How was yours?

 

I was walking this morning in a fog of thoughts having just returned from a monumental 4 days of Christmas. I began to think of the rhythms of the time around Christmas, the lulls and intensity of activities, the build-up, the crescendos and yes, I’ll say it, the climax… followed by a strange quiet, a sort of letting go, a huge out-breath.

 

What sprang to mind was a tsunami. I haven’t ever seen one but have a vague idea of what goes on. The leaching of the water away from the beach as the earth, miles away, has shifted so radically that it sucks the sea back only to catapult it out in full force, leaving nothing to spare in its wake. I think that’s what I feel like a bit. On a tiny teeny scale.

 

There is this sense of engaging the brace-position even though what’s about to happen is good! It is! I’m part of a brilliant family. There is nothing to not love about being together. Yet... Yet… The preparation required for The Christmas Period is essentially a powerful message telling the body and brain that something quite big – and possibly risky - is going to happen very soon. Prepare yourself – geographically, financially, nutritionally, physically, relationally, and last but not least, at the top of the Prep-Tower – emotionally. This year was another biggy for our family – 2023/4 was the fallout from the death of my dad, 2025 was the fallout of from the death of my motherinlaw. A powerhouse of organisational skills and detail and the epicentre of the family around whom we rotated – like stars circling the sun. The wretched-hole-of-absence was what we were all manically prepping for.

 

So as the waters began to recede from the metaphorical beach and the excitement began to grow, so did the sense of anxiety around getting it right, honouring this insanely generous woman who had produced our Christmasses for decades, pulling out decorations from under the stairs, saving a nick-nack made by her grandchildren or children even (that tinsel twizzle is nearly 50 years old) – how do you STILL have that? – on the tree it goes regardless of its state of decomposure… It's not about a fashionable colour theme, the theme is family… regardless of age or life-status, if it’s family related, it’s IN (or on).

 

The sea disappears over the horizon and our whatsapps pick up a notch: do we have enough cheese? How many crackers did you say there are? Wait, how many beds do we need clean sheets for? How many roulades feed 17? That means how many pints of cream? We need to hoover the dead ladybirds from the windowsills.

 

Meanwhile a car-key goes awol and the prep-plans hit a bump in the sea-bed momentarily. Me and my sisterinlaw sit in the local municipal dump in a strange moment of calm as the car can’t start without its electric key: a flash of peace descends in the Toyota as we realise there is nothing we can do but sit in the unexpected quiet offered by our immobilization, people outside the car determinedly shove bits of cardboard into huge metal shipping containers. We laugh at the idiocy of the situation and the car ends up having a sleepover in the dump.

 

And then the water is on the rise again, and organised chaos picks up another notch. What time are you arriving? Which day? So that’s how many for dinner on each night? Put washing up liquid on the list. And another washing up brush.

Secret Santa complete.

I think we need more cheese.

The water is galloping across the sea-bed, with our two dogs surfing on the crest, great smiles on their hairy noses, anticipating ham and bacon and turkey and sausage and cheese ‘falling’ off plates…

 

And then we’re in it – being tumbled around by time and joyful greetings and unpacking food and laying presents under the sparkling tree with its wondrous array of decorations – and trying to hold it together as we recognise moments in the day when our mother/inlaw/granny would’ve conducted an activity – shit we didn’t do a jigsaw this year – or run around the house trying to work out why the chimney was smoking so extravagantly this year. The water frothing and churning around us, potato basting and Love Actually, the dishwasher on its 28^th run in 3 days, wrapping paper strewn over the floor, I love it so much thank you.

 

Boxing Day, we wake late, it’s like that moment in the Yellow Pages advert from the 90s when the young man wakes up to see a painting with a moustache graffitied over the art, discombobulated, we had a good time didn’t we? The house is in one piece, we’re in one piece, we made it through with love and joy and tears.

 

We resemble the debris on the beach after the wave has crashed down – we’re not at all destroyed, but we’re in a ‘wow-did-that-happen’ kind of head space; a little messy, a little phewee, we tread carefully down to breakfast, relieved we don’t have to get to church for 930am again.

 

I guess every family does their thing, and I guess the power of Christmas is that they do it together and hope that they can lean on each other in those moments when they need support.

 

My moment was the waving goodbye to people as they drove off. Waving goodbye to a carload of people, standing next to my niece I realised that oh crapsticks here comes my own mini-tidal-wave, as my motherinlaw was a stickler for a proper wave-off to anyone from her house, and would wave until the car was out of sight. The absence hit like the second-tidal-wave they always say you need to be prepared for, there’s usually more than one.

 

Boom. Turning to my niece we both craughed (cry-laughed) as we knew exactly what the other was thinking in that moment.

 

Fuckadoodle doooo.

Did we have enough cheese in the end? Well yes we bloody did.