I’ve been trying to write a post for days but I’ve not been able to bring myself to do it. I can’t face putting into words how I feel about Christmas. About no nativity play, no Christmas fair, no carols in church, no visits to Santa. About knowing my parents are spending Christmas Day largely alone, that the kids won’t be sharing it with their adored cousins, that I’ll be cooking Christmas Dinner and all the trimmings for Andy and I, while the other three guests round the table cherry-pick the roast potatoes and pigs in blankets and ask to get down after 20 minutes.
Never did I think I’d be nostalgic for paper crowns, set menus and drunk office party people on the tube, or for sore feet from standing up all evening, the overwhelming stench of Cornish pasties on the last train home or for rummaging in the back of the man drawer hunting babysitter cash while Andy makes awkward, tipsy small talk with the poor girl.
Last January, after a solid 10 days on the road hefting the kids and all their clobber from the Midlands to Berkshire to Devon and back, packing and unpacking the car, assembling travel cots all over the place, waking up for night feeds a mere two hours after I’d fallen into bed, I declared that this year we weren’t going anywhere. No sir! I felt decisive and defiant - let them come to us, I said. I’ll host them all, I said, I just want to sleep in my own bed! Well, didn’t I win the spoilt brat lottery?
At this time of year I’m usually wrapping up the last few days of work to the sounds of Christmas music but yesterday I went to put on some classic Christmas tunes and had to turn it off after less than 30 seconds. Not this year, thanks.
I'm slightly struggling to see the point of Christmas this year. Christmas Day is slightly different - an excuse to drink at breakfast, eat inordinate amounts of food and not move from the sofa is always welcome - but anything between now and then and I’m just not interested.
I’m feeling a real conflict between wanting to bury my head in the sand and not let a single festive thought enter my head, and massively over-compensating for the sake of the kids.
My primary concern is whether we’re enough for them. They’re so used to being here, there and everywhere in the run up to Christmas, having lots of people around on Christmas Day, or having the excitement of sleepovers, that I feel like this year will be lacking. A week between finishing school and the big day and, for the most part, we’ll be in the house engaging in enforced jollity and explaining for the millionth time why we can't go anywhere other than the cold, wet park.
This year means stripping away everything that makes Christmas special, chiefly among them the fun and games of navigating the weird clashing of two worlds as you are surrounded by extended family and enjoy the immediate resumption of piss taking from your siblings, as if the past 15 years haven’t happened, while desperately trying to remember how to parent - because it is impossible to behave like a 38-year-old mother of three while sleeping in your childhood bedroom - and simultaneously feeling a bit weird that there’s a boy sleeping in your bed while under your parents’ roof.
We always try and tell the kids that Christmas is about more than just presents (a message that still hasn’t quite got through) but this year it really, really isn’t. Presents is literally all I have. Henry is already chowing three advent calendar chocolates before breakfast (we had a triple whammy of calendar gifts this year), so I don’t have much left to offer in terms of special treats besides gift wrapped distraction.
As with everything this year, I feel like I can handle it (because like all of us I have no choice), but I just want to make it ok for the children. I can’t bear the thought that this Christmas will be weird or sad, that they’ll feel it is any less special. They’ve been counting down the days since before Halloween and I can’t bring myself to ascertain from them whether they know Christmas will, as with everything this year, be just us.
Last week we realised Bella didn’t know what Covid was. She just thought it was another word for lockdown. Shamefully it occurred to us we’d never explained the virus to her and she was just piecing all the bits of the puzzle together and really being none the wiser. We can’t see grandparents, or have playdates, or take swimming lessons, or go on holiday, or do anything that doesn’t only involve bloody Mummy and Daddy, ‘because of Covid’. But like the innocent four year old she is, she never stopped to question the reason behind it.
So we plod on. We hide the elf on the shelf. We cheer ourselves up with a spoonful of brandy cream as we wait for the kettle to boil. (I know it's not just me.) And we thank God we aren’t in the half of the village that has just been put into Tier 3 restrictions (local authority boundaries are fun, aren’t they?).
Like a lot of people I know, I have to try and pull myself up out of a sort of permanent low-level depressed state every day and just look forward to Christmas being over. If only because I am eager to get on with next year, to see the back of 2020 and start afresh with vaccines and a gradual easing of rules and the slow beginnings of our old life returning.
I know it might seem naively optimistic but right now optimism is all we have and I’m clinging to it like a beacon of hope amid wave after wave of utter, utter shit.
Happy Christmas guys!
Absolutely feel the same. The most precious moments are those spent with loved ones.
I will really miss you all and hope that by staying safe we can look forward to more get-togethers in 2021.
100% with you on this - i feel weird almost going through the rituals of the christmas run up but with the prospect of what's to come, it feels almost pointless! But then I think, it'll be as fun as you make it and grab another mince pie and another viewing of home alone!