ALL MY CHRISTMASSES

Christmas has always been a mixed bag of emotions.  When we were children we lived in Africa so Christmas day meant guzzling gallons of ice-cold Pimms (the adults) and fooling around in the pool all day (the kids).  Most people didn’t have family nearby so it was a good excuse to meet up with friends and get plastered in the sunshine with plenty of staff to pour the drinks, make the ice, cook the lunch and, finally clear everything up.  It couldn’t have been easier (for the adults) or less traditional (for the kids).

As a child, I remember some hilarious Christmas dinners with friends and the uproarious games we played, including calling a random number in the telephone book and singing a rude version of Jingle Bells down the phone and my Father having to dress in the hostess’ sexy (and revealing – urgh!) lingerie.  We used to play ‘pass the orange’ – where you have to pass an orange held under your neck to the next person under their neck – a good excuse for those leachy (& sozzled) old men to try a quick snog.  One year the Christmas tree set alight and almost burned completely before anyone noticed and another year, after copious quantities of Swedish aquavit and some energetic dancing I noticed Mummy was missing from the party so went to looking only to find her in the driveway leaning against the back of the car puking her heart out.  We never let her forget it!

Bearing in mind that these memories are all from before I was ten years old!  It wasn’t unknown for someone’s fifteen year old to have to drive them home after the party.  So, all good fun, but hardly the postcard Christmas of Jesus’ birth, carols and snow.  I think the only time we went to church on Christmas day was when Mum’s relations came to stay and she felt she’d better create a good impression.  Having said all that, there was still plenty of tradition – we used Daddy’s university hockey socks as stockings, there was always a turkey, ham, mince pies, Christmas pudding with penny pieces in (carefully saved from trips to England), crackers – either homemade or imported from Europe - carols from Kings (courtesy of the BBC World Service on Daddy’s crackly old wireless) and Granny always insisted on complete silence as she listened to the Queen’s speech.

So l found myself, almost thirty years later, a mother of three, living in Europe, miles from any friends of family.  And I’ve discovered that Christmas in a foreign country is all about embracing the best of the local customs, whilst safeguarding your family’s own quirky traditions.

Now that Mum’s not with us anymore, each Christmas is tinged with sadness at her absence, but I’m always determined to do my best to make it a jolly occasion wherever I am, although, I’ve discovered that a lack of local know-how means that my well-intentioned Christmas plans have a nasty habit of going awry.

I used to be a last-minute-Christmas person.  One unusually successful shopping trip on my way home on the 24th one year, when I bought everyone’s gifts in one single shop, convinced me that this was the way forward.  In fairness I must add that this was before children.  And I only had three people to buy presents for.

 I also had a notion that I loved Christmas, but only if it didn’t go on for too long.  There’s only so much unforced advent enthusiasm one can produce.  Buying everything I needed the week before Christmas always served me well and was my little protest against today’s repellent commercialisation of Christmas when shops start stocking Christmas goods before we’ve even seen Halloween through.  The year that I thought I was being super-efficient by ordering all the children’s stocking presents online the week before Christmas which, unsurprisingly, didn’t get here until long after the big day, much to the disgust of my trio of boys whose stockings were not-stuffed to bursting, but half empty with things bought in a panic post-last-post dash to the late-night corner shop on Christmas Eve.  Their opinion of Father Christmas has never quite recovered.

I digress: My first Christmas in Europe was bleak, to say the least.  I was missing my home, Kenya, the sunshine, my family and the life that I’d left behind when we immigrated to Ireland. The weather was beyond dire and the grey sky and drizzle permeated me and dampened any Christmas spirit.  After our jolly family and friend filled Christmas spent on expansive lawns being waited on by willing staff, the thought of cooking Christmas lunch for four in our tiny little terraced house (with no expansive lawn) filled me with dread.  

