Call me mean-spirited. I don’t care. I just can’t bear seeing people whose lives are already stretched to overload having to take on a ton more stuff.
Come, follow me! Lay down your wrapping paper and embrace your inner Scrooge! You have nothing to lose but a nervous breakdown!
First published in Marie Claire, December 2005.
What’s Right with Christmas
Every year, around 2 January, I say, ‘Right, that’s it! Next Christmas I’m going far, far away, to some country where Christmas is actually illegal.’ Iran, perhaps. Or Saudi Arabia maybe. A place where there’s no turkey, no Raiders of the Lost Ark, where hopefully I’d get into big trouble for humming ‘Away in a Manger’ on the bus.
I always emerge from the festive period exhausted, tubby, smothered with a head-cold, sporting a chinful of stress-induced cold sores and in the grip of a powerful desire to live alone on top of a mountain for the next six months. The worst thing of all is that I feel like a failure, like a curmudgeonly oddball: everyone else loves Christmas, what’s wrong with me?
But then I made the delightful discovery that I’m not the only one who feels this way. Oh no. Lots of people dread Christmas. And once I knew I was not alone, my attitude changed and I realized that actually there’s an awful lot that’s good about Christmas.
For some people it’s about the birth of Jesus Christ, and if that’s your thing, good luck to you, no judgements here, but for me, Christmas is essentially about food. Oh, to have the freedom to eat whatever I want!
Here’s how it is. For most of the year I feel ashamed of every bite of food that goes into my mouth. My internal monitor, that horrible calorie abacus, keeps track of everything and replays any gluttony in order to shame and reshame me.
No matter how little I eat in any one day, there’s always the feeling that I could have managed on less. My appetite is like an out-of-control Rottweiler straining on a chain, and even as I take the first mouthful of anything I’m already worried about the last and how I’ll cope when it’s all gone.
Refined sugar is my greatest love and my greatest heartbreak, and trying to stay away from it is like getting up every day and going to war – there’s danger at every turn. And then December rolls around …
I, along with my four siblings and assorted spouses and children, usually spend Christmas Day at my parents’ house, which is transformed into a refined sugar wonderland for the duration of the festivities. It feels like every room I enter, I stumble over boxes of biscuits stacked knee-high. Hidden behind the curtains in the dining room are three incongruous boxes of Black Magic. I open the fridge for some swotty blueberries and there, twinkling at me, is the perfect Central Casting trifle. Dad even gets me my own personal selection box as he has done every year since time immemorial, even though every year I beg him not to.
I haven’t a hope, resistance is futile, this is far too big for me. And suddenly it’s like a great weight has been taken off me and I grant myself the freedom to eat whatever I want. For a limited period only – like a half-price sale – and I feel skippy and carefree and bingey.
Last Christmas, I began the day, as I have begun every Christmas Day in living memory, by eschewing my usual moral-high-ground breakfast of organic steel-cut oatmeal and instead going back to bed with a tin of Roses, giving myself permission to eat steadily through it until I can see the metal at the bottom. I felt sick long before I reached that happy point, but knowing that there were no limits was what made it so pleasurable. (In fact, this ritual has become so ingrained that, after bitter complaints from my siblings, Mam and Dad are now obliged to buy a second box of Roses for general usage.)
And I felt no guilt. None at all. And frankly the subconscious knowledge that I can go wild at Christmas is probably what makes the denial of the rest of the year possible.
And that is what Christmas is for.
People complain bitterly about the Groundhog Day misery of being trapped, once again, at close quarters with their family, of time wasted watching shite telly, just like they do every year. But they’re missing the point. Christmas is a holiday from guilt, from restraint and from responsibility – and oh, the relief. I may not be sunning myself in the Maldives but I’m taking a mini-break from my own rules.
Yes, I know that as I play the Selection Box Challenge with my sisters (basically you eat as much of your selection box as you can in a minute – Dad times us) I’ll pay the price in fatso shame in January, but for the moment it’s like a ceasefire. I can stop fighting.
It’s the same with alcohol – I no longer drink, but those that do are made to feel perpetually guilty. You think you’re simply having a couple of glasses of wine with your dinner after a bad day at work, but then you discover that actually, no, you’re a binge drinker.
However, at Christmas time, you’re obliged to drink – the office party, the team lunch, the catch-up with old school friends, the mulled wine at your neighbours … the drinking opportunities are endless and, well, you don’t want people thinking you’re a killjoy, now, do you?
The month of December is the only time of the year when you can get scuttered eleven nights in a row and put it down to sociability, and frankly it’s what makes the forbearance of the rest of the year endurable.
Another thing that’s lovely about Christmas is the comfort of our own unique rituals – and this is a Keyes one: when we were younger, money was in short supply and because Dad was afraid we’d have all the Christmas goodies eaten before the day itself, we were forbidden to eat any until he blew the whistle on Christmas morning. But Caitríona and I couldn’t bear the waiting so, before the appointed time, we used to sneak into the darkened dining room – repository of the selection boxes – and sneakily slit one open, slide out a Curly Wurly and a Crunchie, reseal the box with a handy piece of Sellotape, and tiptoe from the room, like cat thieves. And we still do it every Christmas Eve. We leave the dining room and find Dad and sit and ostentatiously eat our contraband, then Dad stares at us hard and forgets that we are now in our forties and suddenly yells, ‘Where did you get that Curly Wurly?’ Then Caitríona and I laugh ourselves sick.
