CHRISTMAS time is an emotional magnifying glass.
If you are feeling good about your life then you will delight in some down-time, toasting with friends over the dried-out turkey.
However, if you’re feeling more Grinch than glee, the misery seems amplified over the festive season.
While everyone else sips Baileys and sings about Rudolph, many of us feel like necking brandy and dandering aimlessly, red-nosed in the rain, dear!
Having just suffered the loss of my stepfather, I confess to falling into the latter category, although I won’t be taking refuge at the bottom of a bottle, lest I wreck the house and traumatise the kids – because at the end of the day it’s all about them, isn’t it?
I adore seeing my boys getting excited at the festive season, so I’ve plastered on a smile and tried to get into the spirit while picking out a tree for them to adorn with all the messy little decorations they’ve made over the years.
I used to sneakily move these to the back in favour of the more aesthetically pleasing ones I’d bought, but there’s nothing like an empty chair at the dinner table to wise us up to the truly valuable things in life.
I confess to laughing at a story about a vicar in England who ruined Christmas by declaring to a classroom of children that “Santa isn’t real”.
He has since apologised, although I’m not sure how contrite the Rev Paul Chamberlain actually is, considering that he doubled down by suggesting that “the parents eat the cookies” they leave out on Christmas Eve (hence exemplifying the “your mas and das are liars!” for good measure).
When I think of all the times I declared vehemently as a child that I heard Santa’s reindeer on the roof, I’m really not surprised that my ma never believed me when I said I didn’t break the glass in the front door, so it would appear that Christmas makes liars of us all.
I’m aware that my sense of humour is darker than my eyebrows but the outrage from the parents who used phrases such as “absolutely disgusting” to describe the holy man who debunked the story of Saint Nick in favour of Jesus’s birthday gave me a hysterical insight into the lengths we will traverse to keep our children in suspense for one more year.
I must add that the children he was speaking to were 11 and despite having “gasped” at this discovery, I suspect that quite a few of them had already wondered if Amazon parcels coming to the door and being hidden in the wardrobe were not from the North Pole.
If you believe Rev Chamberlain, Santa Claus is a fairytale for kids and a boogie man for parents terrorised by the notion that their offspring may feel let down if he doesn’t deliver the goods, yet getting no credit for their smiles when they yell “Thank you Santa!” at 5am on December 25, oblivious to the fact that the new iPad they are thanking a bearded fat man for is gathering interest on Mummy’s credit card.
I settle for the half-way mark of letting my kids know that Santa brings some but not all their toys, as not only does this selfishly allow me to take some of the credit but I figured if everyone did this, it would serve to explain why some children get more than others regardless of their behaviour.
Heaven knows that if Santa actually did follow through on his threats of leaving out the naughty kids, then my living room would be much less cluttered and my bank balance much healthier. Let’s just say Chris Cringle isn’t the only one in the red.
Regardless of whether you plan to endure the holidays or enjoy them, I hope you have a peaceful week.
’Tis the season of goodwill after all, which also happens to be the time of year when normally good-natured grannies fight in shopping aisles over the last jar of cranberry sauce. I once witnessed a man break his arm in a ferocious scramble over the last discounted 50in flat-screen TV in a Black Friday sale – which gives a whole new meaning to getting ‘plastered’ over Christmas.
Regardless of whether you believe in magic men, it might be worth taking a look at the sky, as according to reports we may be more likely to spot UFOs than a flying sleigh.
Who needs elves when we might have real little green men?