In order to raise our spirits, that first terrible Christmas, we decided on a pint down at our local pub early on Christmas Eve.  Children in tow, we sank more than a pint and got chatting to some fellow non-Irish, and after the sinking of even more pints invited them back to the house. Somehow we put the children to bed, and with our new friends (I believe they were Finnish) we proceeded to drink every last drop of alcohol in our house. I found an ancient packet of cigarettes and chain-smoked every last one. At some point in the evening I must have dragged myself upstairs because when I regained consciousness on Christmas morning I was fully dressed on top of my bed.  A quick look at the bedside clock told me it was seven thirty. My first thought was ‘fuck fuck fuck’ followed quickly by ‘ouch ouch ouch’.

I staggered through to the children’s room, hugely relieved to find them still asleep. Sweating and nauseous I filled their stockings, crept down to the drawing room where a dozen or so candles were still alight around the room, the sash windows wide open and the Christmas cards, which has been on the mantelpiece, blowing down the street below. I hid all evidence of previous night’s debauchery under the sofa, made a quick dash to rescue the cards, and then back upstairs, flung on my pyjamas and slipped under the duvet, when through pneumatic drill-like hammering in my head I heard, ‘Mummy, Mummy Santa’s been!’ and I had to put on the best non-hungover act of my life.

Predictably the rest of the day was misery. And we didn’t even have a single bottle of wine left in the house with which to drown our sorrows.

Thankfully Christmases in Ireland improved greatly after that. I love the way that people put up their decorations in early December and make such a big deal of getting the tree up. There’s a swim in the harbour on Christmas morning which is a great chance to catch up with friends and drink mulled wine, if you’re not mad enough to make it into the water.  I’ve taught myself to embrace the cold weather and I love all the baking and cooking, long brisk walks, and keeping the fire lit all day, snuggling with the kids under a blanket and watching our favourite films.

My children still haven’t quite figured out why Irish kids get their ‘main’ present from Father Christmas, or ‘Santi’ and are still slightly mystified & don’t quite know what to answer when they’re asked ‘So what’s Santi bringing you this year?’.  I think perhaps they’re worried they’ll disappoint if they say, ‘oh, the usual, chocolate coins, a practical joke and an orange’!  My children hold a quiet opinion that Santa is mystifyingly generous to Irish children, but they daren’t complain too much as their parents seem outrageously more generous than their peers’ parents and so it all levels out in the end.

Fast forward a few years, and so to France: I had plans to buy everyone’s Christmas presents in the pretty Christmas markets I’d read about in the expat guides.  How my friends and family far away were going to adore the little French goodies I sent them, far-flung god children are going to love having a godmother living in France sending them delightful old-fashioned goodies.  I didn’t take in the fact that most villages have their Christmas markets the week before Christmas.  Far too late to get anything in the post to anyone anywhere (although I like to think that one of Christamas’ little quirks is getting a late card from the Barton family.  I never get into a Christmassy enough mood to write cards until at earliest the twentieth).

After ordering everyone’s presents from Amazon in the end, off I tottered to our nearest French supermarket to acquire our Christmas supplies, list in hand.  I’d even persuaded the femme de ménage to look after the children so I’d be able to give the Christmas shop my 100% attention.  Disappointment started to creep in when after several circuits of the enormous Intermarché there were still no crackers, cranberry sauce or Christmas pudding in my trolley, just a small bag of browning Brussel sprouts. The dozens of jars of Robertson’s mincemeat that had filled the shelves of the ‘section Anglaise’ a week previously: all gone. Quelle horreur of horrors!

I spotted long queue of people I thought I’d take a look thinking they must be queuing for something interesting.  Ah, the fish counter.  And they we all coming away with sea food platters, piled with oysters, mussels, prawns, enormous langoustines,  bits of fish of all colours, garnished with crushed ice and thick yellow slices of lemon.  Ugh, ugh, ugh. No offense, I’m sure if you are used to it it’s lovely, but I can think of nothing less comforting that sucking on slimy shell fish for Christmas dinner when it's two degrees outside.  No thanks.  So I settled for roast chicken, with some slices of jambon from the deli counter.

