Christmas With My Grandfather

Every year Christmas comes along, waving its jolly hat and wishing us all a merry old time.  When this happens, and it seems to happen earlier every year, I find myself facing the same question: What’s wrong with me?  I assume there must be something wrong with me as it is – or will be in the next four months – Christmas, and that means that I ought to be excited and happy.  Yet I never am.

There are a number of things to which I could attribute the unique sense of apathy and dread I have for Christmas.  For one, as we all know, the climate is changing so that Christmases that were cold and crisp and bright have been succeeded by ones which are dark, damp and dingey.  The snowfall, if it comes, will wait till February where I live and even then will make barely an effort to land.  Many people talk about the meaning of Christmas being lost behind the value – the price – of the gifts.  Price is more important than value, a sentiment understood equally by brilliant economists and simple children.  Sentimental adults like me see neither GDP nor the latest must-have, but rather another pile of unwanted dross that will be out of date by the summer.  But I am not devout, and I never thought of Christmas in that sense either.

It has recently occurred to me what the problem with Christmas is.  In childhood, Christmas meant many things, all of which are known to many people.  It meant over-eating, and toys, and comic book Annuals, and making paper-chains to decorate the classroom.  More than any of this, though, it meant something unique to me.  It meant time to enjoy the company of my grandfather.  Most of the year, my grandfather was a busy man with a busy life.  His work took all day and left him too drained in the evening to want to talk to me.  He did charity work; so much of the spare time he had was spent away doing that.  But at Christmas he was mine, or so I felt at the time.

I lived with my mother and her family, my father having been gone from before I remember.  My grandparents were good people who would never wish harm on another living soul and who gave their time as freely as a stream gives water.  Social clubs and charity, local amateur dramatics, my childhood memories are packed with jumble sales in church halls and shake-the-tin collections at the local supermarket.  My grandfather had his own Santa Claus suit which was kept in the loft through the year to come out in time to raise money for the orphanage, the elderly, or whatever that year’s cause was.  I had a green genie suit which fitted well enough, but looked odd stood in the slush by the shopping trolleys.

It never struck me as strange in any way, this annual parade of absurdity.  The fact that in the real world my grandfather was an accountant whose job, one must assume, was to control the money and to serve the profit motive is perhaps ironic.  I wonder now whether in fact it was a year of this that drove him so strongly to do good works at Christmas.  Or perhaps this is a 21st Century view, seen from a time when the divide between profit and goodwill is much greater.  In any case, those annual collections were as much a part of Christmas as the turkey and the tree.

The five of us, my grandparents, my mother, her brother and me, lived in a good sized, but not huge, house with a fair sized garden.  At some point, I don’t remember when, an extension was added to allow my uncle and I separate bedrooms, and this created a large living room which projected into the garden.  This room was where Christmas happened.  The gifts were at one end, the food was at the other, and the whole day could happen in that little bubble.  I don’t think I gave a thought to anyone not in the room.  I certainly never gave a thought to work my grandmother was doing in the kitchen.

I recall that we were not permitted to open the presents until after breakfast.  Inevitably, this made breakfast a rather hurried affair, at least for me.  There by the door to the garden would be the decorated tree, beneath which sat what seemed an endless supply of gifts.  Once breakfast was finished my grandmother would be off to the kitchen and my grandfather would go upstairs.  After a few minutes they would return, my grandmother having cleaned to her satisfaction and my grandfather having donned the famous red suit.  Maybe this only happened once; maybe it never happened at all.

Grandad’s role was to dish out the gifts to their recipients, each eagerly waiting with their laps ready to receive.  I don’t think I noticed that this meant he was always last to open anything.  It’s difficult to think like that when you are a child and there is a mound of presents to be opened. 

Once everything was opened and thanks had been given and acknowledged – sometimes accompanied with an explanation for the more obscure gifts – there was another stage.  Grandad would always take time for his family.  He would share our enthusiasm at our gifts, even when it was obvious he thought them awful.  He would allow himself to be interrupted from enjoying his own gifts to have me explain, sometimes endlessly, usually needlessly, the gifts I had received and what I would do with them.  When all this was done, we would gather at the table as he carved the turkey.

I remember some of the gifts – a tape player one year brought me real joy – but I remember the days far more.  A whole day of the family staying together, not leaving the house and enjoying each other’s company.  Things have changed since then. 

Shortly before my teenage years my mother bought a house for us to live in on our own.  Although we always went back for Christmas, it meant that we were there as guests, and that was different.  I used to try to claim the privilege of guests when it suited, and my uncle would deny this – “you’re too close to be a guest”.  So we were in this half state, always welcome but always considering when to leave.

In the years since the end of my teens, this family unit has degraded beyond all recognition.  Of the five of us in that house, no two of us live in the same town or even county now.  We have spread ourselves across the country to found our own family units.  This is what life is, and in the future there will be adults looking back wistfully at the family units we have founded, but somewhere in the passage of time something has been forever lost.

My grandfather, once a mighty figure who seemed invincible to me, succumbed to old age.  The little, thin old man brought low by the ravages of time is not what I choose to remember.  I remember a man who worked hard for his family and for others, who said little but meant what he said, and who made Christmas what it was for me.