The other unusual postmark knocking about over Christmas is ‘Reindeerland’, which adorns envelopes sent by Father Christmas (who definitely exists) to children who have made the effort to write to him. In the UK he has been assigned the rather cute postcode XM4 5HQ, and every year hundreds of thousands of children use it to send beseeching begging letters. He actually replies in person, and it’s definitely not dealt with by a team of people in Royal Mail’s national returns centre in Belfast. OK, hang on a second. If you’re excited about the prospect of Father Christmas visiting you this year, I suggest you turn to page 17 while we deal with some issues that don’t concern you.
Birmingham, Christmas 1988
I grew up poor in an Islamic family in a terraced house near Aston Villa football ground. We had nothing. My dad was a jailbird and my mother worked as the cleaner at the local fire station. But growing up, as the days got shorter and the nights got colder, came the onset of Christmas, and it was the best thing ever. Trees in people’s front windows, the tinsel… Christmas adverts were joyous and we always had a catalogue. We never ordered from it, but I would thumb through, picking out the toys I wanted, knowing I would never get them.
In our front room the fireplace had issues. It used to have a gas fire, but we couldn’t pay the gas bill so my dad ripped it out and taped it up with a piece of white board. But for me this was a problem. How was I going to get the present Santa had thrown down the chimney for me? The other kids got presents. Santa surely wouldn’t deny a Muslim child because, you know, he’s Santa. So I figured my presents were being stockpiled behind that piece of card. They were safe. I told no one in my family in case they took them, but Santa and I had a pact.
When the card eventually got taken away, there was nothing but dust and cobwebs. I thought with all my heart Santa had my back. Instead he turned out to be a bastard. Christmas is a bastard. Doesn’t stop me loving it, though.
A. S.
It’s impossible to write a book about Christmas without addressing the question of belief in Father Christmas. Last year I was invited on a radio programme to talk about matters pertaining to Christmas, and I was sternly informed by the show’s producers not to make any reference to the possibility of Father Christmas not being real for fear that irate parents would jam the switchboards, furious at their offspring having been mentally scarred. In 2011, the Advertising Standards Authority received hundreds of complaints about a Littlewoods advert that appeared to suggest it was parents, not Father Christmas, who brought presents into the home. The ASA allowed the advert to continue running, but preservation of belief in Father Christmas, rather like vaccination, does rely on everyone buying into it in order to avoid widespread misery.
Runcorn, Christmas 1977
In the mid to late 1970s, having a new hi-fi was a big deal, and taping ambient sound from that hi-fi felt like entering the realms of science fiction. One year my dad suggested that we just ‘leave the tape recording’ overnight, so we could hear the sound of Santa arriving. We left out a mince pie and some brandy as usual, and before we went to bed we hit those two chunky Play and Record buttons simultaneously.
On Christmas morning, Dad played the tape back. After a while, we heard footsteps, an exclamation – ‘my, what a lovely mince pie, ho, ho, ho’ and a jangling of sleigh bells, which my mum had contributed to add that important level of verisimilitude. To a 5- or 6-year-old mind, this was irrefutable evidence. It kept us believing for another year, anyway.
R. B.
Father Christmas hasn’t always been a benevolent bringer of presents. We’re told by historian Martin Johnes that Father Christmas was originally ‘an unruly and sometimes even debauched figure who symbolised festive celebrations’, but he merged with the American figure of Santa Claus during the nineteenth century to become a red-coated one-man logistical solutions unit. (Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t the multinational force of Coca-Cola that imposed a bearded, rotund figure upon unwilling Christians. He was already chubby and dressed in red and white before Coke started promoting him.) By the early to mid twentieth century Santa (or Father Christmas) became the figure that was blueprinted a hundred years earlier in the American poem ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’ (also known as ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’), and as the reindeer, sleighs, toys and chimneys of that poem became cemented in our culture, Father Christmas became almost too big a deal. Telling the truth to children was out of the question. So we keep up the pretence for a period that can last for as long as a decade, partly to maintain an element of Christmas magic, partly as a parenting tool to enforce good behaviour by threatening his non-appearance. You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, you better tidy your bedroom.4
Essex, Christmas 1985
One year my parents couldn’t afford enough presents to fill our stockings from Santa, so they added some gifts from friends and family to bulk it up a bit. But they forgot to take the label off one of them, which was a mug, ‘With love from Ian’. I thought Santa had chosen me, of all the world’s children, to reveal his real name to, and was beside myself with excitement. I remember returning to school and telling everyone, but feigning nonchalance. ‘What? Yeah, his name’s Ian. He told me.’ What an idiot.
