The Ghost of Christmas

I was bought up in a detached house in south east england, built in the post war boom in the 1950′s it reflected many of the vlaues of the 1930s. The quarry tiled kitchen floor, the parquet floor in the hall and sitting room. My father was actually a sales man for a Greeting Card company, and my mother later worked as a teacher. In our house Christmas always seemed a fantastic time of year, of course it was the best time of year for my father.

The hall was stacked with boxes of Christmas cards, that he rushed to his customers on demand and his bonus must have made a difference, as it always seemed a time of relaxed plenty…food, presents, decoration, good will. I can even remember it snowing.

I loved Christmas, the excitements, the stocking, father Christmas, the gifts, letters and parcels from strange lands (as my mother’s brothers and sisters mostly lived in far flung countries.

I can remember decorating the tree each year and opening the box which at the bottom had an old box with some of the decorations from my parents wedding cake. An old fashioned set of lights that always seemed to work year after year, and a couple of ancient pieces of metal tinsel, from my mothers childhood. My Mother an artist encouraged us creatively each year, and their built up a few of our creations each year to hang on the tree.

My mother always made mincemeat, Christmas cake and puddings as well as sweets, marzipan and peppermint creams, on Christmas Day she cooked Turkey and ham and a couple of years I can remember having goose. I can even remember her making some amazing pork pies just before Christmas in one year.

Hundreds of cards festooned the walls, and everyone seemed relatively happy, my mother and father were good gift buyers and givers, especially my father, who loved it all as much as us, it must have been somewhat of a different strain for my mother.

The house was always clean and warm and the sound of music, my father was an accomplished jazz Pianist, and the smells of cooking pervaded the house. I felt safe, fulfilled, happy. Yes there were squabbles and we often went to visit people at Christmas and it was a bit of a drag, but home was a haven.

However this is a legend, it is how i remember it, though I have realised that I have spent years trying to recreate this legend, find houses with quarry tile floors, cook turkey as i remember it as a child, make home a haven and think of out there as dangerous.

I can remember one year I think I was about 12 crying and saying to my parents i didn’t want to grow up, I realised i think somewhere that this fantasy world of Christmas, was in a way fleeting and I did not want to let it go.

I find it interesting as a Quaker, that we can be advised to keep Christmas everyday, and there is nothing I would rather do, except i have a rather distorted view of Christmas, as much as Scrooges was negative mine is overly positive and almost impossible to live up to. Over the years i have tried, no, forced others to try and live my dream my view of how Christmas should be, and it was not always what they wanted, as I said I have searched for houses like the one I lived in as a child, I have even thought of having my present kitchen quarry tiled (the reality is without underfloor heating they are cold, strike that, bloody cold..in winter).

Perhaps Christmas is something you have to let go of for yourself in order to grow up, and I have enjoyed it with my children, but as a separated man whose children live with their mother, I realise I have to fully confront my own childhood and childhood fears, and that I cannot create or recreate the past, I am forced once again to trust the process, and allow a happiness to develop in other things, but I still can’t help thinking if I stay here cuddled up to my half eaten turkey, everything will be OK, its out there where the danger is, and the only way to stop it getting in is to get a parquet and quarry-tiled floor.

How does it go that poem…by Phillip Larkin

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

Related posts:

Related posts:

1. Childhood and behaviour
2. Rose Tinted
3. Children of the 50′s 60′s and 70′s
4. Divorced, and a man, with children
5. Children: What not to do!

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