This year, I won’t be sending any Christmas cards. Instead, I shall be donating a sum equivalent to the costs involved to…oh, I’m not really, but if I ever sent cards in the first place, that’s what I’d do. I gave up sending cards decades ago. Not because of any anti-Christmas agenda or anything vaguely principled like that, but because it played havoc with my desperately short attention span and caused me more stress and anxiety than was necessary. Instead, my partner, who is increasingly a carer as much as a partner, takes care of the Christmas business while I concentrate on maintaining what’s left of my sanity.
In any event, sending cards this year would at least give us something to do in 2023 when thanks to the strikes at the Royal Mail (which I fully support, by the way) have ensured that much of the post has been delayed. I almost suggested putting the recycling box beneath the letter box, as a joke, I hasten to add, in order to negate the need to actually open season greetings post when the festive season had passed us by. But I’m sure we will open everything that arrives and display the cards until spring arrives.
Somehow, I’ve managed to get this far without having listened to the traditional Christmas songs, with the notable exception of Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody which is still everywhere, because my radio has been tuned exclusively to BBC 6 Music. There is still Christmas music, but thankfully stuff I’ve seldom heard or never heard at all. I have nothing against Sir Nodward Holder and Slade, Roy Wood, The Pogues and even, on a good day, Shakin’ Stevens. It’s just that I’ve heard their Christmas songs too much. When they strike up, I groan out loud and let forth some very bad words. It was one of my better decisions to stay away from Radio 2, as well as the commercial stations that pass as entertainment these days.
When I hear “It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas”, I can’t say I feel the same, not least because I don’t know what that means. It can’t be the weather because, as usual in Bristol at this time of year is overcast and damp and decidedly out of kilter of the Christmas card (I’m back to this again) images of snow, snow and more snow. Due to family illness and geographical issues, I won’t be going anywhere this Christmas or doing anything different from normal. No family Christmas dinner, no parties (as usual: I hate parties!), maybe a post Christmas walk and a local pub visit, if I can be bothered, but mostly quality time with the same people I spend time – quality or not – throughout the year. It’s beginning to feel much like the rest of the year, but with even worse TV.
Christmas has never meant that much to me. The actual day itself until my early twenties was just my mum and me, then my mum, my step dad and me and these days my partner, my boys, who are men now, and that’s it. That suits me fine. The less visitors, the better.
What? The less visitors the better? Yes. I’ve inherited the anti-social gene from my mother and my paternal grandparents. They both hated it if anyone other than the postman and the milkman (these jobs were exclusively male back in the day) knocked on the door. My mum wouldn’t even answer the door whilst my grandad would chunter on about how common the neighbours were. Imagine living in a house with an outside toilet and no bathroom at all and referring to others as common? Mind you, it never occurred to me until later life that not having a bathroom at all was unusual. It turned out all his neighbours did, so how common were we?
Perhaps these memories – or the lack of them – explain my apathy towards the festivities at this time of year? It can’t have helped. I mean, I like Christmas because I’m with some of the people I love. I dislike it because I’m not with all of them. Basically, I’m, just fucked up, aren’t I?
Anyway, if you do get a card from me, it will be one I sent 30 years ago that somehow got lost in the post. I do love you all very much, mind. It’s just that I don’t send cards. I hope you understand because I don’t. Merry Christmas Everybody.
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