God gave his only son, England gave tinsel and figgy pudding – Christmas is a fine time to skip town.
The English gave much to the world. Runny noses, sensible shoes, short vowels and baseless condescension. All these are known and loved around the globe, but perhaps England’s greatest gift is unattributed and goes unthanked. It was England that gave you Christmas, with the recipe in the pocket and the strict caveat that if it didn’t fit, you could always take it back for another festival. Before you put up your hand and swear that the vicar said God gave us Christmas, well, yes, technically. But he also gave us diphtheria, toe jam, easy-listening music and England.
Everything you know and associate with Christmas was actually an invention of the English. To be strictly fair, by two of them: Charles Dickens and Prince Albert. From them we get fir trees, holly, ivy, geese, turkeys, crackers, puddings, cards, families and guilt. Again, some of the more pedantic of you may be aching to point out that fir trees and carols and indeed Albert are German. And again, technically, you have a point. But the essence of Christmas, that peculiar paper-hatted, sated melancholy that descends in the afternoon of the 25th – that is peculiarly English. That and the deep, nameless feeling of disappointment and longing that wells up when you finally unwrap the last present. That’s uniquely English.
As is the festive meal that involves a collection of ingredients no sane chef would ever construct, including three dishes – cake, pudding and pie – made with identical confections of dried fruit. As a young food writer, I was once asked by a magazine editor to come up with alternatives to turkey, figgy pudding and the rest. ‘Tell me about Christmas from other cultures,’ she enthused. (I now know the hunt for the alternative Christmas feature is as traditional as Fair Isle sweaters.) Anyway, I dutifully wrote of oysters in France, pig’s foot sausage in Italy, carp in Czechoslovakia, goose from the Carpathians, and the peculiar and weird, boiled, year-old skate from Iceland. I was called into the office.
‘This isn’t good enough, is it? It’s too predictable. What do they eat for Christmas in India, or Vietnam, or, I don’t know, Saudi Arabia?’ Inwardly I sneered at the parochial assumption that Christmas was international, and went away anyway and made up stuff about festive palm trees hung with sparkling sheep’s eyeballs.
But then one year the person over the other side of the Christmas table said, ‘Why don’t we go somewhere hot for Christmas?’ You mean just after Christmas? ‘No, for Christmas.’ Oh, I couldn’t. It’s not possible. I think there’s a law – you have to stay at home over Christmas to do all that stuff. ‘What stuff?’ Well, complain mostly, about the weather, and the amount of junk in the shops. About how the Christmas lights aren’t what they used to be. About the amount of work for just one day. About the meanness of your family, and the appalling manners of mine. About the ghastly decorative pollution of Christmas cards, the vomitous kitsch of seasonal television, and mostly about how out of control the commercialism and feeding-frenzy greed of the whole damn down-the-chimney business has become.
‘Why don’t we go somewhere else?’ Well, I don’t know, really. But I have a suspicion it would be like running away. ‘Exactly.’ So we ran. To the Caribbean. I approached the beach on Christmas morning like a man who had just joined a weird and shameful sect: nudist cross-dressers, conversational Esperanto users. But there was also, buried in the naughtiness, a feeling of lightness, of a load lifted, as if I’d lost my parents’ luggage accidentally on purpose. We sat on the beach, ate salad for lunch, feigned other-worldly indifference when thonged Germans muttered seasonal greetings.
I thought I’d got away with it, until Father Christmas turned up on a jet ski, an absurd puce Englishman in a woollen cape, wellington boots and a stick-on beard, being driven by a semi-naked Rastafarian who couldn’t contain his howls of derisive laughter. Santa stumbled ashore and handed out plastic hairclips and water pistols. It was then I realised the full impact of the global ho-ho-ho warming that is the English Christmas. It was a cathartic moment.
Since then, I have never spent a Christmas in England. I have gone to further and greater lengths to avoid any festive hint or tinsel. Not because I mind terribly, but because I want to know if there’s a single corner of the globe that’s Dickensless or Albert-free. So far, I’ve failed. In Goa, blaring Hindi renditions of ‘Jingle Bells’ over loudspeakers. In Thailand, plastic holly in cocktails, Santa on a gold-painted elephant, and mince-pie pancakes.
I actually thought I’d cracked it in the Kalahari. This is the least commercial place on earth. If Mary had sprogged in the open here, Christianity would have bought the farm before it was two days old. But I came back to my flycamp to find an acacia tree covered in candles, put up by a cook called Adolph who thought I might feel homesick. He also turned out to be born-again, and rather movingly shared his Bible and prayers with me.
Oddly perhaps, the place I’ve found with the least Christmas is actually the neighbours upstairs, Scotland. We don’t go in for it up north. It’s England’s thing. We save ourselves for the grander, more ancient festival of Hogmanay. New Year is pretty much universal, except for those odd places that still cling to sundial- and hourglass-time and roman-numeral calendars. At midnight, on the last day of December, everywhere people kiss and hope for better or less of whatever fed or tormented them for the last 12 months. And they sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Now, if you’re handing out smacked wrists for cultural hegemony, how cruel is ‘Auld Lang Syne’? What does it mean? I’m Scots, and I’ve no idea. What is it that old acquaintances aren’t supposed to forget? But still, the whole world sings it, and for a moment the world becomes Scots. Incoherent, lachrymose, amorous, clumsy and fond. I’d never spend New Year in Scotland, either.
I suppose what I was frightened of most in not spending December at home was the loneliness. The deep sadness of the uncoupled. The longing of the expatriate. But I never have. I’m fonder of the old island when I’m away from it. The irritations and the embarrassment are ironed away by distance.
I think the best Christmas was in Bali. We roasted a suckling pig and in the middle of the hot night, jumped into the swimming pool. And instantly it began to rain: curtains of steaming tropical rain. A gift from home, a little touch of festive England.