uneaten food in the tupperware at the back of the fridge.
Christmas and its overindulgent, overcrowded, overspent, overeaten glory. I wish I could enjoy it more without the constant shadow of Christmas past looming over me. Not only the bittersweet nostalgia of lost years and once happy memories with a sting in the tail, but with the resonance of the more recent events that clang in my ears, sometimes all too familiarly.
And then there's the family. Real families, lest there be anyone, anywhere, still left in any doubt about it, are messier than their Hallmark Channel counterparts (and after my winter of madness when Christmas 24 kept me company through the wee small hours, I am something of an expert on this). They are a blessing that takes you for granted, and seem to generate a Linus-like miasma of 'stuff' around them as they move through the house, sorry 'their' house, whilst still managing to make you feel like they'd rather be almost anywhere else in the world.
Despite, or possibly as the cause of my own stressful time, I still have this imagined rosy glow of Christmas with the family, where we all sit around toasting marshmallows and each others like we're re-enacting Little Women, and I'm the beloved Marmee, but it never turns out like that. It's still pretty marvellous, and an all too fleeting, precious, time that I know is borrowed from an uncertain future, but let no-one say it is easy. Four, five, six personalities all crammed into two over-furnished, over-heated rooms, burdened by the idiosyncrasies of a lifetime of bickering and real and imagined slights, fanned by the undercurrents of the things nobody says to anyones faces (he always uses my mouthwash, she always wears my pants, she's nicer to the cat than me, the house smells of bum), and it's a wonder that I've only landed in the nuthouse once.
This year, for the first time since we decided to get married, Christmas of too-long-ago to remember - 31, 31 years? - I did not spend the holiday season with my husband. Instead, he and his new partner took their new baby off to introduce her to her non-Christmas celebrating Jewish relatives in New York where the little mite can be inducted into the schizophrenic world she has been born into; the world of rewritten history:
Husband: Well we never really celebrated Christmas
We have celebrated Christmas enthusiastically with all the trimmings for the past thirty years and his mother, celebrated Christmas with more pomp than Mrs Claus, with a bigger tree than Harrods, a turkey and canned Cranberry sauce, despite being Muslim.
But, no, now we don't and never have really celebrated, he maintains as his new partner lights her Hanukkah minorah which, presumably, they're not really celebrating either.
And whoosh, thirty years of my life, conveniently forgotten to make way for the new reality.
So he didn't come.
And what a relief it was.
I'm not going to say I didn't miss him a little, for a fleeting moment, since he's been as much part of the tradition as the hijabi woman at the top of the tree, and the Mexican creche, both of which he outdoes in terms of silence, but I didn't miss the itching to get away, the suffering through the three, four, five hours as though it was some sort of ordeal to be endured, like dental surgery, and the false jollity of everyone else trying to make up for his unease.
On Christmas day we watched an old DVD of my parents Golden Wedding Anniversary, shot when my now thirty year old daughter was six, and her brothers four and two respectively. And everytime the cine camera caught him, he was sitting in the same place, either by himself or with the children, talking to nobody.
How could I have been married to him for all those years and not notice he didn't interact?
Anyway, presumably he's off sitting in someone else's house not talking this holiday season, though the baby as the specialist subject du jour, at least provides a focal point - like a fire in a cold room. She is adorable, and her every movement is commented on like a sign from an oracle.
We were probably like that too with our first little baby. It seems odd that those days are long behind me now and he's reliving them all again with someone else at the ripe old ago of 65. God. Life is funny and full of unimaginable surprises. What's scary is at my age, some of those unimaginable surprises are likely to be of the ominous variety!
So, we broke with tradition. Halleluyah. What a blessed, blessed relief. Never, ever again will we spend Christmas together and it's okay. It's fine. It's better than fine.
Soon the kids will have families of their own and drift away - already one son has a quasi-wife and hasn't been home for two years, or incidentally sent a card or a present in that time either. Next year the 'kids' as they still insist on behaving, may be scattered across the world. Last year my other son was in Brazil. My eldest daughter will run like the wind, the first time she finds a crack in the door to escape from. It surely can't be long when it's me and the cats, the BBC, and I don't bother putting up the tree any more because there's no point, and I start volunteering for Crisis at Christmas to give myself something to do.
Doesn't sound that bad.
Glad it's over.
Bah Humbug.
But I'll still treasure the memories, and fold them all away in tissue paper and cotton wool with the tree decorations and store them carefully.
And throw out all the silly annoyances with the uneaten food in the tupperware at the back of the fridge.