R. M.
In an ideal world, kids come to terms with Father Christmas not being real over a number of years, via a slow awakening process. They quietly realise that the mileage that he’s caning with Rudolf and friends over the course of a night doesn’t add up, and the fact that he’s in multiple places simultaneously doesn’t make sense, particularly as he seems to be a lot fatter in Debenhams than he was at the town hall. The moment where kids realise that it’s not Santa filling their stockings should represent a kind of blessed relief because they were starting to question their own sanity. This, however, is not always the case.
Newport, Christmas 1985
On Christmas morning the tradition was that we’d wake up and feel at the end of the bed for the stocking, which was filled with small presents and maybe a tangerine or a mini Mars bar in the toe. But one year we woke up and the stockings weren’t there. I would have been nine. My brother and my sister and I all congregated in one bedroom, saying, ‘Oh my god, I’ve not had a stocking, have you had a stocking?’ Then we looked in our parents’ bedroom, and they weren’t there. This was really weird.
It was still dark. We ran downstairs, and the lounge door was shut, and I remember us saying, ‘Oh god, what if Santa is still in there? Do we go in?’ My brother pushed the door open and we saw that the light was on. We peered round the door, and on the sofa were my parents, asleep, with empty wine bottles around them, halfway through doing the stockings, and my dad with his hand inside one of them. And I swear, because I believed in Santa so much, my first thought was, ‘Mum and Dad are stealing our presents!’ We woke them up and they were horrified. My mum was indignant (‘What are you doing down here?’) but my dad was really upset. He knew that he’d ruined Christmas. There was some weak attempt at explaining it away, but that was the end of believing in Father Christmas. At that point, we knew.
A. M.
The mystery of who brings us our presents is recreated in the workplace with Secret Santa, an annual tradition marked by the high-stress drawing of lots, in which everyone hopes they don’t get their boss. Secret Santa adds layers of unnecessary complexity to office politics that may already be fraught: cheap novelty gifts can be deemed insulting, ones that cost more than the specified £5 or £10 can be seen as pathetic attempts to curry favour, and inappropriate ones such as edible knickers or plastic handcuffs can end with a summoning to the HR department for having violated the terms of employment.
Secret Santa pros will manage to come up with three or four decent gifts from the 99p section of eBay, but mischief-makers will get the biggest present they can find that’s within the spending limit, and come in early in order to haul 50kg of building sand out of their car and into the workplace under cover of darkness. If Secret Santa feels
too much like hard work, the worldwide web now hosts a number of online Secret Santa tools which suck out any joy from the process, with questionnaires and links to products on Amazon at that particular price point.5 Grim.
Hertfordshire, Christmas 2011
In my first proper job I decided to ‘bring the office together’ with a Secret Santa because it had always worked brilliantly with my friends. I remember that I had to really persuade one particular guy to join in, and was surprised when he turned up the next day with a wrapped gift. This turned out to be a box of Matchmakers and a Chas & Dave CD. When the recipient opened it, she ran into the stationery cupboard and started crying. Apparently Chas & Dave provoked some deep, distressing memory associated with her father.
N.H.
Secret Santa may result in some delicate situations as colleagues compare their respective gifts, but things are no less intense in the family home. The ceremony of gift giving is like a strange one-act play staged in the living room, where moments of genuine pleasure are broken up by Oscar-worthy feigned delight, artificial surprise, awkward silences, suppressed fury and insincere thank yous. It’s astounding, really. If everyone was required by law to react honestly to Christmas gifts as they unwrapped them, we’d see a nationwide break-up of the family unit as we know it, and a lot of very long walks being taken on Christmas afternoon.
