I really like Christmas. Always have. The best part of Christmas is… Christmas. The worst part is how it starts far too early. All of this is largely written in stone by now. What is relatively new is the preparation for Christmas and, more specifically, how much I’ve come to embrace and enjoy it.
Oh, I don’t
mean the November hype that lands the exact moment that Halloween ends. I don’t like
that at all. A whisper of a Christmas song an inch before December can give me profound
shivers. I neither like nor want any of that.
But these
days, the ten days or so before Christmas, I’ve come to embrace them as an
integral part of the season and, yes, almost one of the best parts. Anticipation,
expectation, even a little nervousness. Let the planes fly on time, let the
nasty bugs keep at bay, at least until January. Getting there can be half the fun.
I think
this valuing of the pre-Christmas melee has only really come along since the
guys started to live elsewhere. One in Dublin, one in London now. It seemed to
sneak up and become a real thing without ever fully announcing itself. I think their
absence and the promise of their arriving back at the wreath-bedecked door
makes the promise of the holiday almost as good as the fact.
You have to get the stuff out of the attic some days before you do anything with it. Otherwise, the coloured lights tend to suffer some kind of electronic heart attack and refuse to work. Until this year, I really thought that the annual deterioration of the box that contains the fake second Christmas tree was a feature particular to me. But, this year, I see memes and online pictures that confirms that the tatty, over taped, box is a largely universal thing. There is comfort in this. I’m not as slack as I thought or at least only as slack as many more of you.
The main tree
is a real one. The man who sells the Christmas tree gives me my annual personal
five-euro discount and recounts to whoever else is in the vicinity that I am
indeed the ‘Man Who Gave His Christmas Tree Away’ (his capitals, not mine). It
was nothing much. The tree man had just presented me with the most beautiful tree
I had ever seen when a Mother and Child came into the shop and looked
wistfully at it. She actually shed a tear when she saw my tree. “It would look
so lovely in my window,’ she said. Call me foolish but I saw something deeper underlying
her wish for the tree. Some unspoken grief perhaps... who knows? In any event, I
gave her the tree and took another, slightly lesser one. I told her that the
tree was too darned big for my front room anyway. It was nothing, really, it
was a decade ago. But, every year, the tree man recounts the story with
something close to awe and slips me a fiver back. This year, a friend, Coleman, was buying
his tree and lining up to carry it the couple of streets to his house. I
carried it with him. We chatted along the way, from pointy end of tree to butt end
of tree, and it was pleasant and seasonal. The trees all seem a little light on
top this year but it’s nothing that a couple of sets of pre-warmed-up lights
can’t fix.
The word is
out. The Baileys is on offer in Supervalu. Get down there and get a few bottles
in.
The Christmas
Radio Times is very expensive at over eight euro but the shopkeeper and me both
agree it has to be done. The Irish version, the RTE Guide, is great but I love
my RT too much to switch now. Bring it home and shake all the advert sections
out. Put it under the tree but not before noting that the Christmas University
Challenges have already started, and I’ve missed two already. Get a series link
on the others. Only Connect too.
Put on Sky
Cinema and cancel it again the day after so you have it for just the month.
Catch up on all the movies you missed through the year. I’ve already really
enjoyed The Fabelmans. What were you thinking of, not liking it?
Carols
singers gather in the shopping arcade. Nobody has any money for them. We’re all
tapping our cards and our phones these days. It’s a crisis in wassailing.
Work.
Everybody wants everything by Christmas even though they won’t do anything with it
until the New Year. Keep a cool head and a dry trouser. Holidays are coming.
Buy lots of
books. Books are great. They are so easy to wrap up too. The corners of the
sheet fold in at the ends so nicely.
This week,
despite a spate of panics, the last day of work will surely come. I will be alone
in the office as I shut it down and I will play Thomas Hampson singing 'O
Tannenbaum', just as I always do. Then I will lock the door and it will be
Christmas for real.
Enjoy it
when it comes and enjoy the coming of it too.
Yeah?
Yeah.
2 comments:
Christmas this year was probably our most uneventful ever. (By "our" I mean Carrie and me.) In the early days I made a BIG DEAL about Christmas. I basically started buying pressies as soon as one Chistmas ended and spent the whole year getting everything perfect, right down to printing out individually-customised gift labels. If my daughter had a friend or boyfriend over they got s many pressies as everyone else. Which was a lot. Box after box after box. Hell, my daughter had an advent calender until she was about thirty. All if this sounds like a burden but it was joyous. Even people at work got pressies, proper pressies. I spent an absolute fortune every year but, what the hell, I could afford it.
Then one year my daughter pointed out the burden I was placing on her which, honestly, floored me because I never expected her to compete. She wanted to reduce gift-giving to one soddin' gift each. I was having none of it. We settled on three gifts although as far as I was concerned five books wrapped together counted as "one" pressie. But that was the beginning of the end for me. It stopped being fun and became a chore. In years past Carrie had the tree up right after Thanksgiving and it was often still up at the end of January or, one year, even longer. This year it was up and down in about a week. My daughter arrived on time, the meal was lovely, gifts (mostly off wish lists (I hate 'em, I hate 'em, I hate 'em)) were exchanged, catch-ups were caught up and three hours later hugs and kisses were had and that was it. All, by the numbers. I guess it didn't help that Carrie and I were poorly for most of December. Some coldly-virusy thing.
Anyway, I hope yours was joyouslier than ours and lets hope EVERYONE has a better 2024 when it comes.
Let's hope for that, Jim. Happy New Year to you and Carrie.
PS your massive present-giving sounds like it was Wonderful. Well done.
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