The Ghost of Christmases Past

I don't like Christmas. 

There, I've said it. It's not that I have strong religious feelings against the commercialization of Baby J's special day, after all we're merely continuing the tradition of a day founded upon the acquisition of a...

bit of cheap bling and...

the precursor of BOGOF perfume.

For years I've struggled with my festive antipathy.  You see, it seemed so baseless; I just couldn't put my finger on it.  I mean, I'm as materialistic as the next person.  I love getting pressies.  I love over-eating.  I love idling hours away on the couch watching the You've Been Framed Christmas Special and Dr Who.  I never tire of  The Great Escape or throwing things at the telly as Del Boy hilariously falls through the pub counter again.

Why, then — dropping to my knees and beseeching the heavens — this downer on the Son of God's birthday bash?  Why, oh why?

Who would've thought the answer was to be found watching The Exorcist?

Savouring this 1973 horror classic a couple of nights ago, the penny finally dropped.  Prompted by rats scratching about in the attic, clocks halting mid-tick, Father Merrin's feeling in his water, and Regan's sudden-onset double-jointedness, I realised my dislike of Christmas has been formed from lots of small, seemingly unrelated incidents which, on looking back, have the fingerprints from a demonic hand all over them.

And hot on the heels of that realisation came another.  I don't dislike Christmas.  Rather, I mistrust it, in the same way Father Karras mistrusted Christianity.  Kind of...

Christmas Present is a product of Christmases Past.  A whole series of evenly spaced mishaps, upsets and emotional traumas crudely moulded by expectation then fired so hard in the enforced, harsh-bright gaiety of the festive season that they'll weather unscathed the passing of years and any future attempt at counselling. 

Crying over the turkey?  Choking over a crap gift?  The emotional devastation isn't just for Christmas, my friend.

Let me take the opportunity to air some of my festive baggage:

Five years old and I had my first experience of the take-my-breath-away-by-the-utter-shiteness-of-it Christmas gift.  A tender age to be so cruelly scarred, to discover that in the business of receiving gifts there always lurks an element of risk; that the scales of anticipatory pleasure must always be balanced with the possibility of refund-inducing disappointment.

I have three brothers.  I'm the youngest.  Consequently I know how to punch, spit, and throw myself down stairs without injury.  So, tell me, what were my parents thinking when they gave me this?!

Nine years old.  This time I'm the one playing Santa.  My mother — still central to my universe, bringer of goodness, love and harmony — the target of my pocket money largesse.  Let her joy be unconfined!

And it was.  She laughed so hard she wet herself.  Not once.  Twice.  Because she thought of them again over the trifle. 

Then the Christmas to end all Christmases.  While I may not remember the precise year of my death, I remember I was dressed in a pair of my brother's hand-me-down trousers.  Which had been handed down to him, which in turn had been handed down... well, you get the picture.

Corduroy. Faded blue. Flared.  Tailoring details burned onto my brain with sororal accusation. An accessory to murder.

We weren't big walkers, my family. On this particular occasion, however, the Christmas imperative to bond was too strong to ignore, and the way to do this, the way to tug on the loose ends of the family tie — and we knew because we'd seen other families do it — was by walking. Ideally with a...

Alas, we had no dog (the first rat in the attic) but this didn't deter us.  Oh, no. We descended the zigzag to the beach as dogless anarchists.

My mother, imbued with the festive spirit of several...

...over lunch, radiated good humour and satisfaction with life while my father wooed her assiduously with tales of torque and revs and tappets of the real love of his life, his MGB GT. We kids ran ever-widening circles, snatching at hats, pulling at hoods and diving behind beach huts sloughing scales of corporation green.

(The clock stops mid-tick)  The peace behind a beach hut. There is no other peace like it. No stillness as complete, as safe; the world reduced to a windless, waveless Lilliputian landscape of drifted sand forested with ring pulls and wooden lolly sticks, sucked and buckled fag ends; a creosote corridor between worlds, resonant with warm Tupperware sandwiches and salt-stiff skin.

I exploded onto the prom from between two beach huts back into the petulance of that wintry afternoon. The wind, needled by the chill into an unending whine, burrowed into my ears. (Feel that?  The bed shaking.) I couldn't hear my family calling, I laughed instead as they comically mouthed empty vowels, arms flapping.

And it was then that I died.

I'd been skipping backwards, honking with smug delight at being young and fast and nimble.  I hadn't seen the wave shake itself free from the sea and make a grab for the cliff.  It fell short, collapsing onto the promenade with all the grace of a kerbside drunk and, with a disappointed sigh, took me as consolation prize.

Clinging to an iron staple bleeding in the seawall.  The shock.  Disorientation.  Waves crashing overhead, trying to pull me down.

My brother's bastard flares as they tangled around my ankles as I tried to stay afloat.

Then my father's mechanically minded hands hoisted me clear, and everyone was laughing, clapping me on my back, tugging at my sopping clothes, rubbing me hard, laughing.  But as a child all I felt was not their joy at my rescue, at cheating death, but their delight in my humiliation as I stood, seal wet and juddering, inside skin the same colour as those bloody hand-me-down trousers.

Years later, another trial-by-Christmas, and my mother giggles over another timeless Cinzano, "Do you remember the Christmas your brother got swept off the prom?"

My brother?  Hellooo, my BROTHER?!

I'm still not sure which I found worse — the fact that I had died, or that my mother had forgotten.

Well, bugger me. 

I'd spent years wearing hand-me-downs from all three brothers.   This momentous event, this near-death experience, this defining moment, I'd had from new.  It was mine, belonged to me, and I pointed this out somewhat forcefully.

My mother took a moment, then patted my hand.

"There, there, dear," she said, helping herself to a mince pie. "I'm sure one day you'll get over it."

Not unless anyone can put me in touch with a good...

Have a merry Christmas everyone, but my advice?  Don't trust it as far as you can throw it...