This very loaded, intense period of time generally begins at some ungodly hour on Christmas morning if you have small children, slowly moves to later in the day as those children get older, and then zings back to 6 a.m. as those children have their own small children. If your family happens to observe the traditions of mainland Europe, you might open your presents on Christmas Eve – but that’s ridiculous, as it leaves you with nothing to do on Christmas Day except wish that you hadn’t already opened your presents. My own family manage to work up some enthusiasm for unwrapping by late morning. We proceed painstakingly around the room, sizing up the presents, tapping, shaking, rattling, then unwrapping a present each in turn, with my dad saying, ‘Ooh, what have you got there?’ in a strangely high-pitched voice that he only ever uses at Christmas (and the question is ridiculous because everyone knows what everyone is getting as we specifically asked for this stuff a month earlier). We don’t have that many presents, but it takes ages. It really stretches out, like a fifth set tiebreak at Wimbledon and just as exhausting.
Bath, Christmas 2006
My dad’s brother’s wife, who I affectionately term Aunt Hag, has always had it in for me. I have a younger brother she adores, and she loves my mum and dad, but she’s never liked me, and this has always been reflected in the presents she gets me. My parents receive wonderful gifts from her, but mine push the boundaries of the word ‘gift’. I got congealed nail varnish from her one year. When I was about 5 years old I remember getting a yellow My Little Pony umbrella with a hole in it. For years I would try to point out to my parents that this was going on, but they’d stick up for her and say I was being ungrateful.
The last time I visited her at Christmas was ten years ago, with my parents. I opened up my gift and it was a pair of rusty earrings. Seriously. Then, for the next half hour, I watched as my parents unwrapped all these gifts that she’d lavished upon them. As I sat there, we started to look at each other and laugh. That was the point when the penny dropped, when they realised that my aunt actually does hate me. I don’t visit her any more because it’s just awful. Her presents aren’t just bad, they’re almost malevolent.
R. O.
It’s basic human decency to spread the love equally; my friend Dee recalls with anguish the Christmas Day when her grandmother gave her a packet of biscuits and her brother a cheque for £2,000.6 I really hope that it isn’t always girls who come off worse in these situations, but another friend, Helen, tells me of the traumatic occasion when her brother got a brand new bike and she got a loom (‘14-year-olds do not want two-foot wide peg looms for Christmas,’ she says). With luck, however, everyone will be satisfied with their haul and won’t start threatening each other with vicious-looking sprigs of holly. Some of the most difficult scenarios involve two people who’ve agreed between them not to do ‘big presents’, only for one party to secretly row back on that promise and decide to give an absolutely enormous present, leaving one person with a DSLR camera and the other with some shower gel. This is really unpleasant to witness and can only be resolved via delicate arbitration and a phone call to Relate.
Whether it goes well or badly, the ceremony usually ends with everyone sitting amid a blizzard of wrapping paper that you’d definitely roll around in if you were a dog, but you’re not, so best to leave that to the dog. Present wrapping is the only art form we show our appreciation of by ripping it all to bits, whether it’s finely detailed origami or roughly Sellotaped crêpe paper. Given the mundane nature of the majority of gifts, present wrapping should give us a perfect opportunity to lend them a personal touch – but we’ve even started contracting out the wrapping because we’re lazy and we’re rubbish with Sellotape. ‘A lot of the skill of present wrapping is down to patience,’ says Julie Gubbay, who is great at wrapping presents and has her own business called That’s A Wrap. ‘People just give up after the third present, they get sick of it. But I was always good at it, because I really want them to look perfect. Pyramids and cylinder shapes are hard, though. One year I had to wrap up 200 toilet rolls. Don’t ask. It was a nightmare.’
