It all happens so quickly. One minute you’re rushing around and over-thinking, the panic rising like a bubble of acidic bile, convincing yourself that you haven’t done enough, it’ll never be enough, you’ve fumbled it this time sunshine, this is the end, they’ll know what you really are, you’ll be found out and all you can do is pack what you can carry and run.
You know, the usual normal Christmas feelings.
And then it’s 11:43 on Christmas morning, and the presents are opened, the beast of choice is in the oven and you’re a little bit buzzed on breakfast champers and well, that’s it for another year. From here it’s the glorious no-space-no-time of Betwixtmas, the beautiful limbo, the sweet bardo of semi-existence—
Yeah, ok, this is an edge case in the standard scenario. C and I decided to goblin up this season, retreating away from all obligations apart from the ones we provide to each other. No potential for politics or religion at the Christmas table, no children in melt-down, no simmering grievances boiling over into full-blown psychic warfare just as that third martini kicks in. Been there. Done that. Still bear the scars. This year it’s just us and the big roast and and a few cocktails to accompany Ramones covers of Christmas songs.
Sound good? Look, it’s as introverted a Christmas as you can get, but sometimes I feel you have to walk away from the expectations of the season and make your own rituals. If you love being around people, packing into pubs, dragging out that dusty set of chairs from the garage when you realise there’s not enough seating for everyone round the table—well, lovely, go to it, may your day be merry and bright. It’s just not for me anymore.
This all comes from a place of love, of course. I adore my family, the ever-increasing brace of younglings, nieces and nephews who brighten any room they’re carried or toddle into. But inevitably, C and I burn out on all that conviviality waaay too quickly. The last big family Christmas we spent had twenty of us in a huge converted farmhouse in Staffordshire for a week. Which was lovely up until the point where it, well, wasn’t. The pub down the road became something of a sanctuary. We took a lot of long walks.
Gods, this all makes me sound like such a curmudgeon, doesn’t it? I sometimes think about walking away from it all, leaving the decorations up in the loft, eating a Chinese takeaway for Chrimbo lunch, simply enjoying the silence. But somehow the traditions sneak up on C and I. We fall into the same patterns. Enough chocolate and snacks in the house to last until Easter. A huge afternoon meal guaranteed to send us into a coma. Carols from Kings on Christmas Eve. Bruce doing Santa Claus Is Coming To Town as the first tune of the day.
The thing is, we all need some sort of ritual at the darkest point of the year. Wild revels, lighting a fire against the cold, celebrating as the world turns her face back towards the sun. There’s consensus in the West as to what form those celebrations should take, but other options are certainly available. Our goblin day, quiet in the garden room, me tapping away on my new iPad keyboard (which has triggered a certain volubility, I ain’t gonna lie), C building a Lego Eeyore, Spotify moving into the reggae stage of proceedings, seems right to us, especially after the last few stressful months. Christmas can be a time for self-care. It should be a moment where you celebrate your own Saturnalia. Whether that be with a houseful of folks, with a selection box of the ones you love best, helping people who need a little boost or just ignoring it completely. You’re allowed not to subscribe to the jollity if you don’t wanna.
Maybe that’s the reason for my December grumpiness. I have a natural aversion to being told what to do at the best of times, and Christmas just feels like a pile on at a point when I’m already feeling a bit vulnerable. Go here, do this, buy that and for gods sake try to look as if you’re enjoying yourself, don’t ruin it for everyone else.
Been there. Done that. It’s my Solstice and I’ll Grinch if I want to.
But hey, there’s still turkey in the oven—because I like turkey. There will be too many roasties, cooked in duck fat, and braised red cabbage and carrots in orange with fennel and two types of sausage, because I like them and goblin Christmas means I get to play in the kitchen contented-like and mindful-wise. Peeling spuds and slicing veg is very restful if you go at it the right way. C’s doing her classic prawn cocktail and I stay well away because she doesn’t want me fiddling and ruining it. And it fills my sour old heart with something like joy to watch her cook because she has the skill and confidence in her own tastebuds to know when it’s right. And it will be. Delicious, like always.
And there will be Christmas pud for afters, with ice cream and custard, because we like it. And there will be Christmas cake with cheese, and a rather nice looking clementine and cranberry frangipane from Aldi, and the ever-lovely notion of the over-stuffed festive sandwich later on.
You know what? That’s how we play this. Embrace the bits of the ritual which bring us happiness and sack off the rest. Think of your ideal Christmas dinner plate. If you don’t like sprouts, don’t eat them. No judgement from me, I hate the things.
Building a place of comfort and joy from the materials available to us makes more and more sense to me as I move into my autumn days. I have spent too much time indulging the whims of others over the past—crikey, getting on for sixty years. Change, a little late in the day, is coming, and tweaks to the seasonal expectations are very much a part of that. Do I seem Scroogey? Well, the guy had his flaws, but he also had some good points. A terrible boss and uncle, for sure, but he trod his own path unapologetically.
This is wandering a bit, I know, but I have my reasons. See, thinking of the rituals of Christmas brings me back to the mini-pilgrimage C and I undertook in Glastonbury in November. A three-stage trek from the Abbey to the top of the Tor, with a wind-swept epiphany at the end.
Christmas, I believe, has the same tripartite structure. You engage the ritual after a flurry of mad activity and preparation. The day itself is the culmination of all that work, the catharsis made real in feasting and frolics—or in a lot of cases, the traditional collapse in front of Strictly).
After that, a period of reflection, inactivity, healing. Betwixtmas is a time when, ideally, little should be done or be seen to be done. After the storm, calm seas. We’re spending a bit of the time away from Reading, in a pub with rooms, which means I don’t even get to cook.
Finally, the new year approacheth, and with it a sense of rebirth, fresh beginnings, a chance to start again—or at least move forward with an eye towards a nub of self-improvement. The ritual completes and resets. We return to our daily travails. The cycle continues.
And all of that is subject to change. Perhaps you’re working—in a pub, in retail, as an essential worker, in which case thank you for your service. Maybe you’re starting a new project a few days early, making good use of that crafty Christmas present to discover and embrace a new hobby. Possibly you’ll be in bed at 9pm on New Year’s Eve with earplugs in.
Just don’t join a gym, for goodness sake. It won’t end well.
Here, then, at the mid-point of the second phase of our Christmas workings (I’m writing this on Boxing Day but you’re reading it now, hello and I hope nothing catastrophic has happened between my now and your now to render this whole effort trite and redundant) is, I believe, the point of the ritual where the true magic lies. When you find the people you like to be around, or you realise that you honestly prefer your own company, or anything is better than feeling like this. This is the point when a real and honest discovery can happen, for good or ill. When the normal rules of engagement apply a little less strictly and you find it easier to say what you mean, to speak and think more clearly. This is my favourite part. There’s peace and quiet and you finally get a a chance to listen to yourself.
If we take nothing else away from this long strange amble through the canyons of my mind, let it be this—grab a moment today to take a breath, pause and let that voice at your centre tell you something. You don’t have to believe it, and you don’t have to take its advice, but at least it isn’t coming from somebody else.
Who knows, you might find the route through your own ritual when the noise of everyone else’s drops away.
See you next Saturday for the first Swipe of 2026.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 