I remember I was at university, and I went to visit my boyfriend in Sheffield just before Christmas. He said that he’d been thinking about what to get me, and he’d decided to get me a Ladyshave. And I thought, well, that’s awful – for all the obvious reasons – but I just laughed. I think I was waiting for a punchline, like ‘not really, I’ve got you a diamond.’
But on the day I left Sheffield to go back home for Christmas, we walked through the town centre and we stopped outside Argos. He asked me to wait there while he went in. So I stood there, thinking that it can’t be as bad as I think it’s going to be, he’ll salvage this somehow. But he came out with an Argos carrier bag, with a box inside, which did indeed contain a Ladyshave, and he gave it to me. I said thank you, turned and walked to the station, and I remember sitting there on the platform, thinking my god, my boyfriend’s got me a Ladyshave for Christmas. He even told me he was going to do it. And I didn’t stop him.
H. W.
Let’s also cast our mind back, briefly, to the second of Russell Belk’s aforementioned perfect gift characteristics: ‘The giver wishes solely to please the recipient’. As we know, people can sometimes give unto others gifts that they want themselves, an act that’s laughably transparent. The mother of a friend of mine is obsessed with owls. Her daughter doesn’t share her obsession, but one year her mother presented her with a huge gift-wrapped present, about three feet in height. It was a giant plastic owl.
Then there are the mysterious, last-minute presents with no obvious thought put into them, just objects, random objects, which can be bought, and occupy space, and can be wrapped up, so they’ll do. I don’t know, maybe a lampshade, or a box of plastic suction hooks, or a bag of pizza base mix, or a bottle of Vosene with a promotional comb Sellotaped to the side, or a Healthy Eating calendar with the price still stuck on, or an unusually shaped thing with no obvious function and no instruction manual to shed light on what it might be. This category of present can be borne out of desperation, or stinginess, or just a dislike of Christmas. But for some families, inexplicable bags of presents can start to become a tradition.
My mum grew up after the war, and she has that mentality of not spending money on things you don’t need. So on Christmas morning, we come down to the living room, and we say to the kids, ‘OK, Grandma’s presents are there in the corner, and we’re saving them until last.’ They’re always in a Lidl carrier bag, and they’re wrapped in whatever paper happens to be lying around, because she believes that Christmas wrapping paper is a waste of money. And the presents are legendary. She doesn’t ask us what we might like, she just gets whatever she wants. A key ring with a cat saying ‘Always Yours’ on it. A can of WD-40. Anchovy paste. I quite often get walnuts, which I can’t stand. Her labels are amazing: she once got me Peter Kay’s autobiography, which was nice enough, but she wrote on the label: ‘I got this in a charity shop’.
It’s not just thrift. She’s thinking things over in her mind about the past, and it comes out in the presents. But in that moment on Christmas morning it’s difficult to follow her thought processes. I mean, the last thing you’re expecting on Christmas morning is a can of squid in black ink. But we sit down as a family, and say, ‘OK, who’s got the best present from Grandma?’ Last year my 19-year-old son, who had just started at university, got a roll of Sellotape. My mum might even have been using the Sellotape to wrap other presents and thought, ‘Oh, that’s what he’ll need’, and then wrapped it up. People think her presents are hilarious, and they are. But to be honest, they’re also really touching.
P. S., Chesterfield
What with the passive-aggressive fallout from misjudged gifts – the jumper never to be worn, the Vengaboys album never to be enjoyed – it’s little wonder that people resort to less imaginative, more practical ways to tick the present-giving box. The bleakest manifestation of this is the tenner in the Christmas card, particularly if two people give each other a tenner in a Christmas card, the Yuletide equivalent of the nil–nil draw. Vouchers may seem more thoughtful and less vulgar, but let’s face it, vouchers are just cash that you can only spend in one place. (‘Why are you placing such unreasonable restrictions upon me?’ is the perfect thing to yell at anyone giving you a voucher this Christmas, although I accept no responsibility for the fallout that may result from this.)
