12 Years of Christmas

The Eighth Christmas - 2009

It was Christmas Eve again. It felt as though it was constantly Christmas. I lived my life to a scenery of baubles, mince pies and fairy lights. Tinsel had gone out of fashion, but Christmas certainly hadn't. It began the day the kids finished their summer holidays. The "Back to School" adverts were taken down from shop windows and display boards hovering over supermarkets' non-food aisles. Instead, Christmas began in September. It began slowly - hollow chocolate Christmas characters, wrapped in colourful foil - but as September progressed, strange, pointless "gift sets" began to creep into the shops, in anticipation of the organised holiday shopper. Then restaurants and hotels stuck plastic banners outside, saying "Christmas bookings now being taken", but they didn't seem to realise that we had yet to eat our way through those over-priced round plastic tubs of Haribo jelly sweets; it wasn't even Halloween, and Christmas was knocking at my door.

I had to suffer it, of course; just as every other sane Brit had to, but I had hoped that we'd miss the big day, itself. Annalise even more so, because she'd spent the previous three Christmases with my family in Woodstock, and although she had the patience of a saint, we needed to even things out, and I couldn't bare the prospect of another Christmas spent with Glasgow Ged. We were all set to fly out to spend Christmas with Annalise's parents, but then Bernard - Eleanor's father - went and snuffed it at the beginning of December. The man was old - he couldn't help it - but it was bad timing, because he died on the tenth, and Eleanor's first husband - the girls' father - had died on the twelfth.

Naturally, my dad had tentatively asked if Annalise and I might be able to change our plans and come to Woodstock. I think he wanted a full house so that Eleanor could do her mother hen thing and take her mind off death; so that the girls would have noise and a painful barrage of games to play, filling every moment with festive cheer. I understood why Dad wanted us to come home, but I owed it to my Annalise to do right by her family, too. I hesitated. I prevaricated, and Dad knew I was trying to wriggle out of it.

'Luke was going to spend Christmas with Tammy's parents, but he's agreed to come home - bringing Tammy with him,' Dad said. He left a pregnant pause. It was so obvious that what he was really saying was, "Luke's done his duty. Now it's your turn". So I'd broached the subject with Annalise. Naturally she got pissy with me.

'She's not even your mother. They're not even your sisters. Why do you have to be there?' she'd asked, and there was only one answer I could give.

'They are my sisters, and although El isn't my mother, she's the closest thing I have to a mother, and I need to be there for her; for Dad, too.'

'And what about me? I'm your wife. You need to be there for me!' Annalise was right, of course, but I also thought she was being a bit selfish. Just because something can be justified, just because you can give a good reason to do or not do something, doesn't necessarily make it right. It reminded me of The Winslow Boy. My mother had loved that play, and read it to me several times as a kid. I'd thought it was a tale about telling lies, designed to teach little boys to be honest, but it wasn't. It was a lesson for the adults. "Let right be done", the lawyer said. Not justice but right. And they weren't always the same thing. If Annalise got justice, we should have spent Christmas 2008 in South Africa, but it wouldn't have been right.

I did the husband thing and put my foot down. I cancelled our flights, and actually, got our money back because we were due to fly out to South Africa a week before Christmas and would have missed Bernard's funeral if we'd gone. Annalise wasn't happy. It was our first proper argument, and I regretted it, but I couldn't regret my decision. So there we were; driving to Woodstock on Christmas Eve, Annalise sat beside me with a sour face. God, I had no idea she could look so angry. I only hoped she was sulking to prove a point to me, and that when we arrived at my Dad's, she be all smiles and Christmas Wishes.