Christmas can be a contentious issue. Love it or loathe it, it’s here to stay. So inspired by a post by my lovely friend Anna on her blog, I thought I would share what Christmas means to us and give you our perspective of this festive season. Here are our intimate reflections; Love or Loathe Christmas, our perspective.

Anna was inspired to share her perspective through a series of questions that she was posed, and I thought it was a fabulous idea. So I have used some of those as my prompt with a few extra thrown in for good measure. We would of course love your Christmas perspective, and for you to let us know what it means to you.

What does Christmas mean to you?

This is such an interesting first question and, if I am honest, since my dad died, Christmas has just not felt the same. I remember our last Christmas together when we were in a rental house in the Loire Valley in France. Myles and my mum were cooking the turkey and dad and I went out to find firewood. It was a precious father daughter moment, when we both knew that he was dying. It was a poignant space in time.

Christmas Eve we sat down in what was a dreadfully damp house, as I recall, and read our traditional ‘The Night Before Christmas’ poem. I recorded it and someone in our archives I still have that tape and one of these days I need to get it digitalised. We laughed, cried, did it in silly voices, which was synonymous with my daddy and it was a special holiday despite the impending doom which would befall us within 10 months.

Since then Christmas has been gradually scaled back. Without our kin-pin patriarch it would never feel the same again. We did our best to do some Christmassy things with mum, although over the years it has pretty much fizzled out for us.

Christmas these days means over-commercialism, greed, gluttony and anything other than Christ’s birth. Given that our celebrations are a mere token on just the two main days of the festive period, we have come to see the broader picture of Christmas and, certainly in the UK, see the vulgarity that the season provokes. I mean, Christmas begins sometimes at the beginning of August, it is utterly ridiculous and has become, in our opinion simple a marketing tool.

So I guess it is safe to say that Christmas holds a lot less meaning these days. It means stress in the kitchen, an expectation of gift buying and sending cards that end up in the recycling bin. It feels wasteful, indulgent and far removed from the traditional values that used to hold Christmas together. The endearing Christmas message sadly has been watered down and we generally choose to remove ourselves from it as much as possible.

What Christmas memories do you have?

As a child I remember the tree not going up until around 15th December and as most kids, I would sneak a squeeze of the gifts beneath labelled with my name and still none the wiser. I recall going to bed as excited as the next kid, waiting faithfully for Santa to drink the sherry we had left him and Rudolph to demolish his carrot. Waking on Christmas morning I would dive into mum and dad’s room as a young child and rummage in my Christmas stocking. (As an older adult I would wait until the afternoon to open any gifts. Myles always used to joke, when he first met me, that it was child cruility that I had to wait all year for Christmas then would have to wait til past 3.00pm to open my gifts.)

The morning was pretty dominated by the kitchen. Mum would have put the turkey in the oven early doors and her creativity and diligence would be felt as dad and I did what we could to help. She was a workhorse in that kitchen and we always had such incredible food.

Great Aunty Doris would be collected from up the road to spend the day with us, although I always remember that dad could never drink, as he had to drive her home again. To be honest I think that was a small price for him to pay as it was a pain worst than death having her accusing looks, her huffy personality and generally party pooping presence. Although we all did our bit as she was on her own, so it was the right thing to do. We did that for as many decades as I can remember.

By 10.30am we would go round to our neighbours for drinks as the smells from there kitchen made us salivate. An hour passed by and mum was eager to return to her own kitchen to finish off the banquet that she spent hours creating. Food dished up, kitchen cleaned up and finally at about 3.30 we would sit down and open the main Christmas Tree presents. It was my job to distribute the gifts and one I used to love. Then we settled down to an afternoon film with the prospect of a snooze from GAD and turkey sandwiches, Christmas Cake and all other manner of goodies that mum had lovingly prepared over the preceding weeks.

Come Boxing Day, it was my turn as a young adult to pull together our favourite festive meal; Boxing Day salads and cold meats. It still remains to this day, my ultimate favourite meal of all time. There was an afternoon walk if weather permitted and as early as possible the return of GAD, so poor old dad could finally have a drink.

There were never any parties, any frivolity, just Monopoly, food and the passing of time. It wasn’t a bad memory in any way, just one where the house was filled with duty rather than fun and playtime, which I think is what we all would have preferred.

