A solitary Betwixtmas
My former partner hated the ‘dead period’ between Christmas and New Year. He could afford to take a years-long sabbatical from work, so he didn’t need downtime, and he loathed, with all the angry energy of a bored toddler, the closure of the world.
My father, if he was home from sea at this time, also loathed this annual shutdown, which included, back in the 1970s and 1980s, the pubs. His second most-loathed time of year was Easter. I don’t remember why he failed to prep for these scheduled dry times by stockpiling booze. Maybe he did, and he just drank it all in advance.
Why do these coincidences only hit you over the head in retrospect?
I love this time of year, and not because I love tinsel and roast turkey. Universities close and employees are obliged to down their tools. There’s no option to mime minimal productivity over the three days at the absolute arse-end of the year for the sake of a couple of extra days’ leave later. The days are short and mostly grim. All they’re good for is staying at home, on the couch, reading and catching up with TV series and films. When the days are long and fine, such inactivity feels like a ‘waste’.
(Depending on personality type, people may have different levels of guilt about ‘wasting time’ and ‘inactivity’. I am programmed to be ‘productive’.)
The dead of a northern European winter frees me from any obligation to go out in the world and Do Something. Australian Chrimbo limbos spent far from the coast, holed up indoors with the curtains closed against the baking inland heat, are not dissimilar. I prefer the cold. The conventional British vision of Christmas BBQs on the beach in Australia—so incongruous and comical—never applied to me.
A Christmas Day spent in solitude is a blessing. For many women, the festive season is simply hard yakka, catering for large family gatherings, dealing with difficult and demanding relatives, wrangling amped-up, fractious children, and being responsible for everyone’s happiness on the one day of the year that everyone feels entitled to a Good Time. A professional events manager would charge hundreds of pounds for the day, and the catering and clean-up staff would be extra.
As a selfish, solitary woman, I’m not responsible for anyone else’s Guaranteed Good Time.
The last thing I want is for people to take pity on me and invite me to join them in such family gatherings. The total lack of public transport on Christmas Day nobbles this option very effectively. I appreciate the kind intention, but Christmas can be a stressful time for families, all the more so for any external parties in attendance.
On Christmas Day this year, I wrote 2,000 words of my novel, made some salad-bag soup and did a short weights workout. By 15:30, it was dark. I heated my Lidl nut-roast, opened a mini-bottle of Prosecco and watched The Holdovers on NOWTV. Nobody was bored, nobody was grumpy, nobody ranted about the pubs being shut or how much he hated this time of year. It was a good day.
(NB. This is the ideal time of year to sign up for the NOWTV cinema seven-day free trial. Just remember to cancel.)
At the other end of the dead zone looms New Year’s Eve, Hogmanay up here in Scotland. Expectations of this evening are so high, along with taxi fares, that it’s safer to stay at home and go to bed at 21:00, your skull stoppered up with earplugs against the imminent war-zone clamour that starts at least half an hour before midnight and continues until there’s nothing left to set off or blow up. I have form for leaving parties at 23:45, to avoid the rush for taxis. It’s less embarrassing to not go in the first place.
This isn’t to say I haven’t had my moments. One New Year’s celebration, 1991–1992, in grimy Catford, south London, lasted a week. In 2000–2001, also in London, I didn’t go home for three days. Like the next Tokyo earthquake, another banger is well overdue.
Parties and other forms of fun can be planned, but a truly epic event is pure random chemistry.
As I write this, the annual street party in Edinburgh, now a massive and corporatised event, has been cancelled because of extremely bad weather, as opposed to just bad weather, which is the seasonal norm. All the partygoers who came to Edinburgh especially will be sitting it out in their overpriced hotels or the dodgy holiday lets that make life hell for locals.
This year, I expect to be in bed by ten, after another mini-bottle of Prosecco, a book and some telly. When my turn for a party swings around again, I’ll be well-rested and ready. Every year would simply be too much.