Reflection and anticipation are the buzzwords at this time of year. It is (what I've started calling, anyway) Betwixtmas, the lost few days that linger between Christmas and New Year. Dad has a jigsaw puzzle stretching across the dining room table, covered by a cloth for mealtimes; Mum is surrounded by fancy boxes of chocolates like the Queen of Hotel Chocolat, and I slump around in my pyjamas watching old movies and flicking through the brain-teaser books I've inevitably been given, while the fire glows and the teapot glistens. None of us know what day of the week it is and the telephone remains gloriously silent.
Reflection: the delicate art of looking back, of realising where you are and how you got there. My family are experts at nostalgia. Today, at my sister's house, two Darth Vaders were racing around with plastic light-sabres while Batman was leaping from the chairs into a crumpled pile of wrapping paper. I was quietly sipping a cup of tea while my sisters told stories about their wedding days that I had never heard. My nineteen year old niece was perched on the arm of a sofa, intertwining her fingers with those of her new boyfriend, who was staring mistily into her eyes. My Dad was asleep. It was rather like a pastiche: a scene from one of the old masters, where each stage of life, each figure had been carefully crafted together in some clever, rosy painting.
Like Christmas itself, today was a lot noisier than a painting.
On Christmas Eve, at the barn service, the Bishop of Reading softly lamented the fact that the Victorians had somehow made Christmas a little too comfortable and cosy. Where's the noise, the dirt, the smell, the screaming baby born into a world of unimaginable pain and darkness? Not very Christmassy is it? Yet you and I know full-well how to clean up a Christmas to make it Christmassy, even without thinking about that un-silent night! Family's not always that smiling portrait of faces that beams from the laminated pages of the photo album.
"Whatever is it?" asked my Dad, clutching a curiously-shaped garden ornament. It looked like a dragonfly on a ski-pole. "It's um, it's very... interesting," he said, perfecting that curious grin of bemusement and disappointment. He hated it. That curious grin is usually reserved for visitors who talk over the weather forecast, light entertainment programmes featuring Graham Norton, or a plate of unexpected seafood.
My Mum got an iPad. It's always a risky move getting my Mum anything too technical, but this time my Dad had banked on it being easy to set up and even easier to use. This is the reason then, that I was summoned to install everything she needed. I really could have done with a sleep, but it worked out OK in the end. Will it join the ranks of the digital photo frame and the DVD recorder as a thing she never uses? Time will tell.
This setting-up procedure of electronic gifts is one of the pitfalls of 'working with computers'. I'm sure lots of people tumble accidentally into this hole: someone asks your gran what it is that you do again. And your gran lights up like the Cheshire Cat, "Oh yes, he/she works with computers," she says proudly. From that point onwards you are the family expert when it comes to anything with a circuit board! Everything from trojan viruses to corrupted hard drives has your name on it. Excel's crashed? You're getting a call. Nobody knows where the Save As menu is, or how to get an email out of the trash can? You'd better be on standby. And you'd better have some patience.
We do all get on though in our family. There are no feuds, no explosions, no petty arguments. Everybody is quite alright with everyone else and we do enjoy being together... for small periods of time. Alright, my oldest sister is louder than an air-raid siren, my nephews are fond of pushing the naughtiness envelope and two of my brothers-in-law support football teams whose fans traditionally despise each other. However, we do all get on really very well. Having decorated my Christmas list with the words: AMAZON VOUCHERS, I was quite amazed to see that whoever was my secret santa had thought much more carefully about it than the list dictated. I got a model of the Mary Rose, a bag of jelly babies and a box of Russian Caravan tea... in addition to those much requested vouchers - genuinely three of my favourite things.
So, as Betwixtmas begins and the brandy slips warmly down, it's nice to look back and be thankful for this season. The wind is stirring outside, whooping through the trees and whistling down the chimney. It isn't a silent night by any means, but something about this time of year reminds me that it's Love that makes it calm, and that it's Peace that makes it bright. And those things can burst into our wintry world just as much today as they did two thousand years ago.
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