One quirk of my life is that I never celebrated Christmas as a small child. I was in secondary school when I put it to the family that, rather than doing what we normally did (nothing, but a worse-than-usual nothing because TV sucked and everything was closed), we should take the opportunity for some state-sanctioned downtime and bond.
It wasn’t a hard sell (one thing I inherited from my mother is needing no excuse to party). The issue wasn’t religion or culture: it was scheduling. My siblings and I only had our mum growing up, and she worked in a shop; Christmas Eve and Boxing Day were major shopping days and on Christmas Day she was beat. So I promised to take care of everything.
Being 14, it was obviously an unmitigated disaster. I served prawns covered in ketchup and mayo in a mug (“Prawn cocktail,” I explained). I ruined my sister’s tights by cutting them up for stockings. I overloaded several extension cords with lights (the electrician was impressed: only true Christmasheads would have dinner by candlelight). It was probably quite tense, too, what with me shouting “Be jolly!” at anyone who dared to rest their face.
In my family, Christmas remains “my” holiday. But I no longer feel the need to subscribe to a cookie-cutter version. This year, for the first time, I’ve delegated. Mum’s on food and encouraged to use spice; brother is on movies (the more chin-strokey the better); sister is soundtracking the day with rap; English boyfriend has no role other than to not look mortified.
My older cousin messaged me a millennial-goading joke: “This year will you be leaving Santa avocado toast?”
“Why not,” I replied. “It’s Christmas – we can do whatever we want.”
