We pulled away from my parents’ drive.
“It’s okay for Christmas to change shape,” said Sammy, kindly.
It’s a discussion we’ve been having over the last few days. The more Christmases you have, I suppose, the more keenly you feel it - that tension of trying to keep Christmas fixed into place, to lock it in position so it looks the same as ever it did, while Christmas itself has this habit of always changing.
Or, it’s fairer to say that people change, and it’s people, families, we, who celebrate this season. We change. And sometimes that means Christmas is a lovely pair of slippers you just can’t fit into any more.
This Christmas feels like one of those. We’re not making it huge for four-year-olds, or excited cousins. We’re not racing around making everyone happy, or spending the day like appeasers in an argument. There’s no drama; there’s just different, responding to the fact that we are the shape we are, that things have happened, that life has led us here. And what Sammy was reminding me was that that has to be okay.
Or, in other words, you make the most of your new slippers. I think that’s pretty sensible. Merry Christmas.
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