And So This was Christmas

My favourite day of the holiday season is now officially December 27.

This is a wonderful day. Upon awakening there is the luxurious feeling of no responsibility whatsoever, plenty of sumptuous leftovers waiting to be re-heated for dinner and the knowledge that I may be able to actually enjoy a movie or book entirely, without getting lost in planning whatever needs to happen the next day. I can also cobble together seasonal snacks such as turkey and stuffing smeared onto a buttered croissant and cranberry sauce spooned into leftover cream before I disappear to the bath. With a marzipan chocolate!

By December 27th, I will have shrugged off the shackles of extensive to-do’s such as picking up one more stocking item, remembering to defrost something vital, replenishing potatoes because I forgot when buying everything else, stopping to buy pet food (again) and then being flooded with shame because dinner has become a desperate afterthought once more …

Anyone for fish sticks? 

The thing about Christmas is that it is the ultimate anniversary marker. Good and bad memories swirl together unhappily in my mind and even though I try to stay in the present (pun absolutely intended) The Present, happens to be a vibrating, ill-fitting place full of anxiety and sudden, unexpected tasks like cleaning underneath the fridge in case Christmas visitors decide to drop to the floor and have a good look-see as they retrieve the milk; obviously this will not happen but I learned early in life that with cleaning, there is judgment. Hilariously, these days I have no lurking in-laws examining the dust on my baseboards with slitty eyes. (And The General doesn’t even know that we have baseboards, so the only taskmaster is myself).

But readers – I am harsh.

Listening to Christmas music however upbeat and well intentioned is just like slicing my heart open and adding a few jiggers of battery fluid. I can usually manage a few tunes at the beginning of December – say, whilst making mince pies and feeling the spirit – but after that, I suffer. The British favourites that are peddled out again each year (even though they peaked in the 1970s such as Slade, “Merry Christmas Everybody!“) are particularly painful as they recall a brief, idyllic time when anything seemed possible and the promise of an exciting life was rolled out like a hopeful carpet before me.

I am not one of those who goes “all out” at Christmas either. I lean towards the simple, pagan side and enjoy a few bits of greenery inside and some plain white lights lining the windows to chase away that late afternoon gloom that slowly seeps in every night like Dickensian fog. This was something we started doing during the Pandemic (plugging those lights in as I poured a glass of wine) and psychological or not, it’s a ritual that continues to be helpful.

Rather than complaining about the long Canadian winters and reading doom-filled weather predictions aloud in a tense, dramatic cadence better suited to ‘Hamlet’ (camera swings to The General, looking hurt, here) some of us are embracing the certainty that spring really is, but a few weeks away. I am even coaxing a few hydroponic lettuce to try again  as they huddle squatly in their sugared-water moats on the windowsill and today, one of them is proudly sporting a few tiny green leaves in its centre like sharp feathers in an Edwardian hat.  It’s strangely exciting.

This year, therefore, although the Christmas tree and decorations are long gone the white lights will happily remain, installed like festive clown lights around our two kitchen windows until the spring Equinox.

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