The thing that people seem to resent most about Christmas is the wasted time. At any other time in the year, if they had ten days off, they’d go skiing instead of watching crap telly in their pyjamas. But the thing is that doing something pointless in a life full of purpose is a precious joy. Under normal circumstances I have a bottomless list of jobs. Always. I should be answering emails or changing the bulb on my bedside lamp or removing my chipped nail varnish, or taking cod out of the freezer or doing sit-ups or charging my phone or buying a birthday present for my god-daughter or looking for lost things or making a new list because I’ve run out of room on my current one. As a woman, I’m expected to be many different people, all of them fabulous.
But the pleasure of Christmas, of watching strange old films which are already half over before the remote lands on them. Bad films. Terrible films. Films of no worth whatsoever. Films that live on in the collective memory and unite the small band of people who saw them. Every Christmas we STILL ask each other incredulously, ‘Do you remember that weird film about the man who lost his memory and married his own wife? Did that really happen?’
But the very best thing about Christmas – and sadly this confuses and upsets people – is the rows.
Of every lovely thing that Christmas has to offer, this is the one that is most misunderstood. See, we’ve bought into that goodwill-to-all-men business and we expect that it’ll be easier to love others at Christmas time.
But why would i
t? There’s more pressure on us than at any other time of year: the card-writing, the hangovers, the lists, the present-buying, the crowds, the brutally relentless socializing, the cooking, the travelling, the lurking outside Argos at daybreak, ready to do battle to get your hands on the last delivery of Ninky Nonks (or Elsas or whatever it is this year) in the universe before 25 December – it all takes its toll. And the next thing, we find ourselves mired in a sudden shocking shouting match with our nearest and dearest – and we have the temerity to be surprised? Ashamed, even.
But there’s no need, no need at all! We have to stop thinking of this as a bad thing. No, it’s very, very good. See, most of the year we are small, powerless creatures in a malign world and when bad things happen we have to swallow back our rage. Our hairdresser gives us bouffy when we specifically said, ‘No bouff!’ We get a parking ticket two minutes, two short minutes – a mere 120 seconds – after the meter expires. At work, a toady younger man who is gifted at golf gets the promotion that should have been ours.
And what can we do? Nothing! We are small, powerless creatures and we have to force a wobbly smile and – yes! – tip the hairdresser, because if we don’t she’ll only blow-dry our fringe funny to punish us the next time. Instead of vaulting across the bonnet of our car and biting the cruel ticket man, we have to pay the parking fine. And we have to start reporting to the smarmy younger bloke at work.
And it builds up, all of that frustration and impotence. Our shoulders are permanently up around our ears, a bit falls off one of our molars because we’ve been grinding our teeth to dust in our sleep, and we jolt awake at 4 a.m. every day to worry about the future.
… and then suddenly we find ourselves trapped in an over-warm, over-full house with our family. Tellies are blaring from every room, there’s no privacy and no peace, the kitchen is full of steam and Brussels sprouts and it’s only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose.
Hard to predict exactly how it’ll go – that’s the beauty of it really. But suddenly you’ll find yourself shrieking at a loved one about bread sauce, or lemons being cut into wedges instead of slices, or overuse of the Sellotape. And of course the rage isn’t really about bread sauce or lemons or Sellotape; it’s about all the other stuff, the not-being-allowed-to-bite-the-traffic-warden stuff.
And my advice is, don’t be ashamed of your outburst – embrace it. Have a good old rant. Release all that rage: it’ll save you a fortune in therapist’s fees and dentist’s bills and it’ll stop you getting addicted to sleeping tablets further down the line.
Because the important thing is that the boundaries of family are far more elastic and accommodating than those of any other social grouping. Families argue. We’ve been doing it all our lives and we always bounce back to maintenance-level dysfunctional (what counts as normal round my way). It’s all okay.
And never forget, it will soon be January, sackcloth-and-ashes month, so enjoy the gluttony, the sloth, the inebriation and the arguments of Christmas. These are simple, low-cost pleasures – and yet they are priceless.
MY FIVE FAVOURITE THINGS ABOUT CHRISTMAS
1) Curling up with a dusty Agatha Christie and realizing seven pages from the end that I’ve read it already
2) Eating trifle straight from the bowl for my bedtime snack
3) The gym being shut
4) Watching Moonstruck for the millionth time with my sisters and saying all the words
5) Sitting around the table, with all the family there, in the aftermath of a giant shouty row, smiling and thinking fondly, ‘These are my people, this is my tribe’
First published in the Sunday Times Style, December 2008.