The truth is that small stacks of envelopes just don’t look that good under the Christmas tree. The trend of giving ‘gift experiences’ only adds to that stack, with envelopes containing printed-out emails on which people have scribbled things like ‘you are going bungee jumping in February’ or ‘have a great time rallying at Prestwold Driving Centre’. Then there are the envelopes containing apologies for things that haven’t turned up yet – ‘bread making machine coming in early January’ – although it’s worth being explicit about this kind of thing. Give a child a photograph of a bicycle in an envelope with no accompanying note, and they are likely to experience several seconds of turmoil until you explain that they’re being given a bike and not a photograph of a bike.
No, to fulfil the traditional image of Christmas, you need big stuff wrapped up big (or small things nestling gently on velvet cushions in presentation boxes). But for many people this eye-watering outlay on gifts isn’t ethically or environmentally sound. As the commercialisation of Christmas grows ever more rampant (see Six Bargains Grabbing, page 113), there’s a snowballing temptation to outdo the excesses of the previous year’s splurge, and some families now find themselves unwittingly obliged to fill a Christmas Eve Box. For those who remain blissfully unaware, the Christmas Eve Box is just a load more presents but given a day early. It was suggested in The Daily Telegraph in 2016 that the Christmas Eve Box has become a ‘a charming new tradition’ – but let’s be honest, it’s about keeping kids quiet as their anticipation of Christmas Day reaches unbearably frantic levels, like throwing red meat to the wolves.
This zealous pursuit of materialism may prompt the most politically left-leaning member of the family to abandon traditional gift giving, choosing instead to buy everyone charitable donations to good causes which manifest themselves in the form of a certificate and months of email spam from a panda. It’s a position I have sympathy with, but it’s possible to acknowledge the excesses of modern living and also accept that presents can be lovely things. Few things are as heartening as going for a walk on Christmas morning and seeing kids on new bikes that are ever so slightly too big for them, and while there’s no doubt that Christmas comes with an obligation to give stuff (perhaps too much stuff) it also presents us with a wonderful opportunity. Because, if you do it right, it’s possible to make someone’s year, and create a memory that can last a lifetime.
Watford, Christmas 1982
When I was a kid, I wanted a ZX Spectrum. I knew my folks couldn’t afford it, so I started to save up. I had a paper round and did other odd jobs. I compiled a list of all the things I would need – computer, joystick, even that funny little thermal printer they had. I put all the prices on my list and was committed to about a year’s worth of working and saving. I asked my parents for money towards the goal.
On Christmas morning, I got the normal sackful of ‘little’ presents and my ‘big’ present was handed to me by Dad. It was a cheque for £35 and I was delighted because that was a lot of money for me – and them – at the time. Then, Dad said to me – ‘Actually, give that cheque back. We might need to think about this.’ I paused and gave him the cheque back. He turned the TV on and slid a wooden tray out from underneath the telly. On it was a brand new ZX Spectrum, and the telly was beaming out the game ‘Harrier Attack’. I burst into happy tears. So did my parents. Best present ever, even now.
S. N. R.
Eleven Sherries Swigging
Bryn: Doris, will you join us in a Mint Baileys for Christmas?
Doris: I won’t, Bryn. I’ve been drinking all day. To tell you the truth, I’m absolutely twatted.
Gavin & Stacey Christmas Special, 2008
I notic
ed when I was young that Welsh people of a certain age would make this peculiar whooping noise whenever they were surprised, shocked or delighted. It sounded like a slower version of the ‘pull up’ siren that goes off in the cockpit before an aeroplane slams into the side of a mountain, although it obviously wasn’t as scary as that. When you heard the sound you’d definitely raise an eyebrow, but it wouldn’t prompt you to leave all your belongings, remove your high heels and make your way to the nearest exit (which in some cases may be behind you). I’d hear that noise a lot over Christmas holidays spent in the Swansea valleys with my mum’s side of the family. They were never big drinkers, but if alcohol had been consumed then the whoops would become more frequent and much longer in duration. By 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve it was like hanging out with a bunch of malfunctioning but very friendly flight simulators.
