The excuse of dogs

The main reason I eventually get the decorations down before Christmas is because as a child I grew up in houses that were nicely decorated over the festive season, warm and welcoming with mulled wine, mince pies and regular visitors and guests.  We still go to my parents' house for lunch and it's turkey with all the trimmings and Christmas pudding which we can never manage on the day.  There may even still be a home-made Christmas cake somewhere, on useful stand-by duty until probably mid-February.   I remember the pleasure of it nibbled on winter afternoons, sometimes beside a fire: a rich, sticky, marzipanny finger slice, with icing.

In this military family on Christmas Day the Queen's speech was always switched on at 3pm and appreciated thoughtfully by my parents who would usually murmur a remark about the Queen's steadfast, long service and the useful work done by the royal family.   If it didn't happen this year, at the sewing machine, either I missed it, or my little nieces, toddler twins, were entertainment enough or perhaps my parents do catch-up TV now.  It is not the same on catch-up though.  There was something about everyone watching it together and the chat afterwards.  It was a purely social pleasure, like the chat there used to be before Saturday curry lunches at the mess, while we children played. The value was in the time spent together, that almost magical combination - the unplanned, organic exchange of news, information, opinions and ideas - which is conversation. I was lucky as a child growing up with two parents, stability, income and I am fortunate my children have at least some sense of that.  The order they find more at my parent's house yet they prefer home.

I have felt for nearly forever that Christmas is overdone commercially, and if it was the Victorians who kicked off wringing money out of the season, they ought to be answering for it still by peeling mountains of brussels sprouts.  Slow-burning effort meant my father and I eventually persuaded our family to pare things down so that for years now it has been presents for the children only. I don't want my boys to be sucked into the web of rushed present-buying for family members who don't need or want any more stuff. Perhaps boys are different but fortunately, they show no signs of it. Still  - did I say presents for the children only?  - they take something they have made at school, at clay or in the kitchen to my parents who host the day, to their aunt and uncle who are always there and who have spoiled them for years and this year little things for their adored toddler cousins.  And we will not give gifts for the adults - besides the champagne, salmon, chocolates, crackers, table decorations... These are contributions towards the day but it is thus the idea of gifts insidiously expands.  That we want to give is of course a good thing but only when it is not necessarily tied to notions of reciprocity which destroys the gesture and yet not tying gift giving to ideas of reciprocity is the difficulty.

Another change is that our own tree is now brought in from outside; small, rather manky, lopsided but at least alive. Isn't an evergreen tree, honoured with decorations supposed to represent life in midwinter? If so, why do we kill them and drag them, dead into our houses?

With relief, I have stopped burdening the postal service with Christmas cards, even while I admire the reams of cards on ribbons festooning doorways and mirrors on my parents' house, a reminder of their long popularity and decades of friendships across the world. Some of my friends send electronic messages with photos of the family or a festive scene from where they live.  That is lovely, greener and takes the pressure off hitting the last posting day.

I have a friend in her mid-forties with a child and a pre-schooler who has an admirable enthusiasm for Christmas. Watching her commitment, preparations and activities is almost a spectator sport. I think I would like Christmas more if there was less focus on one day. The day is a deadline which almost by definition makes it a high-pressure target. It is the shopping, cooking, letter-sending, gift-making or buying, decorating, all by a certain day.  This is a day from which many are left out and many others worry about those left out or, more meaningfully, try to ensure they are not. Adverts try to persuade you to buy more to help you cope with this most stressful time ofthe year (!) By Boxing Day this surge of preparation becomes meaningless. One looks up, dazed, hungover, overfed, ill from the stress or with a sense of relief from the pressure, to find January glaring back. How were we so duped? Count me among those who would prefer a varied festive winter season to get us from November to say the end of February, though perhaps not with all the lights, at least not if you live in Belgrade.

For a few years now I have suggested that we three households go to Spain for Christmas but with small additions to the family, ageing parents and the pull of tradition it is not a natural option. In reality, we jostle for turkey (turkey?!) in the packed aisles of local supermarkets and try hard to be at least blandly inoffensive and if possible pleasant and helpful to the collected family on Christmas day. Last year, failing to get anyone to come with me I slunk off late, as dusk was falling (after the washing up), in desperate need of a walk. Nobody was impressed but another escapee nodded and surprised me by smiling wryly. Perhaps he noticed that I didn't have the excuse of dogs to walk. This year I stayed in and hemmed shift dresses for my nieces.

I feel sometimes that the trappings and pressure of Christmas threatens what all that is supposedly to honour. Perhaps that is why I think of a simpler day together, a break from it all: sunshine, warmth, simpler food and a walk outdoors.  When the noise is cacophonous and something in the lunch is burning it can be hard not to take family life for granted.  My brother might forget that I was supposed to stay at theirs on Boxing Day, might become demoniacal in the kitchen, might protest too much, too often, yet he cooked for us all this year, has been a generous uncle and wants to take my kids to Alton Towers.  My husband is here, for all our differences, still providing for us, helping out with the kids at weekends and when I take a trip and still present at these gatherings.  Working away most of the time, my family is my husband's social life.  He is as much, if not more married to the wider 'us'.

