Eileen Battersby reflects on what Christmas means, what it does to us all, and what it has become.
Anticipation, apprehension, guilt, happiness and abject terror: Christmas is all things to all men, women, children and turkeys. It is the ultimate inspiration for goodwill, the best reason for ceasing hostilities. It is also the greatest of Western religious feasts, a celebration of hope and rebirth, albeit one highjacked by clinical preparation and universal commercialism. Too much shopping, too little singing; too much domestic tension, too much designer Christmas, too little joy.
A Christmas carol sung by a tenor voice will soar across the menacing silence of a battlefield, banishing all hatreds, yet there is nothing like Christmas for creating nightmare traffic jams, road rage and maverick parking, never mind inciting latent aggression in shoppers stampeding through crowded supermarkets, eyes bulging like cattle on the way to slaughter, as the countdown hours tick by.
Few on earth will not have noticed that there is no soldier quite as determined, or intimidating, as Mother as she completes her shopping on Christmas Eve. Behold her manoeuvre that trolley. See her edge her way higher up the queue. Watch your feet, she has no pity, those elbows can shift a body twice her weight. Have we not all experienced the trauma of shopping fatigue? Have we not all watched gentle folk tussling over the last can of black cherries, the final jar of cranberry sauce.
Lamentation. Why didn't I grow or, at least, buy my own cranberries, haven't I got a secret recipe? Consider the guilt of presenting a shop-bought Christmas pudding. Oh shame, this cake is not home-baked.
Even the mildest woman becomes a virago. Butchers quake on presenting poorly dressed turkeys to discerning housewives, conscious that "by thy Christmas dinner shall ye be judged" by critical mothers-in-law made expert by years of experience in such matters. "Call this slush gravy?" Anxiety soars; you pick your friends, but your relatives are imposed by genetics and marriage, your neighbours by quirks of shared location.
Men are too fragile for Christmas. Fathers become psychologically and spiritually diminished after a day, usually Christmas Eve, spent trawling the shops, desperate to recall whatever it is that their loved ones are interested in. What books have they read? What music do they like? What size clothes do they wear?
How is it that men seem to judge every child and grown woman in their family to be some six inches shorter than they actually stand? How many embarrassed loved ones have attempted to force their bodies into garments three sizes too small for them, as Father, Husband, Boyfriend mutters accusingly: "You're bigger than I thought you were." There is nothing like Christmas for reminding us how little we actually know about each other.
What is the single great thing about Christmas? Easy. Tradition. It all leads back to a holy infant born in a humble stable. Wise men, bearing gifts, followed a star. The European Christmas carol provides the abiding genius of the season. It also manages to relocate the Christmas story from the Middle Eastern desert to a cosily atmospheric European rural setting of woodland and snow. Even the most crazed shopper will stop in a thronged street to hear a chorus of voices lifting God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, Silent Night, See Amid the Winter Snow and Joy To The World high above the bustle.
Such is the glory of the European Christmas carol it is easy to understand why shop assistants in Austria recently threatened strike action unless their respective managements limited the amount of Christmas jingle junk music played during working hours. Yet it was not the secularisation of Christmas they were objecting to, merely the poorer musicality of the 20th century ditties - Austrians are used to fine music.
It is interesting how Christmas music is so blatantly divided between majestic carols and crummy twaddle such as that accursed supermarket favourite I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - yuck, and the unfairly threatening You'd Better Watch Out, You Better not Cry, Santa Claus is coming to Town. Wrongly presenting Santa as some kind of sheriff, the song's message is also untrue because he is all forgiving, he doesn't make deals, although Father Christmas as St Nicholas certainly did.
The northern Europeans have it easy; all that snow, an abundance of quality trees, an ability to cook, the legitimate use of sleighs and the presence of real reindeers. Consider Tchaikovsky's ultimate Christmas fantasy, The Nutcracker. England has Charles Dickens, who understood both the ambivalence and inequalities of the season as well as the magic and the food. Scrooge had his faults but he did object to humbug - and rightly so.
Move farther west and, well, the tinsel, fake snow, ski wear, and Bing Crosby takes over lamenting that elusive White Christmas. The Californian Christmas sun of my childhood invariably shone, few citizens wore sweaters, never mind Arctic assault wear. Yet the performers appearing in festive programmes on television from the studios down the road favoured ski clothes and hats, while perfectly shaped artificial snow flakes descended from the studio ceiling. But we did go to the mountains and Santa's Village, where there was a chance of snow (not always real) and if the reindeers remained in hiding, the ordinary deer didn't.
Once in Ireland, the White Christmas, became the Wet Christmas. It is difficult to render rain Christmassy. I'm Dreaming of a Wet Christmas doesn't have the same resonance, particularly as it probably is already raining. But the Irish Christmas possesses its own wonders, such as the storyteller, the great Éamonn Kelly, describing the absolute darkness of the Christmas nights of his Kerry country childhood.
The otherwise excellent US Christmas had an abiding flaw, all those flashing lights, and the giant Santa effigies adorning roofs. We had one but a freak wind whisked him away. He was later located floating in a neighbour's pool, its water stained red by the dye oozing from his suit.
My vast Christmas decoration collection is largely wooden, mostly German, traditional and definitively non-electric. Alas, flashing lights and giant Santas have now taken over Ireland. Even rural houses are ablaze with frenzied lights and chaotic novelties. Ireland's romantic Yuletide darkness is gone. Some households have more than one visiting Santa prowling the roof and garden. A Co Offaly bungalow is reported to have no less than five Santas mounting an SAS-like attack on a fluorescent snowman.
Such excess, such high electrical usage. What will happen when tomorrow's cooking begins?
And so to the fate of the turkey. Doomed to a short life of high calories and low activity. It's a sobering thought. Not even an ESB blackout can help as they are already dead. Is it not time that the turkey is made from something other than a live bird?
Rich or poor, young or old, Christmas remains special. True it creates the bleakness of January, but for a couple of days most of us will be kinder, more hopeful. God Bless us one and all, Tiny Tim, could prove less corny than it sounds.