So much so does Christmas scare me, that one year I ran away to Tasmania to avoid it.
I had in mind hiding in a hotel room and later going to a movie - I hadn't realised that Tasmania is closed on Christmas Day - well every day really. But I did manage to find one cinema open. "The Gremlins" was showing and I actually sat through it. That alone is surely proof that I'm just not a Christmas kind of gal.
I haven't enjoyed any Chrismases in my life. The best I can say is that a couple stand out for not being too dreadful. I liked the one I spent on a plane going to Bali because it managed to wipe out Christmas dinner. I liked the one in Tasmania when I watched "The Gremlins", and another camping on the bank of the Murray River near Echuca, where to the unnerving background sounds of yobbos' motor boats, we ate burnt cheese jaffas and pretended it was Easter. A few others were just OK but mostly for me, Christmas is a day to be gotten through. Luckily it only lasts 24 hours.
I know why I don't like it, but contrary to Freudian theory, the knowing doesn't help me adjust.
I don't like it because I associate it with loneliness and confusion.
When I was growing up I lived in a very small nuclear family - a mum and two kids. Christmas seemed to belong to other people. I'd imagine and long for large gatherings, lots of adults and children, presents, Christmas trees, carols. Did we ever have a tree? I doubt it.
In the days before Christmas we'd visit the cousins. I remember these visits in black and white. After long uncomfortable trips on Melbourne trams, we'd arrive at their houses in far-away monotoned suburbs to drink weak tea and swap cheap and useless presents. I remember a facecloth. And bubble bath lotion. We didn't have a bath. A cake of Lux soap. A handkerchief. I remember thinking how thoughtless.
I can't understand the buying of presents merely to have something wrapped up to hand out just for convention's sake. To me it's like paying for a parking ticket.
Today's New York Times featured a section of "Last-minute Lovelies" - "quick tokens of cheer for last minute holiday guests". These include a "pair sheer rosy stains, one for cheeks, one for lips", a $25 coloured glass bead for a pony tail or a wrist and a "Resolution Tracking Diary" so you can record how you broke your New Year's resolutions. I don't THINK so. Oh, but here's one worth getting - "Yiddish With Dick and Jane" by Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman. That one might be a goer.
I only know one other person who doesn't like Christmas, and that is my friend Sarah in Melbourne. Like me, Sarah grew up in a very small and fatherless family, and like me Christmas for Sarah evokes memories of loneliness.
One year Sarah decided to hold a Christmas dinner for people who had nowhere to go for Christmas. It seemed like a good idea at the time. She was quite excited about it.
She made a guest list and consulted numerous recipe books. She even bought a tree and put up fairy lights. She invited me and my lover of that time, but we were off to his Dutch family's Christmas and couldn't go. "Bummer", said Sarah, "I was hoping to have some normal people there."
I was actually quite excited about going to a Dutch Christmas and even though it didn't end up meeting my expectations, I'm not disappointed that I went. I have managed to repress the entire day and so have absolutely no memory of it. Now that's one Christmas that doesn't bring back sad memories. The human mind is truly a wonderous thing.
While I was experiencing something-to-be-forgotten, Sarah was, I thought, enjoying a happy and crowded Christmas Day. I imagined her in her element amongst her lame-ducks that she'd collected over the years - the reformed alcoholic, the BLF worker with the bad back, the homeless grown-up children of one of her many ex-lovers, the Vietnamese orphans who couldn't speak English, her friends with incurable illnesses. Could've been fun ...
But I'd forgotten - Sarah was just like me! Christmas Day was just not meant to be a Sarah thing.
"How'd it go?" I asked her later that day when I phoned for the postmortem. "DREADFUL!" she told me. "BLOODY DREADFUL!" Turned out that as soon as each of the prospective guests found out that it was a Christmas dinner for people who had nowhere to go, that each person decided that it sounded just too depressing and decided to give it a big miss.
Oh well, at least I'd had dinner with other human beings, even though I cannot remember a single one of them.
I wonder what Sarah is doing this Christmas. Perhaps I'll phone her. We can drink a glass of champers together and pretend we are in Hobart. I'll tell her I've bought and gift-wrapped "Yiddish With Dick and Jane" by Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman for the unexpected holiday guest who won't come. Yes, the more I think about it, the better it gets. Perhaps it will even snow. This would be the icing on the cake, and make it what I hope that all of you really do have ...
A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
Kate Juliff
New York
December 2004
