Nollaig Shona!

Happy Christmas!

Well, the Christmas season has arrived suddenly again, even though commercially it started approaching even earlier than usual, in calendar terms. I’ve trained myself as well as I can to ignore advertisements in all media (an Open University module on behavioural psychology back in the eighties left me with a profound mistrust of all forms of psychological manipulation, I think) but even I have to admit that it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas this week.

We have in the past spent Christmas and New Year in interesting places abroad — Barcelona; New York; Venice; Prague; the middle of the Atlantic on a long cruise to the Caribbean — but we’re equally happy holed up at home, with plenty of food and streamed videos, and Dónall’s huge library of books, DVDs and BlueRays. Neither of us can drink alcohol any more, which is a shame because we used to love a few tots of Baileys, Horses’ Necks (brandy and ginger wine), Prosecco and Macon red — but that would be the case wherever we spent Christmas.

I used to decorate the house with holly and ribbons, and we still have a little stash of baubles, tinsel and kitsch for the purpose, but I no longer have the energy (or the stability) for standing on ladders and festooning the window and picture frames — or for taking the withered remains down again on Twelfth Night. We’ve only posted a few greetings cards — blame the extraordinary cost of postage stamps — but we’re very grateful to everyone who has sent us physical cards; they are our only seasonal decoration this year, apart from the wreath on our front door. Phone calls to old friends, emails and animated digital cards have had to take the place of printed cards.

Last week I decided to take part in a poetry workshop on a Christmas theme, led by Vanessa Lampert. I wanted to test whether I could break out of my Scrooge syndrome and write a Christmas poem. I was very glad I did. In the course of 90 minutes Vanessa led me into the labyrinths of memory: for an hour and a half I suspended my present situation and looked at past Christmases, when I had a small daughter to love and a huge Christmas tree to decorate. I was able to write three poems in the week afterwards.

Here is one of them:

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Up into the precarious loft space.
Grab the box you tipped in
last January.

Only one box now.

Somewhere
(in another loft perhaps)
other boxes.

‘Baby’s First Christmas’
proud souvenir
from grandfather.

Glass bells from
another era. ‘Listen, they tinkle’
in a chld’s small hand.

Strings of unreliable lights
to check and erect
among prickly branches.

Tinsel never drapes
in arcs like the pictures
on the cards.

Willing hands reach for
baubles to hang from threads
on the lowest branches.

Crusty cardboard stars
Father Christmases shedding
particles of sparkle.

Entrusted with memories
each year the tree would
display for me

lost times,
lost places,
lost people.

Only one box now.

I hope your Christmas is a very happy one, and that you spend it with someone you love. I feel very lucky still to be doing that.