Around the streets as I walk home from work there are houses decorated with all manner of flashing Christmas lights. There are giant inflatable snowmen and polar bears, flashing lights in the form of a Santa on a helicopter, a Santa parachuting from a flying sleigh, a Santa climbing a ladder up the side of a building. There are reindeer and elves, there are snowdrops and bells, there are twinkling cascades of faux snow in blue and red and green and white and gold.
We've never been a family for ostentatious displays but we used to celebrate Christmas. Nowadays we don't. At least not in any way you'd notice. There's only my father and me in the house and it seems rather a pointless exercise to get the decorations down from the loft, spend time putting them up, sit and look at them for a couple of weeks, spend time taking them down, and then put them back into the loft. The limit of our Christmas celebration is to buy each other a couple of cheap gifts, stand any Christmas cards we get on the shelf and, on Christmas day, eat the smallest piece of turkey we can possibly find. If we actually bought a real Turkey, no matter how small, with just the two of us eating it for breakfast, dinner and supper every day, we might be finished in time to buy one for next year.
It wasn't always thus.
I remember all kinds of things that make me nostalgic for the old Christmases. Different things from different Christmases. The first thing that springs to mind is the annual ritual of paper-chains, strips of coloured paper glued into linked loops by pudgy infant fingers and hung across the room proudly, no matter how inept the execution might be.
I remember back when my Granddad was still alive and my brother and I were young enough to share the box room at the back of the house. We never hung up stockings, we always placed baskets at the foot of the bed and tried to keep each other awake to catch Dad and Mom putting the presents in. We never succeeded.
I remember that back in those days Dad, as dads did, always went out on Christmas morning to have a couple of drinks with his friends and that we moved all the furniture round and laid the table properly with the best crockery and cutlery and a new crisply white table cloth (the only time in the year when we actually did so). And he'd come home and we would (also for the only time in the year) sit down around the table and eat a meal with three actual courses. Then we'd clear away one lot of food and load the table with Christmas cake, mince pies and trifle ready for the next meal.
I remember the feeling of excitement at opening Christmas presents which were always something I wanted (including the toys mentioned in previous entries) and never something I needed - apart from my aunt's present: a new pair of gloves every year.
I remember the crepe paper streamers that we had for years before they were eventually thrown out to be replace by glossier, shinier, foil streamers that inspite of being glossier shinier and foil were somehow just not as "real" as the old ones.
I remember the Christmas when I wasn't supposed to be in the Nativity play. I was a helper, gluing little sweets onto circles of gold card to make crowns for the three kings. And how I got to wear one after all when one of those kings came down with Chicken Pox.
I remember when I was in the Christmas play - not a nativity that year, but the Trial Scene from Alice In Wonderland. I was the Knave of Hearts. I remember my two lines: "It wasn't me" and "Do I look like it?"
And there is, of course, nostalgia of more recent vintage: Goat Curry for Christmas dinner in the Himalayas, the Sherpas decorating a branch with tinsel and a cake with jam; the noise, bustle and chaos of the Santuranticuy Christmas Market in Cuzco, threading my way through the stalls with their rows of plaster saints; kids singing Christmas Carols outside in the rain as we ate dinner in Banaue in the Philippines; the scariest Santa in the world at the kids Christmas party in Zomba, with his sinister white face mask and bare feet.
I can't imagine that I'll ever be especially nostalgic about these last few Christmases or that this Christmas will generate any great feelings of comfort and joy. Not that I expect gloom and misery but nowadays it's chiefly remarkable for being a couple of weeks when I don't have to go to work. Oh, I'll do the drive round to relatives and drop off the cards. I'll give gifts to the chosen few. I'll watch Christmas TV and go out for beer a few times but these are not substantially different from the rest of the year. No nostalgia to be had.
Of course that's what nostalgia is: the recollection of how things always used to be better, or as Ambrose Bierce had it - "fond remembrance of imaginary times past".
We've never been a family for ostentatious displays but we used to celebrate Christmas. Nowadays we don't. At least not in any way you'd notice. There's only my father and me in the house and it seems rather a pointless exercise to get the decorations down from the loft, spend time putting them up, sit and look at them for a couple of weeks, spend time taking them down, and then put them back into the loft. The limit of our Christmas celebration is to buy each other a couple of cheap gifts, stand any Christmas cards we get on the shelf and, on Christmas day, eat the smallest piece of turkey we can possibly find. If we actually bought a real Turkey, no matter how small, with just the two of us eating it for breakfast, dinner and supper every day, we might be finished in time to buy one for next year.
It wasn't always thus.
I remember all kinds of things that make me nostalgic for the old Christmases. Different things from different Christmases. The first thing that springs to mind is the annual ritual of paper-chains, strips of coloured paper glued into linked loops by pudgy infant fingers and hung across the room proudly, no matter how inept the execution might be.
I remember back when my Granddad was still alive and my brother and I were young enough to share the box room at the back of the house. We never hung up stockings, we always placed baskets at the foot of the bed and tried to keep each other awake to catch Dad and Mom putting the presents in. We never succeeded.
I remember that back in those days Dad, as dads did, always went out on Christmas morning to have a couple of drinks with his friends and that we moved all the furniture round and laid the table properly with the best crockery and cutlery and a new crisply white table cloth (the only time in the year when we actually did so). And he'd come home and we would (also for the only time in the year) sit down around the table and eat a meal with three actual courses. Then we'd clear away one lot of food and load the table with Christmas cake, mince pies and trifle ready for the next meal.
I remember the feeling of excitement at opening Christmas presents which were always something I wanted (including the toys mentioned in previous entries) and never something I needed - apart from my aunt's present: a new pair of gloves every year.
I remember the crepe paper streamers that we had for years before they were eventually thrown out to be replace by glossier, shinier, foil streamers that inspite of being glossier shinier and foil were somehow just not as "real" as the old ones.
I remember the Christmas when I wasn't supposed to be in the Nativity play. I was a helper, gluing little sweets onto circles of gold card to make crowns for the three kings. And how I got to wear one after all when one of those kings came down with Chicken Pox.
I remember when I was in the Christmas play - not a nativity that year, but the Trial Scene from Alice In Wonderland. I was the Knave of Hearts. I remember my two lines: "It wasn't me" and "Do I look like it?"
And there is, of course, nostalgia of more recent vintage: Goat Curry for Christmas dinner in the Himalayas, the Sherpas decorating a branch with tinsel and a cake with jam; the noise, bustle and chaos of the Santuranticuy Christmas Market in Cuzco, threading my way through the stalls with their rows of plaster saints; kids singing Christmas Carols outside in the rain as we ate dinner in Banaue in the Philippines; the scariest Santa in the world at the kids Christmas party in Zomba, with his sinister white face mask and bare feet.
I can't imagine that I'll ever be especially nostalgic about these last few Christmases or that this Christmas will generate any great feelings of comfort and joy. Not that I expect gloom and misery but nowadays it's chiefly remarkable for being a couple of weeks when I don't have to go to work. Oh, I'll do the drive round to relatives and drop off the cards. I'll give gifts to the chosen few. I'll watch Christmas TV and go out for beer a few times but these are not substantially different from the rest of the year. No nostalgia to be had.
Of course that's what nostalgia is: the recollection of how things always used to be better, or as Ambrose Bierce had it - "fond remembrance of imaginary times past".
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