Southsea, Christmas 1974
My dad was a very creative, inventive man who liked to make an effort with presents. The big present for my mum one particular year was a big wicker Ali Baba laundry basket. It was from John Lewis, it was bright orange and it was a Very Big Deal. The idea was to wrap it up like a giant cracker, so he got all of the children involved with Sellotape and scissors and bright green crêpe paper. We wrapped this basket up and placed this huge surprise next to the Christmas tree, although my mum obviously knew what it was all along.
On Christmas Day it became clear that there was no film in the camera. Normally we’d have loads of photos taken on Christmas Day, but we couldn’t buy film because the shops were shut, so my dad decided that we’d be very careful with all the wrapping paper, keep it all, and then recreate Christmas a few days later when he’d bought some film.
The Sunday after Christmas I remember coming home with my Brownie uniform on, and we all had to get changed into the clothes we were wearing on Christmas Day. We rewrapped the presents, including this laundry basket, and there’s a photo of us pulling this giant cracker and opening it. Then we recreated other key scenes from Christmas – and you can tell they’re recreated from the photos because we’re doing things you wouldn’t do on a normal Christmas Day, like me and my brother and sister pretending to admire the decorations. Looking back it was such an odd thing to do, but it was basically because my dad was so proud of the way we’d wrapped up the Ali Baba.
J. H.
For all the effort there has been to smash gender stereotypes, the typical haul of Christmas presents hasn’t changed much over the years: practical stuff for men, luxury stuff for women and a squeaky ball or a chewy stick for the pet.7 Each year brings a must-have children’s toy, from floppy Cabbage Patch dolls in 1983 to flippy Pogs in 1995 to eggy Hatchimals in 2016; many of those Christmas hits represent a kind of collective psychosis where we meekly cough up for them because we have neither the patience nor the imagination to think of anything better. The child who receives the coolest present may well end up provoking the ire of their siblings (e.g. space hopper stabbed with penknife), but sometimes those fashionable, much-hoped-for gifts simply don’t materialise. One year a friend of mine was convinced that his main present would be a Judge Dredd role-playing game, but it turned out to be some cork tiles, a disappointment so acute that he still feels the pain decades later. Most gifts deemed to be ‘wrong’ by kids are usually down to adults failing to second guess their offspring’s rapidly shifting whims, but for older recipients, ‘wrong’ gifts come in a
much wider variety of sinister forms.
“And why the hell do you think that I need a stress ball?”
For starters, there’s talc. Let’s get talc out of the way immediately. Then there are ‘rude’ presents, like Quartz Love Eggs or Hematite Jiggle Balls, which have ended up under the tree but really shouldn’t have. (‘Don’t open that now. Helen, open it later. HELEN, DO NOT OPEN THAT.’) Present giving can be a high-stakes gamble; it’s not difficult to get someone something that they are guaranteed to ‘quite’ like (scented candles, socks, books), but a lot can go wrong in the pursuit of stunt gifts that have a 10 per cent chance of hitting the mark and a 90 per cent chance of provoking stern looks.
Merseyside, Christmas 1984
On Christmas Day, my dad’s brother, John, came around to give us our presents. John was a bit of a legend. He never usually bothered with Christmas, but this year he’d given the five of us a massive washing-machine-sized box, each. They were all wrapped up, sitting there in the living room. Being 11 years old I was really excited by this, but my mum and dad would have known that something was up, especially when John got his camera out to take photos. Anyway, I wrenched open the box and a live duck flew out. I crapped myself. There’s a picture of me somewhere leaping back with this duck approaching me. John had bought us five live ducks.
C. S.
An entire book could be written about men’s failed attempts to buy appropriate gifts, particularly for the people who, at least on paper, they’re supposed to be in love with. Receipts for lacy stuff from Intimissimi or Ann Summers must never, ever be mislaid, because they’re as integral a part of the gift as the goddamn lingerie. Ditto perfume: if the recipient hasn’t already expressed a preference, buying scent for them is exceedingly risky, like buying them a pair of shoes. Some men, however, make no effort to be romantic whatsoever.
Sheffield, Christmas 1992
A Very British Christmas Page 2
