I grew up with a devoted Christmas maximalist: my mother. We sprayed bullrushes and ivy silver, bottled and pickled, stirred and roasted, planted charms in puddings. Carols were sung until the neighbours pleaded for mercy. The tree was resplendent, presents piled up; I think she secretly gave a stocking to the dog.
Then, to my surprise, I married a Christmas-hater. As the first decorations appeared in shops, gloom would start to descend, and by late December he’d be in the deepest of Grinchy depressions.
At first, our anti-Christmases were a lark. We’d tell both sets of in-laws we were with the others and bunk off for a Yule-free day without a bauble or a mince pie in sight. But as our three children got older, the unavoidable set in: school nativity plays, grandparental gush, compulsory tinsel and turkey. The poor old hater had a harder and harder time of it; he bore it manfully. So one year, when the children were verging on their teens, I decided to give him a present he’d actually like: a no-Christmas Christmas. Surely we could, with the whole world to choose from, avoid it altogether?
I planned it carefully. Sri Lanka: a small but reasonably luxy boutique hotel deep in the northern rainforest, with leaf-roofed cabins dotted among the trees and shower rooms open to the sky. We would wander barefoot under mighty trees, laze and swim in bathwater-warm pools, feast on hoppers, kottus and green jackfruit curry, sleep under brilliant stars in the warm velvety night.
The children were lavished with all the present stuff early on, and then lured off on our trip with promises to our two cricket-mad boys of matches in Galle, and my daughter seduced by the chance to bottle-feed big-eared babies in an elephant orphanage.
At first, all went well: wickets, pachyderms, resplendent Buddhist art, glorious beaches. I had that rare, brief glow, as mother of a family, that everyone was just about equally content at once. And if the wind was starting to blow stronger each day, and I saw shopkeepers boarding their windows, I was still convinced that nothing could go possibly wrong with our long drive northwards for our dream anti-Christmas.
Hah. By the time we were halfway up the narrow road through the nature reserve in the centre of the island, the lashing rain was so strong that we were crawling at just a few miles an hour, the wipers on the people carrier beating helplessly, palm trees beside the road whipping down almost to the tarmac with the strength of the typhoon. As darkness fell, driving was close to impossible: at one point, a solitary bull elephant loomed in the headlights, blocking our way like a giant, ghostly omen.
We sat, waiting him out, now into the seventh hour of our Christmas Eve drive, the rain still viciously pummelling the roof, the winds buffeting the van, our teeth chattering. But stubbornly, I thought, we’ll get there, it’ll be fine, there will be delicious Sri Lankan food and a lovely peaceful night ahead. Get there we did, eventually. Barely visible through the rain and the pitch dark, the lights of a low building: there to greet us, the courteous staff in their brilliant sarongs, holding out welcome trays and garlands. But as we climbed stiffly down from the car, my surge of relief at our arrival only lasted seconds. Clearly visible in the lobby behind them was . . . a life-size Santa, in his sleigh, with full cohort of reindeer, all lit up in flashing neon and pumping out synthed carols on a scratchy loop tape.
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That wasn’t all: only too clearly, as well, came the boisterous refrain: Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, Zicke Zacke, Zicke Zacke, Hoi! Hoi! Hoi! As we were ushered into the only dining room for many, many miles, there we were among a large European party in full roistering mood. There were streamers, party hats, tinsel, shouted songs and drinking games, while in the background the horrible crackle of Santa’s sleigh went on and on.
We had blown the family savings, crossed the world, driven through a typhoon, to land up in a Christmas inferno vastly worse than anything we’d left behind. It wasn’t done with us yet. Only one menu was available that evening: a western-style Christmas special. Not much later, the ancient smoked salmon and suspiciously fishy-tasting turkey, half a world and probably half a year from home, took their revenge. As the poor phobic was on his third dash to the bathroom, those synthed carols still pumping through the thin walls of our supposedly romantic hut, he muttered through clenched teeth, “The thing about Christmas is, it bloody well hates me back.”
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