During my last Christmas in England I mainly noticed the dismal weather where 4pm looked like a cold, grizzly 10pm. I noticed the tacky but insistent Christmas push in every shop and the unavoidable pie-eyed merriment in Manchester’s lavish bars. I noticed the stress, the lack of spontaneity, the tedium of the whole thing.
But over here it is so very different, it made me have a think. The decorations seem so very subdued. I like the sudden appearance of poinsettias everywhere, those startling red leaves a cheery invitation to La Navidad. But the flamboyance of the British decorations is missing. I like the warmer, better weather that sometimes spoils us here. But I also miss the cosiness of a nice warm pub on a cold night.
The Spanish celebrations seem to lack music, unless I’ve just failed to find it. Oh, I know, the tacky tinned ‘jingle bells’ and other piped carols get tiresome, but I still miss the sound of Christmas. In fact, I have to confess, I miss the excess. The tiresome, insistent, over the top, ludicrous show of Christmas in Britain, makes the celebrations seem something extra-ordinary. On a good day, when you can really let yourself go and join in with it, it’s just so much fun!
I suppose it is all a question of familiarity. I like the Spanish epiphany with the parade, the three kings, the gangs of little children, wild with excitement; but it doesn’t quite have the aura of Christmas. I want the British Christmas quietened down and de-commercialised. I want the Spanish Christmas jazzed up a bit. I guess I’m just impossible to please. I’m harking back to those unrepeatable childhood memories and therefore bound to be disappointed.
Do you remember when the whole show was new and a huge surprise after the endless dark and cold of November? Do you remember when the decorations were a huge excitement? They first appeared in school in sticky glitter glue on cardboard and white paper snowflakes; we drew crayon pictures of donkeys and shepherds, and painstakingly wrote ancient and incomprehensible legends beside them: “An lo, an Angel appeared to them”. I don’t remember the Nativity Play, but I remember that I knew I wouldn’t be Mary because I had short curly hair. I got the part as the Angel Gabriel apparently – there is an old photo of me looking very serious in a white shift with a silver tinsel halo. And lo, an Angel appeared to them, by dint of Mrs Hall lifting me onto the table in front of the shepherds.
Then there was the house. Putting up the house decs was brilliant; all those colours and bits and pieces. I remember squabbling over who put up what and the quarrel collapsing in a tissue paper war that had us all shrieking and laughing, even Mum and Dad.
Remember the tree coming in? Our Dad took getting it set up straight, wedged in a bucket with bricks and stones, very seriously. That lasted for ever while we hung on nearly bursting with impatience to get to the decorations. Remember that wonderful clean, green smell of pine resin, the big regret over artificial trees – and needles shed all over the carpet? I remember old, delicate, baubles in knots of tissue paper, glass baubles that shattered in bright splinters if they broke but were very beautiful. I remember when I was very little – two or three, some grown up swinging me up to hang a bauble, for the first time, “Very carefully now, Rosie,” on the tree.
I remember waking to feel that enticing, promising weight on the end of the bed. I shared a room with my older sister, Judy and would lie awake asking “Can we go in yet?”, until finally, finally, she thought it was late enough. That would be about six thirty. Poor Mum and Dad! Then we’d meet our brothers on the landing and knock at their bedroom door, and be let in to tear apart those Christmas stockings around their bed.
We didn’t go down to further pressies. Our folks held off the main pressies till after Christmas dinner. Of course, Christmas dinner was a party in itself. Mum had a fancy red tablecloth kept for special occasions, which is now fixed in my mind as the perfect stage to present a slap up feast on. But the presents couldn’t be opened – not one – until the washing up from dinner had been done, dried and put away! Imagine! Never has any household chore been done with such alacrity, or merriment, as us helping with the dishes at Christmas!
I doubt anything can recapture those dazzling Christmases! But, Britain or Spain, maybe the jgist of it is to remember how much fun it was; and try to match that. So, Have a Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, and above all, enjoy the party!