As we know, consumption of alcohol speeds up our heart rate, widens our blood vessels, lowers our inhibitions and can cause significant damage to fixtures and fittings. It can help to put old arguments to bed, but can also help to create exciting new arguments, rich with potential and possibility. People start to fall over with theatrical flair. And at Christmas the British pursue all this stuff with vigour and enthusiasm; alcohol becomes the national anaesthetic, suppressing social awkwardness and allowing us to laugh at things that aren’t particularly funny. In 2004, some people with nothing better to do did a global survey and discovered that the British ratchet up their boozing at Christmas more than any of the other G7 nations. So we sit there, at the top of the pile, saying ‘cheers!’ to each other and wondering whether we should be feeling proud or not.
Stoptober and Dry January have become widely observed periods of abstinence, and they form a convenient bookend to what we might call Bender December. The counting of alcoholic units, a foggy concept to the British at the best of times, becomes even more erratic at Christmas. The quantities being slung back across the land make the whole idea of units seem a bit ridiculous, like measuring turkey consumption in micrograms. Quiet, unassuming relatives who barely touch booze under normal circumstances will suddenly be heard to say things like, ‘Ooh, don’t mind if I do’ or ‘Perhaps just a small one’, with a glint in their eye and a large empty glass in their hand. Later, they will do the can-can.
Hendon, Christmas 1976
I remember my mum and dad hosting a daytime drinks party in the run-up to Christmas. Those kinds of events were memorable when you were young, because you’d see adults getting drunk. You didn’t really understand it but you knew something unusual was up. This particular party had ended, and my dad, perhaps unwisely, was giving some people a lift home in the car.
He had a favourite crystal glass, for special drinks, on special occasions. In the course of tidying up, my mum, who was not a drinker but had had a number of sherries, picked it up and dropped it. It smashed into pieces. This was in the living room, and I remember her slumped over an occasional table, drunk and helpless with hysterical laughter, saying, ‘It’s his favourite glass, it’s his favourite glass.’ I’d never seen my mum lose it quite like that, and I remember feeling confused. I didn’t understand. If it’s his favourite glass, and you’ve broken it, that’s a bad thing, so why are you laughing?’
J. M.
In, say, March, or October, the casual suggestion of having booze for breakfast would prompt concerned relatives to plan some kind of intervention. But it’s different on Christmas morning, when orange juice is upgraded to Buck’s Fizz without any nudges, whispers or worried phone calls. This festive combination of mild depressant and vitamin C is one of a curious array of seasonal drinks that tend not to be consumed at any other time of year, with advocaat being another obvious example. We don’t show as much enthusiasm for eggnog as our American cousins (probably because we’re too busy laughing at the word eggnog) but we embrace advocaat – essentially eggnog plus brandy – warmly, perhaps because Warninks, the pre-eminent brand in the UK, has the decency to keep the mention of egg to the small print on the back of the bottle.8
“Just two more minutes, everyone. Just two more minutes.”
Back in the 1960s, the advertising slogan for Warninks ran ‘Eveninks and morninks, I drink Warninks’. This excuse definitely won’t wash with your family if they ask you why you’re drunkenly humping a footstool, and it seems extraordinary that an alcohol brand ever marketed itself as perfect for pre-lunch consumption. But a morning snowball (advocaat plus lemonade) is an acceptable part of the British Christmas, and, approached with care and caution, can make Christmas morning zip by in a pleasant haze. People can, however, go too far, and they do. Let this be a Warnink to you.
Twickenham, Christmas 1990
My family has always been quite boozy, and this particular year – I remember it was World Cup year, Italia 1990 – some friends of the family came to visit for Christmas Day. I went to the same school as the kids, and my dad was best mates with their dad, so they all came over in the morning and the adults started drinking enthusiastically. We had Christmas dinner at about three in the afternoon, but as soon as the starters had been cleared away my friends’ dad just fell asleep, face down on the table, snoring loudly. Nine of us were sat around the table. None of us could wake him up.
My dad, who has quite a rich baritone voice, started singing ‘Nessun Dorma’ [‘None Shall Sleep’!], which had been the big anthem for the World Cup that year. The singing got louder, and louder, but he kept on snoring, so we all joined in, all eight of us, in this big crescendo, because we’d heard the thing so often during the World Cup that we all knew it. And by the end, the big ‘Vincerò!’, everyone was laughing, but he still didn’t wake up so we had to move him to the sofa.
