THE CYCLE OF A DECEMBER

This happens every year, nowadays. It tends to go like this...

December arrives, the advent calendars come out, and somewhere at some point I have a conversation with someone... feels like it’s different every year... about putting up the decorations either too early, or too late, in whichever opinion-camp you pitch your festive tent.

In early December, it feels as though the month will yet stretch out for weeks on end, and there are still oceans of time before I need to feel ‘festive’.

Mince pies appear. I smile and say ‘okay then’ while looking out at the still autumnal rain and crispy leaves. The mincemeat is nice, but I wonder whether I’d feel something similar chomping through a Christmas pudding in July.

Tinsel, lights, the smell of roast chestnuts in the air, and George Michael warbling in the shops as though it were 1984. Yet it all feels somehow still too... early in that first week of the month.

Then, mid-December comes along. This is peak-carolling for me: the old tunes with their familiar, grand, plonking chords and hearty lyrics - though it still feels like Christmas itself is a way off yet, somehow.

The Intrepids borrow my nectar card for their food-stock trip to Sainsbury’s, work starts to feel like a slowly emptying station platform, and we all navigate the Christmas Do (last Friday) with political skill and drunken diplomacy* in our itchy Christmas jumpers.

And then... every year... about this time... it hits me suddenly, despite all the signs and sparkling heralds I’ve mentioned and have lived through... it occurs to me that Christmas is next week.

And that’s when it gets a bit tense. I need to start my Christmas shopping, pronto pronto (even though in November, I’d clasped my hands together and told myself I’d get it all done early... again). I find it very difficult. And of course, it coincides completely with the schools breaking up and everywhere being full of people.

So, here we are then, in this sort of hyper-advent advent. A week to go and lots to do.

My only consolation is that this crazy rush always ends with a quiet reflection at midnight on Christmas Eve in the big church in the village. The silence and the stones contrast beautifully with the outside world. That, as well as Christmas Day itself of course, is a thing to look forward to.

Though, Boxing Day, when the whole family squeezes into my sister’s cold front room like penguins in a sea of wrapping paper, being pummelled with nerf guns and plastic drones to the tune of electronic bip-bops, and cries of “Mum, have you got any batteries?” - that’s a different part of December altogether.

*What I mean by this is the handling of inebriated colleagues while still sober. This year it involved humouring a bragging contest about how much toast a person can eat in one sitting, and then a discussion about whether the film Seven is a Christmas Movie because it features the Bible, and Brad Pitt getting a present at the end.