ON MY TRAVELS
* * *
Maison des Rêves
First let me tell you who Bryan Dobson is: he reads the news on Irish telly every evening at six o’clock (well, a minute past six, but let’s not quibble), and there’s something about Bryan that I find immensely reassuring. Now, can I tell you about the role he played in a holiday I had in Morocco? Thank you. Well, I visited with Himself, who had climbed Mount Toubkal on one of his mountain-scaling adventures and every day after his return tormented me with, ‘Oh, Morocco this, Morocco that. The time I had the delicious tagine in the blah-de-blah.’ So eventually I agreed to go.
And Marrakech, a place that Himself had particularly loved, transpired to be not so wonderful for me because – in one of those unfortunate oversights – I didn’t have a penis. They’re not so keen on women in Marrakech. To put it mildly. But that’s a different story.
This is about what happened after we left the gropey, hissy insults of Marrakech. We were driven for several dusty hours through barren desert and crucifying sunlight, heading for a palmeraie in a place called Ouarzazate (a palmeraie is something akin to an oasis, a sudden burst of green – yes! – palms in the endless shifting landscape of the desert). Suddenly, out of the emptiness, a sand-coloured fortress appeared, with turrets and narrow slits of windows and a huge wooden door. Do you watch Game of Thrones? Do you remember when Khaleesi showed up at Qarth, ‘the greatest city that ever was or will be’? Well, it looked a bit like that.
The driver ushered us into the fortress, where the light was so dim that I struggled to see. Behind us the huge wooden door slammed shut and uneasiness started to hum inside me, then an elegant blonde woman stepped forward and said, in a French accent, ‘Welcome to Maison des Rêves. This way, please.’
She led Himself and myself down a windowless corridor, off which led numerous rooms and alcoves, but we were moving at speed so there was no time to stop and have a gawk. Eventually we fetched up in a sitting room with big leather couches and a drinks table containing every kind of alcohol ever invented.
‘This is a hotel like no other,’ she said. ‘There is no restaurant, there are no mealtimes, everything is at your pleasure.’ She smiled – sort of – and I tried to smile too, but I wasn’t keen on the sound of things. I like rules. ‘There are no charges. If you desire a drink’ – she gestured at the table, which was buckling under the weight of bottles – ‘please help yourself. Whenever you need anything, simply come to this room.’
Then we were taken to our first-floor bedroom, which was beautiful – exquisite even – in a simple, deeply tasteful way. The bed was low, the linen smooth and cool; a seating area had a strange-shaped fireplace that looked like the cone of a tagine, and the bathroom was big and modern and stone-coloured. But there was no telly. Or mini-bar. Or phone. Or little book saying stuff about plug adaptors and babysitters. Most crucially of all, there were no windows. Well, I exaggerate – there was one, hiding behind shutters, but when I opened them the window looked on to a small, square, access-free space. We could see nothing of the outside world and, with panic flickering in the pit of my stomach, I knew I needed to ground myself by – please don’t laugh – going on Twitter. But – horrors! – there was no Wi-Fi. I needed the Wi-Fi. I needed Twitter. I felt a thousand million miles away from home and I needed a reminder that it still existed.
So I went downstairs, looking for the special room with the couches and drinks table, but I must have taken a wrong turning because I discovered myself in a tiny dining room. I set off in another direction and arrived at an empty, turquoise-curtained hammam. Back I went, walking faster now, taking left turns, right turns, recognizing nothing, and I stepped into the bright light of an unexpected courtyard – the walls were mosaicked in a million shades of blue and a perfect little fountain bubbled in the middle. Exits led away from all four sides and suddenly I couldn’t remember which one I’d come in via.
Panic started to rise in me; I was lost, I’d never find my way back. And just as I was about to start shouting for help, a man, dressed in baggy trousers and a long tunic, appeared and, smiling but silent, led me to the sitting room with the couches and the drinks.
French lady showed up and explained that sometimes there was Wi-Fi but it was unpredictable and sporadic. ‘Because we are so alone here, so far from civilization.’ She gave a helpless little shrug and I wanted to shout, ‘I know we’re very far from civilization, stop reminding me about it!’
When we came down for dinner that evening, candles burnt in wall-sconces and we couldn’t find the couch-and-drinks-table room. That scared me because I freely admit I can barely tell left from right, but Himself has an uncanny sense of direction. Eventually someone materialized – smiling but silent, just like the last time – and led us to a tiny, perfect dining room, set for two, with candlelight glinting off golden-coloured goblets and polished silverware. There was no menu and no explanation of what we were getting, which is so different from Ireland these days, where you’re practically invited to meet a cow and its entire extended family before you have a cut of beef.
Also, it was so dark, we might as well have been eating blindfold, and afterwards we were accompanied to the foot of the stairs which led to our room, because if we hadn’t been we’d probably still be traipsing around to this very day.
The next morning before breakfast we spent a good ten minutes lost and wandering, until yet another silent-but-smiling man in trousers and tunic led us outside to the garden, to a stunningly beautiful area which featured large wire sculptures of butterflies and flowers, with massive swathes of brightly coloured silk strung between them, creating an outdoor room. We were seated upon cushions shaped like low chairs and we were brought delicious food.