C. C.
Maintaining adequate stocks of Christmas alcohol can involve bottles of wines and spirits being moved between homes with the slick efficiency of a narcotics network. Unlabelled bottles of potent home brew can help to make up the numbers, and it’s quite likely you’ll find sloe gin in at least one of them. ‘Everyone round here gets very precious about their sloe berry spots,’ says Willow Langdale-Smith, who turns her local Leicestershire berries into booze and describes the results as ‘like a mince pie in a glass’ and ‘fucking phenomenal’. ‘Last year it was really tricky to find a sloe crop because some of the blackthorn bushes had been infected by a virus,’ she says. ‘When I found one that was unaffected, I quickly started filling empty dog poo bags with them – whatever I had in the car, it was a case of fill anything you’ve got.’
Making your own Christmas booze may be cost-effective and rewarding, but most people opt to march to the off-licence for a festive spending spree. Of all the drinks on offer therein, Baileys has manoeuvred itself into pole position as the UK’s Christmas favourite.9 We’ve been persuaded that chugging back a few measures of Baileys in December is sophisticated and slightly sexy, although after seven or eight of them you’ll be neither of those things. There was an advert for Baileys that ran for three or four years on British television during the 1990s, featuring a couple in a swanky hotel who were sufficiently emboldened by their Baileys consumption to start getting amorous in an elevator. While they did so, other hotel guests peered in enviously through its scissor-gate doors. Those guests represented us, a nation; we wanted a piece of hot Baileys action. ‘The advert was very aspirational,’ says Joe Cushley, who played one of the guests. ‘And they were evidently trying to sex up the brand. We were told to look into the elevator as if we could see the couple “performing sex”, but “not too much”. It was weird. I remember all the actors developed this primitive desire for free Baileys, but there was only one bottle there, which was the prop. Anyway, over the years the repeat fees for the advert were enormous, so I still raise a glass to Baileys to say thank you.’
The British alcohol industry has gone to great efforts over the past few decades to equate Christmas drinking with opulence, cream, comfort, cream, warmth, cream, elegance and cream. It’s a tried and tested marketing technique, from Harve
ys Bristol Cream (cream, button-back armchairs, roaring fires, ‘the best sherry in the world’) to Sheridan’s (cream, luxury, two-tone bottles, a yin-yang spout which produces a celebratory coffee-flavoured mini Guinness); from Cointreau (no cream, a French guy saying ‘ze ice melts’) to Stella Artois. All these drinks have one thing in common: in sufficient quantities, they can make you inadvertently swear in front of your grandmother.
Watford, Christmas 2004
On Christmas morning I didn’t feel well. My younger brother and I had gone out on Christmas Eve with the express purpose of getting as drunk as possible. We donned cheap Santa hats, made friends that no one should be making friends with, and wandered drunkenly around our sad commuter town. But as Christmas Day went on, our hangovers subsided. After dinner we decided to play a family game of Trivial Pursuit, and as the Stella kept flowing we all got into the game a little too much.
At some point I suspected that my aunt had made a minor infraction but picked up a ‘pie piece’ regardless, and I called her on it. She argued with me, and it began to get heated. I heard myself remind her that it was ‘a fucking pie slice question’, and immediately looked across at my 70-something, teetotal, devout grandmother who pursed her lips and glared at me. So yeah, I said ‘fuck’ in front of my nan on Christmas Day, and I was reminded of this for years afterwards. She died in 2015; I hope she forgot my foul-mouthery before she departed.
L. J.
Not everyone approves of swearing, and not everyone approves of drinking either. Despite Christmas drunkenness having become a well-established British tradition by Victorian times (and probably centuries earlier, it’s hard to say, our ancestors had a habit of losing the receipts), there are those who believe that Yuletide inebriation should never be encouraged. You may think that there’s little distinction between wishing someone a ‘Merry Christmas’ and wishing someone a ‘Happy Christmas’, but there’s subliminal messaging going on here. Queen Elizabeth II always says the latter in her Christmas address as a subtle hint that we should restrain ourselves. The former would apparently be like urging us all to go out and get smashed on whisky macs.
A Very British Christmas Page 3
