The Magic of December

Is it possible to talk about December without mentioning the C word?
After all, as a month it’s rather dominated by THAT day, isn’t it?
You know, the 25th. Yule, that is.

I mean, there are 30 other days that aren’t Noel, and they almost never get talked about. Except Boxing Day, and people only ever talk about that because nobody knows what it means. Oh, and Christmas Eve...

Damn! I’ve done it. I’ve mentioned the C word. So in answer to my opening query: no, of course it isn’t. What a silly idea. And why even try? Not everybody hates Christmas. In fact, I love it. But then, I’m a fat chap with a longish white beard. In fact, I was in a garage forecourt shop paying for petrol about this time last year when the cashier said to me: “Looking forward to Christmas, then?” When I replied that yes, I was actually, she said: “Your busy time, I suppose.” Oh, how everybody laughed!

Of course, lots of people really do hate Christmas, because it can be such an awful faff and fiddle. But it’s the faff and fiddle I like.

I particularly love Christmas shopping. One of my earliest memories is going uptown Christmas shopping late one December evening with my Mum, when all the street lights were lit and the shop windows had a cosy and inviting glow. I must have been three or four, and 50 years later I still get the same feeling.

These days there’s a bonus: shopping for Christmas presents is an excuse to get away from the family for a day in town by myself, which everybody has to do once in a while.

And who doesn’t love putting up the decorations, transforming the house for the obligatory 12 days from a minimalist cube into a glowing cavern of colour and light? It’s become a Christmas ritual that my daughter and I should go to the plantation together to select the tree, which she is now in charge of decorating. The plantation is a wonderful place: they sell Christmas wreaths as well there, and geese, and turkeys. I think they sleep for the rest of the year.

Talking of geese and turkeys, we have another little ritual which involves me tentatively suggesting that we have a goose this year, to which my wife replies that a goose doesn’t really do the whole family; and that anyway, goose is a bit rich and fatty. So we have turkey, but always a good one and always delicious. Still, I do like goose: in the old days my mother would put the goose into the Rayburn as soon as she got home from Midnight Mass. That gave it 12 hours to cook very slowly, and by the time we sat down it was almost melting.

Christmas dinner, it has to be said, is greater than the sum of its parts. Turkey is okay; so are chipolatas and roast potatoes and roast roots and bread sauce and sausage meat stuffing and even Brussels sprouts, especially with chestnuts. But none of them measure up to caviar or foie gras – until you put them together and follow them with plum pudding and brandy butter. Then something magical happens and a collection of ingredients that are actually pretty humble become the best dinner of the year. Especially when I’ve cooked it myself (with a little help, where necessary, from my wife).

Those are some of the things I like about Christmas. There are a lot of things that other people like – especially the Nativity, which you will notice I have avoided. Christmas is, by definition, a time for Christians. But not being a Christian doesn’t make one wholly materialistic: there is something a bit magical about Christmas that transcends the expensive presents and the too-much-dinner and the too-much-wine, even if you’re not a believer. We all need a little midwinter magic, whether you call it Christmas or Yule or the Winter Solstice.

And we all need a little goodwill...

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