The joy of a very self-centred Christmas
Last year I was initiated into the resolutely ‘me first’ Christmas. I didn’t get to spend Christmas Day with my three children, aged 12, 14 and 17.
They’ve swapped the day between parents since we divorced five years ago. I’ve had to accept their other life, and they mine.
Of course, I called them mid-festivities and tried to chat, but it dawned on me that they were blissfully happy doing their own thing, which only gave me fuel to do just the same.
Plus, the ten hours sleep I got on Christmas Eve was a first and more than made up for any feelings of guilt.
It turned out to be the year of my most rebellious Christmas. I spent it with a dear girlfriend, also in her late 40s, also divorced, at the country cottage where I live in Gloucestershire.
It was gloriously, unashamedly just-the-two-of-us. No kids, no great aunts, not even a dog. Our ex-husbands were forced to lift a finger — to do the stockings (the biggest relief) and entertain their various relatives. The Christmas we enjoyed felt positively student-like.
Which is why I’ll be taking the lessons learned from last year into this one, at my parents’ house where I can revert to being a child myself.
Being under my mother’s protective wing this Christmas helps cut me (another) luxurious break. She’s an alchemist at the Aga and we can expect seven to 11 vegetables and just as many puddings.
22nd December 2023
Daisy was a guest on Woman’s Hour discussing ‘the joy of a very self-centred Christmas.’
The kitchen is her domain and if I so much as peel a sprout I’ll probably get it wrong. Once, I buttered in advance all the immaculate halves of toast to go with the smoked salmon starter, a major faux pas as apparently each guest should do their own in the moment of eating.
My father is quietly just as invested in Christmas as my mother. He’ll help me lug the presents about, I won’t have to make a fire or empty a bin, and he’ll endlessly entertain the grandchildren.
Best of all, every morning he appears at the door of the bedroom I grew up in, in his dressing gown, pretending he’s my longstanding jabbering and aged butler, called Jeeves, and delivers ‘Ma’am’ (me) a cup of tea. Being made a cup of tea is such a treat I could cry.
I can rely on my parents to make Christmas utterly magical by the very fact they don’t do anything by halves. Which is not to say that Christmas can’t get emotionally charged.
This year, however, I have a plan for that. If the going gets tough, I intend to take myself off and go Zen with a spot of Vedic meditation, which I generally practise twice a day for 20 minutes.
Who cares if I’m branded a hippy. Decompressing is what my me-mas is all about.
As mothers and ever-givers, last year it was a complete novelty for my friend and I to have no one to look after.
I didn’t dare tell my mother that dinner was a posh ready-made ensemble from the frozen food shop Cook, or that the bread sauce was made out of a packet and bloody delicious. All I had to do was add milk!
On the day, my friend and I woke singledom-late — no children screaming in our faces at 4am. My friend gave me the best me-time stocking ever, full of girlie goodies.
We had planned to have a poached egg brunch and our Christmas meal around 5pm. But guess what? We spontaneously threw that plan to the wind.
Instead, we skipped breakfast and went for a rampaging walk. It rained like a monsoon. We got home, I had the best hot bath of my life and then slowly began Christmas lunch.
No one asked us how long it would take. Which was, in a way, a shame. Pierce and… ping! Redcurrant jelly. Gravy. Pre-made stuffing. It all tasted surprisingly good. Normal even.
Then it was time for the first ever King’s Speech, which we really should have been concentrating on, except we found ourselves already on the floor, a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape down. I don’t even drink.
We talked all afternoon. How much it had taken to extract ourselves from our unhappy marriages. How hard it was breaking with convention. The judgments we had faced (‘it’s not as if he was hitting you,’ one friend told me).
We talked about how we had to consciously, deliberately, choose ourselves, and in so doing we knowingly caused pain for our children. And yet we also knew we had to show them the way. That tradition is not everything.
Last year we deliberately took the hassle out of Christmas by experiencing it as we wanted to. We created time.
As single, hard-working mothers juggling a hell of a lot of plates, neither of us felt any guilt. Why should we bother to send cards to those who hadn’t been there for us? This was our time.
Most of the women I know are desperate for more time — for themselves and each other.
A certain sense of duty in life is important and we are not just here to please ourselves. But there should be a special place in heaven for any working parent flying solo.
And, if you can take a short cut, find your ‘no’, in order to be a happier and hence better person, spreading love instead of projecting pent up stress, then why not?
As for this year, whatever happens over the intense three-day window that is Christmas distilled, one thing will get me through it, and this is the best bit of all.
Once it’s done and the children are back with their father for the remainder of the holiday, I am jumping on a plane to India for my own mini version of Eat, Pray, Love.
The sun will shine. The sea will be near. I have no plans, other than I’ll be able to do just what I love. And why not? I’ll be back to the greyness of the school run before I know it.
Every mother deserves to grab a bit of me-time when she can, especially at Christmas.
