Christmas for a Spartan
I began ceding Christmas to my in-laws years ago. It was either compete or give up and competing was out of the question - they live on a farm on Highway 2, cut down their own tree every year, professionally wrap all the gifts - my mother-in-law even makes Christmas pudding the old-fashioned way - with suet. When my ex and I separated, I ceded Christmas to my in-laws once and for all by insisting my kids continue to celebrate Christmas with them as they always had. And so, every Christmas Eve (or before) they head to their grandparents with their dad and return the day after Boxing Day, Christmas safely over, all excess enjoyed by people who enjoy excess.
I'm frugal. And spartan. And although I am extravagant in some matters - like education - I find it hard to enjoy Christmas because I don't like the waste of too much food and unsolicited gifts pointlessly wrapped up in earth destroying Christmas paper. But I'm not a Scrooge, either, so I decided the best way around Christmas was to give it up to others to enjoy with my nearest and dearest. Because once you have kids, Christmas isn't something you can ignore. You have to plan for it somehow, even if it's to plan to bow out of it so that the Christmas people can take over. Even then I had to argue my kids into it. They only agreed to the arrangement when I told them to imagine a Christmas with just me, now unbelievably lame it would be for them, and how impossibly stressful it would be for me.
So they went to their grandparents, as per usual but without me, and that was the end of it.
This year I had planned to be better prepared, to do up a little Christmas before the big day, but events conspired against me and I didn't manage to do even that little bit. There was the bus strike, then I woke up deaf a couple of days in a row, had a bout of vertigo, ended up on medication - all conspired to wear me down just enough that only a superhuman effort would have resulted in much of a Christmas atmosphere in my apartment.
And I didn't have a superhuman effort to spare because when I'm not having vertigo I'm trying to nail down a permanent job in a city that lives on contracts - so I can get a mortgage from one of our non-money-lending banks. (That plan is undergoing serious renovations, by the way, as I rethink the strategy of investing in an economy managed by incompetent idiots.)
Still, for the sake of Christmas, I put lights up around my bookcase - it's all the apartment needs to look Christmassy - and made a chocolate pie with shortbread crust to amaze and delight the kids, who weren't really amazed and delighted at all. It's a fantastic pie, but it's a bit of a sophisticated taste - bittersweet - not the sort of thing kids like at Christmas when they're used to Skor cakes and squares made with every gooey ingredient known to man at grandma's. So I was really relieved to hear the kids say they were getting excited about going to their grandparent's for Christmas (the older they get, the more I worry they won't want to go - as friends take all precedence over family) and I finally relaxed into my accustomed Christmas lameness. We'll have our usual little Christmas on the 23rd (I always buy a few gifts and then give them what they really want - cold hard cash in recycled money cards - I can't bear to buy new money cards when the old ones are still funny) and then they'll head off for the Christmas they'll remember fondly as adults.
Do I regret not being a part of those memories? Nope. I am who I am. My kids get a kick out of my Christ'itude and take as a matter of course my preference to stand aside at Christmas. And this year, in spite of my intention to be festive (some time back in the summer), the exact opposite has happened and I feel as if Christmas has finally become the Emperor in the Emperor's New Clothes.
I thought I gave up Christmas years ago - but now I know I have. Merry Christmas to all who love the season and Happy New Year to all who are relieved when it's over.
