The misery of the festive season has started early this year. And I mean really, really, early. I received my first e-mails about Christmas menus at the start of September, and now there are tinsel and holly decorated boxes everywhere, asking for donations of food, money and presents to bolster the spirits of the less well-off for whom Christmas is never, in the words of the Andy Williams hit, the most wonderful time of the year.
I’m one of those people now. Not one of the ones standing beside a huge cardboard box asking passers-by for donations, but one of the those peering into it to see if there’s anything I need.
There is no time like Christmas to reinforce your vastly diminished coffers. Where once, I used to love the late-night shopping under twinkling fairy lights, wondering what to buy for my relatives and friends, now I cut a rather sad and lonely figure with no one to buy for, no one to buy for me, and leaving town on Christmas Eve with a chicken leg and three sprouts for my festive dinner.
I feel nothing but grief as the build-up begins. I mourn the happy childhood I had, waiting on the stairs and coughing loudly to wake Mum and Dad so that my brother and I could get started on the presents.
I mourn the father I lost in 1990 and, in 2019, Mum, too. I hosted Christmas for most of the years after Dad died, and Mum would arrive with a carload of goodies that would have sufficed us on safari for six months.
She always brought a homemade Christmas cake, of which she was immensely proud, plus a honey-baked ham, chocolates, dried dates and figs, and loads and loads of presents.
Since she died, Christmas is a time of aloneness and loneliness: metaphorically standing outside houses, wiping condensation from windows, looking longingly at families inside, gathered around a fire, surrounded by wrapping paper, and sensing the smell of turkey coming from the kitchen.
It’s positively Dickensian.
People suggest that I do something valuable and ‘give back’ but they have no idea how hard it is to volunteer over Christmas. Everywhere is full up – with other lonely people seeking the comfort of strangers. I once tried to volunteer in Los Angeles, serving food to the homeless, and was told there was a three-year waiting list – mainly of celebrities looking for a worthy photo opportunity before dashing off to the Beverly Hills Hotel for their own dinner.
I genuinely have nothing against Christmas. In our very difficult world, I am all for anything that puts a smile on people’s faces, and if you can afford a Hamley’s sleigh for your already spoilt child, fill your boots! My job is not to judge. I’m just saying it how it is for me.
And I’m not alone. Already my social media feed is filling up with people already suffering from ECS (Early Christmas Syndrome) and living in dread of the day itself. Our lives may be filled with plenty of other things before then – work, practicalities, friends – but we know that as the day itself looms ever closer, those three days will feel like a lonely hole you just wish would swallow you up and leave you to hibernate until it’s all over – for another year (well, probably six months, the way the early Christmas risers are going). And we’re dreading it. In October!
Why can’t we just hold Christmas off until December? I understand that hotels and restaurants have to get their bookings in early, but why must we be subjected to baubles and berries when summer has barely ended.
I love autumn, not least because it’s my birthday on November 5th (hint, hint. No, I’m not collecting for charity like all those well-meaning people on Facebook. I want presents. And money – just like I had when I was five, according to my baby book).
It’s not just the feeling of celebration that moves me, though. Autumn, to me, represents a new start: leaves falling (there is not greater smell than that of damp leaves after rainfall), saying goodbye to the old, the shedding of skins as we prepare to breathe new life.
Why can’t we just enjoy that for a while? Why the leap from summer to Christmas, leaving autumn behind, a weathered orphan?
On Boxing Day, adverts for summer holidays will start invading our TV screens, wiping out spring, too. We have lost the two best seasons through people’s desire for instant gratification. So, if you’re heading to the loft this weekend to get your Christmas tree down, I beg you – put it off for another two months.
There is only one good reason for ever mentioning Christmas before December, and although I don’t have kids, I am wholeheartedly in favour of parents telling their offspring: ‘If you don’t behave, Santa won’t bring you any presents.’
And that’s a Christmas message I’m happy to hear all year round. Oh, yes.
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