Christmas through the times of my life

Christmas in my childhood was the classic 1960s British version.  My brother and I were up very early.  On Christmas night  I was permitted to have the travelling alarm clock in my bedroom.  It unfolded from a bright red leatherette box about two inches square, had a luminous golden face and I thought it was entirely beautiful.  Six o' clock was allowed.  Five o'clock was not.   My younger brother and I shared a room.  I would usually wake first and lie there watching the illuminated dial.  At about 5.15 would come a stirring from the other bed as Paul felt his way down in the dark.  "Liz, Liz.  He's been.  He's been.  I can feel it."  The torch would come out from under my pillow.  It was just a stocking on the bed, one of my Dad's walking socks.  Big presents were under the tree and we had to wait until our parents were up to go downstairs but we could open the stockings.  There would be a tangerine in the toe of the stocking and half a dozen Quality Street chocolates, pencils and rubbers and tiny notebooks made by my father.  Once there was a little jumping frog who jumped into the fire place and got covered in soot so when we finally went into see our parents our faces and pyjamas were smeared with black.

Christmas lunch was at about 1.30 and alternated between the grandmas' houses.  There was more room at Nana's house and a garden to be turfed out into while the grown ups drowsed after lunch.  At Grandma's house there were more roast potatoes and chocolates and after lunch the grown ups retired to the faintly musty-smelling front room.  The room was so rarely used that a fire had been lit at about the time we children were waking up on the other side of town.  By 2pm the room was stifling hot, still smelling of furniture polish and the faintest echo of damp.  

I remember those Christmases as full of laughter and food.  There was always a grandparent or an aunt or uncle ready to play your new game with you or read you a story.  At some time in the afternoon one of them would sweep you into your coat and boots and whisk you around the block for a walk, the excuse being to look at other people's Christmas trees before it went dark and the curtains were closed.

When I was eleven we emigrated to New Zealand and Christmases were entirely different.  It was not dark and cold and Lancashire wet.  It was warm and bright and mid summer.  We were a bit older and had separate bedrooms so it was not my brother who woke me but my four or five year old little sister, creeping in with the dawn at four o' clock.  "Lizzie, Lizzie.  Can I open my stocking with you?"

However hard my parents worked with stockings and presents and food, there was a gaping hole at Christmas where the grandparents and the aunts and uncles had been.  After the first Christmas of walking sadly in the empty park in the sunshine my parents solved it by taking us on holiday on the afternoon of Christmas Day.  Presents opened and  bacon sandwiches eaten, we would pack up the car and set off for our neighbours' batch, a basic little tin hut by the beach.  Teatime would be barbecued sausages and a swim, different enough to be exciting.    I don't remember missing my grandparents.  I just remember the hot sand on the soles of my feet and the sound of the sea.

As an adult Christmas became a tricky time after the collapse of my first marriage.  My ex-husband and I tried to spend Christmas together with the children, often travelling to spend it at my parents' house where they and my brother and sister recreated the good cheer of my childhood's aunts and uncles.  Marrying for a second time changed the dynamic again.  There were two families with different traditions and expectations.  It never felt right to take the children away from their other parent so Christmases were always spent in Manchester, alternating between a full house with four early teenage children and a nearly empty one when the children went to have Christmas with their other parent.  I persisted in believing that I enjoyed Christmas and found that to make that be true it worked best not to be too elaborate, to eat a nice roast dinner and watch Christmas television and not to ask too much of anybody!  Christmas with very little fuss was a pleasure.

And here we are now, nearly thirty years married with four adult children with homes and traditions of their own and ten children between them.  This year we are going to our younger son's.  I am not cooking a Christmas dinner.  We will try to see all four families over Christmas and New Year and now we are the grandparents, not responsible for making the whole thing fly, able to sit to one side and have a post lunch nap.  We are the people ready to play the new game or take the dog for a walk.  I will love it.  I will love the full house and the full plates and the grandchildren opening presents and rushing around.  And then I will love it when we come home and sit together in the peace and calm and say to each other "This is a nice house, isn't it?"