Christmas in London

Yesterday I woke up to the sound of my landlady cursing. A dedicated Londoner, Cindy was standing on the stairs in her bathrobe looking harassed as she shoved £10 notes into five separate envelopes.

"Wait!" she hollered, taking no notice of me as she flew out of the front door in bare feet to hand out the envelopes to the garbage men who happened to be passing by.

She returned, grumbling about Christmas, London and the "ridiculous" tradition of tipping milkmen, postal workers, garbage collectors and every other conceivable service professional before the holidays. Of course for all her kvetching, it was clear she secretly enjoyed this annual ritual of splurging generosity.

Nothing stirs the heart of a true Londoner more than Christmas. The holiday combines the two things residents of this city love best - it is a time-honoured tradition that everyone complains about.

London is never more fully itself than at Christmas. This is the time of year when tweeness - the sweet hokey quality that most chic Londoners cringe at the rest of the year - suddenly seems well-placed.

As a North American outsider, I can't get enough of it - the roaring pub fires, the blinky-blinky strings of coloured lights, the sudden appearance of chestnuts in every restaurant salad, the fake snow spray-painted on the windows of my local Boots.

Things that would otherwise be considered sickeningly cute any other time of the year suddenly seem appropriate and lovely around Christmas. London, in spite of all its grime and congestion, comes into itself over the holiday season.

The city's history as a loosely connected string of self-contained villages is most obvious these days than any other time of the year. Christmas, after all, is time for local pleasures - ordering a turkey from your neighbourhood butcher, posting cards at your local post office, hauling home a tree from your, um, local spruce vendor.

Having grown up in Canada, a country whose cities are characterised more than anything by their generic postwar suburban sprawl, I am constantly struck by the sense of community in each little pocket of London I visit.

The holiday season, a time when people seem happier than any other to indulge their inner villager, shows London off at its Dickensian best. London is the only cosmopolitan mega-metropolis in the Western world where of carollers still go door-to-door on Christmas Eve. The enthusiasm with which my most sophisticated London acquaintances have greeted the return of an iceskating rink at Somerset House is moving, as they wobble around with only dim memories of Torvill and Dean's Bolero for guidance.

New York, for all its consumer bustle and sleigh rides in the park, and Toronto, for all its romantic blizzards, doesn't hold a candle to storybook London at this time of year. The irrepressible spirit of the place is unparalleled. For centuries, Londoners have braved rain, sleet, darkness and, in more recent times, terrorist threats in order to get out and spread yuletide cheer.

Fears of Tube bombing in the capital are as much a part of Christmas in London as the dazzling sprays of lights above Oxford Street.

This year the invisible threat of IRA violence has simply been replaced by plotting al Qaeda cells.

Grim warnings of bloody obliteration from the Home Secretary and even the Prime Minister himself don't seem to ruffle the feathers of city residents, who go about their eggnogging as if Bali and Kenya were distant memories.

Unlike North Americans, who would dive for couchcover given similar circumstances, Londoners are used to living amid an urban backdrop of fear and loathing. What's a bomb threat, after all, other than a really good reason to drink and be merry?

London is awfully hard on itself. Open any national newspaper in the country and you will be treated to a smorgasbord of bad news about the place. This week, we were informed that gangs of teenaged robbers work the Tube, crime rates are soaring, transport is still a nightmare, with no end in site for the congroupsgestion, expense and endless breakdowns that all Londoners are so used to. The Mayor's office admitted this week that the metropolis is outrageously expensive (thanks for the news bulletin) and has failed to market itself to tourists. Sweetly, in the midst of all the chaos, crime, and ineptitude, the Mayor has busied himself by declaring war on... the pigeons of Trafalgar Square - the city's most beloved vermin population.

The other day I had a transformative London experience. Having allowed myself the usual half-hour to get across town during rush hour for an appointment (it really should not take any longer than that, if you look at it on the map), I found myself stuck in the middle of the obligatory twohour-plus gridlock.

Naturally I was in a taxi with the meter running at the time. "Not to worry, love, we'll get you there on time," the driver sang into the rearview mirror as he watched me writhing and spitting into my watch face. Little did he know I was already half an hour late.

It was, in every sense, a usual day in London. And then the most amazing thing happened. As the taxi crept at a sloth's pace under the glitter of Oxford Street, I was filled with a sudden rush of warmth toward the city. Watching the hordes of shoppers pushing past each other, parcels in their mittens, I felt my body relax and my mood lift. I realised the unthinkable had happened: I was in a traffic jam and I didn't even care. In fact, at that particular moment, I rather liked it. I was becoming a true Londoner.

In spite of all the headaches, holiday cheer persists in London. Black cab drivers invariably wish their passengers a Merry Christmas, and Salvation Army Santas clang their bells on the pavement corners. London is exhausting, but its residents are inexhaustible. Every high street is thronged to the gills with shoppers. Harvey Nichols and Harrods are hives of activity and commerce.

The economy may be going to pot and house prices may be about to, but you'd never know it from the way it takes your credit-card purchase 15 minutes to go through - the phone lines are buzzing like there was no tomorrow. As far as most Londoners are concerned, what's the point of worrying about the bills that follow in January or the dark threats of terror - when they could be enjoying having a wonderful Christmas time?