Here is my father, approaching eighty, more stooped but a stoical and cheerful survivor of three cancers, diabetes and impending macular degeneration, still pouring wine and champagne for everyone and, around his medical appointments, making determined plans for his next trip abroad.  My mother is here too.  Memory loss meant that she forgot last year (or was it the year before?) that we were supposed to have Christmas lunch at our house (or did she), but she is still active, running things, driving, helping her neighbours, socialising with friends, enjoying her grandchildren.

During one of my father's recoveries I recall a friend saying:  My parents already passed away, both through long and sad processes.  Any single second you can be close...any smile you can get... that's the best gift you could ever offer.

So while I may sometimes lament the pressures of the season and the way we more generally might want the trappings of our lives slightly differently, I recall what Clive James said about manners and realise we are very lucky even to have family, blessed that we are all still here.

No complaints

Clive James, who, famously, has been terminally ill for many years, was recently in wonderful conversation (on iPlayer) with the Mary Beard. That Mary who has shown that being one's unaffected self is in fact an art or perhaps, more's the pity, almost an act of resistance.

During the conversation, he says repeatedly how blessed he is, how grateful for having had a life, for having had his particular life, for having had this extension to his life and, due to pioneering drug treatment, the time to reflect on it. But this is no simpering end.  James is, in his own words a larrikin and a performer, a poet and a scholar.  In Mary Beard's words, a rogue.  I met him once at a book event in Oxford, years ago.   He had fun, mischievous eyes, roguish indeed and a quick intelligence but one that never trumped humour which is my  favourite kind.  In the interview it's all still there.  With disarming openness he made me aware that he and some others were going for a drink somewhere nearby and that I could join them.  I did not have the experience to deal with, not the unexpectedness but the unusualness of the suggestion.  He was, after all, a famous writer over thirty years older than me, that I had just met.  But it is with endless regret that I recall I did not.

Later in the programme they discuss whether he has any regrets about books he has written. He says:

There are things I shouldn't have written. There are things I could have written better. But on the whole, I have no complaints. It would be very bad manners to complain. 

He says it with much modesty and with the such conviction, which is to say the very quietest kind that needs no emphasis, that is simply the knowledge that comes simply from a long and reflective life. That point about complaints extends the definition of what is usually thought of as good manners which is something useful to bear in mind when considering what it is to live well.

Santa

My husband doesn't really do Christmas, or birthdays or anniversaries though he does write cards for the family and he comes to Christmas lunch at my parents' house. This year he has taken to decorating the miniature tree and even brought out, with some pride, his own mini stash of decorations. I got the normal ones down from the attic again last week and was surprised on returning from a quick trip to town to find some of them put up by my husband - and tastefully. Let me say there may be surprises to come, and good ones, in long marriages.

Santa has always been female hereabouts. I imagine she wonders - with regret? with relief? - whether this year (year 12) will be Santa’s last at our house. 

My fizz-popping nine-year-old loves Santa, the letter he writes, the whole shebang. He gets so excited.  If I told you this is the child who broke the springs on the sofa, you would get the idea. So who that can remember that magic or has witnessed it would willingly (Trump aside) want that to end? I say so with a touch of scepticism because this son is a consummate actor and I have little doubt that he would pull the wool over anybody's eyes if it meant a conduit stayed open to a lumpy stocking.

I feel though that stockings, rather like Christmas itself, are better in the expectation that the reality. My elder son I noticed this year would probably concur but he is less keen on mornings generally these days. Actually, I think the younger one mostly enjoys unwrapping presents because he does not seem to pay huge attention to what is inside.

He tells me his friend's family is not religious.

- Oh, really? 

- Yes, Santa, doesn't come to him, continued my son.

- What?

- His family isn't religious so Santa doesn't come.

- Really? Neither is ours and Santa comes to our house I replied, wondering if I'd missed some essential step of logic.

- And they don't celebrate Christmas either.

- Oh. So what do they do?

- They have family time.

- Right. Well, that's odd because Santa isn't to do with being religious, I said, perhaps a little hastily.

- Yes he is, Santa is a Saint, he replied quick-wittedly. I see this son as a potential barrister. He sees himself working in Tesco. I think it is the proximity to sweets. Santa is Saint Nicholas, he said conclusively.

No, I said, matching his conviction. Santa is Santa Claus.  I wondered how far he had twigged to etymology and decided, for once, to forego that lexical adventure. It isn't the same thing.

- It is, he said determinedly.  He is Taurean, like my father. I know what they are like.

- It isn't, I insisted and decided to pull a fast one: Saint Nicholas arrives in a ship to the Netherlands, from Spain, with presents and Black Peter, I said, piling one bamboozling layer on to another. Santa Claus arrives from the North Pole in a sleigh with reindeer. Two completely different things, I added, lightly.

There was no answer to that. Thus, our children try to make sense of the world. I wondered how I had come to be defending Santa. But, I thought a little guiltily, at least I’d kept Coca Cola’a part out of it.

I was always rather troubled, studying philosophy, which is, after all, the search for truth, whether getting involved in Santa was a good idea.  On the one hand, the magic, on the other...difficulty.  I recall A.C. Grayling had an answer for that.  He was our admissions tutor and the best lecturer - or rather, intelligent storyteller - that during nearly eight years at university, or indeed elsewhere, I have ever heard,   I think it was in one of his books that he was talking about the tooth fairy.  The tooth fairy, as you know, brings money, so her existence is in fact, justified belief.