One of the nicest Christmases we had, was in the Isle of Man when friends came over with their two young children. We threw ourselves into the spirit, given we don’t have children, making a real effort to bring some magic to the holiday. We had a chimney breast and fire, so on Christmas Eve, when we had packed them off to bed, Myles got a tray of flour and made footprints from the fireplace to the Christmas tree. Seeing Harry and Tom’s faces in the morning with a snow filled landscape outside was a priceless moment, spoilt only by the kid’s insatiable tearing of wrapping paper all completed within the hour, then having to endure their bored faces once the hype was over. I think things started going south for us, in that moment.

What Christmas traditions do you uphold?

These days, Christmas is a low key affair. We generally celebrate with mum and Bob before the big day, as we prefer to be out of the UK for the winter season and they do their own thing. They too have a similar perspective on Christmas to us, so there are no major expectations. The only promise I have made to mum is that if she is ever on her own, she will never be alone at Christmas. Christmas still maintains a value of togetherness at some level for us.

We rarely let Christmas in until the week before. Generally Christmas Eve is the time we ramp up our celebrations. The most important things for Christmas Eve is the reading of The Night Before Christmas, which as been in Myles’ traditional past since he was five. We still have the pop up book that he received from Santa at Debenhams in Hanley, Stoke on Trent. He remembers being so disappointed with his book when all the other kids were getting Action Man and the like. And yet, here we are, the book still in tact and very much part of our Christmas even now. So much so that for the last three decades, for each new child we know born into this world, we will buy them a version for their first Christmas so that they too can appreciate the value of that Christmas moment.

Those deeply profound and earthy Christmas traditions are what really hold the season together for us. Christmas Day is a nice meal, sometimes at a campsite with other people around us, sometimes on our own. Either way it is always low key. In 2023 we had Christmas and New Year in the Sahara Desert, which was just fabulous and totally unique. And that is our driver these days; to have a unique and cultured Christmas.

At 11am on Christmas Day there is always a toasting to absent friends, where we remember those friends and family not sharing our space with us either physically or actually. It’s a somber moment although a precious one. There after, there is really not much else we do to acknowledge Christmas. No expectations, no presents, no glutinous indulgence – well perhaps just a bit of that. And it sits just fine for us.

This year we have been invited to Anna and Roger’s home in Portugal and for the first time in years we are having a proper celebration. And we are really looking forward to the festive season. They will share their Christmas Eve traditions and we will take care of an English Christmas with traditions pulled from our own past memories as well as other more typical English experiences. We’ll tell you more about how that all unfolds after the event, as we want to keep our plans secret to some degree. It will be a nourishing and authentic Christmas experience and for that we are excited and grateful.

What do you find difficult about Christmas?

I think I may have said it all before. For me, us, the difficulty about Christmas is not what it brings up for us personally, it is more about how we have lost the essence and spirit of Christmas. The romantic notion of Christmas fades as each year passes, although we do try to hold onto some of those important traditions. I find the gluttony uncomfortable, the commercialism overbearing and the spirit sorely missing. I may sound like a bar-humbug, although this is how it feels for us. So you can imagine how excited we are to join our Swedish friends to celebrate and bring back the traditional values of what Christmas truly means and rediscover some magic.

What do you like about Christmas?

I have to say that I do love the idea of Christmas, the lights and the atmospheric music especially. I’m an incurable romantic, so seeing the joy on children’s faces with their sheer innocence warms me. I love seeing other people having fun and enjoying the true values of Christmas and I love, best of all, being in Europe during the festive season. Christmas is really just a couple of days and seeing the authenticity of Christmas here just is joyful. After Christmas Day, it’s all over and done with and that really sits well with us. I love our little traditions that are part of our unique way of celebrating and I love, more than anything, when it is over and we can return to a normal rhythm of life, love, laughter and travel experiences.

How will you spend Christmas this year?

Well in truth I don’t want to say too much about how things will unfold as many of our contributions to the celebrations are a surprise. We have a plan, Christmas Eve will be experiencing a European celebration, with perhaps the fusion of Swedish and Portuguese experiences. And then Christmas Day we take over the sledge reigns as we host a traditional English Christmas full of the authentic ways that Christmas has been enjoyed in the past, from our childhoods. The biggest joy for us, has been the recapturing of what Christmas used to be, the time honoured traditions that belong in our families and others, and bringing a spirit back into this festive period.

However it unfolds, we are looking forward to a different and special celebration with friends sharing difficult cultural perspectives and practices that bring the simplicity of Christmas into our homes. We look forward to sharing how it all unfolds in a blog after the event. Until then, however you celebrate, or don’t, we wish you happy holidays full of love, happy memories and shared experiences.

We would love to hear from you about your perspective on Christmas.

/K