On Christmas morning the doorbell rang and there were five or six burly and handsome pompiers standing there.  Now, pompiers, or firemen, in France have elevated status & are much respected in the community. We admired their dedication popping round to everyone on Christmas morning to check that everything was alright, and agreed that they were indeed worthy of the esteem they received.

We greeted them in our best French, wished them a ‘joyeux noël’, grinned a lot, told them everything was fine, ‘merci’, no fires to report, and sent them on their way.  They stayed chatting and grinning for longer than necessary, we felt and seemed reluctant to leave.  So we were quite relieved to get back to our tepid roast chicken by the time they eventually left.

We discovered afterward that everyone in France (apart from us) knows that reason the pompiers call on Christmas day is for their end of year bonus and one gives generously in the event that their fairly crucial services might be required during the year.  We kept our fingers crossed we wouldn’t need them urgently in 2010 and the following year we donated generously when they called.

A foreign language does nothing to ease the confusion of a foreign Christmas. When looking for a Christmas tree I asked at the hardware store where we could buy an ‘arbre’, (meaning tree) ‘de noël’.  I received strange looks and mumbled answers, and it was finally the children who discovered at school that a Christmas tree is called a ‘sapin de noel’ and that an ‘arbre de noel’ is a staff Christmas party. Hmm. Who was the strange English-speaking femme trying to gate-crash work dos?

Two traditions that I love in France are midnight mass, which is big social, everyone including the children stays up late and head to church after a huge dinner and plenty to drink.  I’ll never forget the beauty of the starry Mediterranean skies and the sound of feet crunching across the frosty gravel beneath the six hundred-year-old church, its ancient bells ringing out.  I was happy to adopt the tradition of the ‘thirteen deserts’, a Provencal custom consisting of thirteen little dishes of delicious things sweet things set on the table and constantly refilled throughout Christmas; rather like nibbles with drinks, but after dinner, and for four days.

This year, living back in Ireland again, I find myself, laden with all the Western consumerist-induced guilt, trying to create a more than perfect Christmas for three boys who are demanding from Santa a small country's GDP-worth of electronics. I have taken Christmas head-on this year; I am a woman on a mission. 

In disturbingly uncharacteristic fashion my preparations started weeks ago.  It is merely the twelfth of December and already I have all my Christmas cards posted, the children have written letters to Santa and posted them up the chimney, the tree is up and decorated to with an inch of its life, all presents are bought and wrapped and the wreath has been nailed to the door and blown off again at least five times. I’ve already made (er, and eaten) several dozen batches of mince pies, the boys and I have created an epic Festive Season playlist and I’m working on a paper chain of Olympic length.

I've realised I have the power to create amazing and lasting Christmas memories for my children. And for that, I’m willing to go many extra miles.

In my opinion, the country that does Christmas best is England. The collective British stiff upper lip breaks into a huge grin and everyone goes wonderfully overboard and an uncharacteristic country-wide enthusiasm ensues: The promise of snow, ice skating in the open air, carol singing in the village and heading back to someone’s beautiful house for mulled wine, carols outside the pub on Christmas Eve, pint in hand, by the light of our iPhones, all fifteen of us hopping into the same bed to open our stockings (my uncle dressed in his Christmas themed nightshirt and cap) on Christmas morning, the children singing Away in a Manger at church, watching old home movies with my wonderful cousins, reminiscing (and boring our own children) about our childhood, the banter and shared work of preparing meals and clearing up, the long, enforced walk on Boxing Day, that everyone secretly enjoys and hours of gloriously low-brow television. These are the memories I want my children to have.

Christmas abroad is not better, not worse, just different. One of the pleasures of living away from home is assimilating to local customs and learning new ways of doing things and trying different food and drink, but, similarly, another of the pleasures of living abroad is creating a little bit of home on big occasions and safeguarding your special family traditions.

Wherever you are, I wish that you have a happy and peaceful time, surrounded by the people you love.

There’s just one thing that still perplexes me: how do you get the wreath stay on the door in this climate?

Merry Christmas, Krismasi Njema, Joyeux Noël, Nollaig Shona.