On a Christmas that is like no other, ghosts of Christmases past come to mind, a back catalogue of memories that reflect the changing face of the festive season.
Aged 5 – waking in the dark and tracing contours of lumpy anonymous parcels, their sharp edges or squishy contents, ever conscious of the awful warning that if opened before daylight, Santa would take everything back.
Aged 7 – the strange Christmas away from home because of a death in the family, and my two cousins getting American dolls with bold faces and long, luxuriant nylon tresses you could brush. My china baby doll, sweet faced, but bald as a coot, totally outclassed and me seething with envy.
Aged 8 – My eldest brother’s wedding the day after Boxing Day. I got a green velvet dress with a lace collar and heart-shaped pockets. The groom spent his wedding eve at the ironing board painting all the dots on my mother’s outfit to match her lilac feathered hat.
Soon came the markers of growing maturity – the year of the scooter, the roller skates and (at last) the bike – and the trials of learning to ride it on a cobbled street. I bear the scars still.
Which reminds me. A generation of Christmases later the Loving Spouse and I had friends in for drinks on Christmas Eve. They stayed late and we still had to do the ‘Santa run’ for Daughter Dear. Take it from me, it’s not an easy job to convey a full-size bike out of its hiding place in the attic, SILENTLY down a steel spiral staircase at three in the morning. “To me-to you,” CLANG! “To me-to you,” BOING! interspersed with hysterical giggles. What a palaver. The bells of Hell couldn’t have rung louder. She insists she slept through it.
Skip back to Christmas in our first married home. Resisting the tyranny of traditional fare, I opted for ‘weeping leg of lamb’. Removing it from the oven, I slipped, the joint shot upwards, I went down. There was a gravy stain on the ceiling that resisted repeated re-paintings.
In 35 years of teaching small children, perhaps my happiest memories are of this time of year and the annual class Nativity play, performed to a biased audience of their parents. The oldest story, ever new; every year different, always the same.
With 25 to 30 mixed infants to choose from, casting was the first problem. No shortage of shepherds and angels, but picking the principals was always difficult – good strong voices, a reliable memory for lines and unlikely to be fazed by an audience. Also, of strong constitution (I had two Marys go down with chickenpox in two consecutive years.) Then, what an orgy of stitching, stapling and sticking - re-purposed Communion dresses and a tinsel halo for the angels; re-fashioning of striped shirts and pyjama jackets for the shepherds and tea-towel head-dresses. Nobody’s mother wanted their child to be the donkey – their darling’s face obscured by brown wool.
The revealing of the Christ child was an annual dilemma.
One year the delivering angel failed to appear on cue. A desperate teacher, crouching off stage launched the Baby Jesus across the floor like a curling-stone to skid to a halt at Mary’s feet. Most memorable was the year we had a REAL Baby Jesus, volunteered by its besotted father, the proud owner of a new video-recorder and itching to record his son’s first Christmas. At the appropriate moment, a responsible Angel Gabriel carried the slumbering, swaddled bundle forward and deposited it carefully on the floor in a tomato-basket manger – a fragile construction of interwoven slats of feather-light wood. The angel chorus stopped picking their noses and fiddling with their haloes and burst into song. The baby woke up and began to squirm and kick. The tomato-basket rocked perilously, then, in slow motion, keeled over on its side, sending the baby rolling gently across the floor to the feet of the front row. Its father kept on filming.
Have a safe and happy Christmas dear readers. A word to the wise – not even Nigella can make sprouts palatable.
