Ripping up the Yule book

10 April 2012

An Arctic grotto in the front room; a pork belly sandwich with just the Queen for company; seven dwarfs and a Strictly judge; and lunch with the ex, her exes and mum's fifth husband. Five writers share their unconventional Christmases, past and present

Simon Callow's matronly Christmas pasts

As a child, I loved Christmas too much: I was bound to turn against it, because in time it would fail to live up to my expectations. Inevitably it did, and, equally inevitably, I did. But those early Christmases were astonishing. My father had walked out on my mother and me when I was 18 months old, and I was entirely brought up by women, all widows or spinsters - not a man in sight.

They had a determination, all those grandmothers, aunts, great-aunts and second cousins twice removed, that Christmas should be like no other time; many of them would stay overnight on Christmas Eve to execute their grand design. There was a tremendous sense of secrecy about the preparations, a lot of nodding and winking and veiled references to what was going on. There were, of course, presents, but very early on I discovered where they were hidden and became a master of unwrapping and rewrapping them so nobody knew - no mean achievement, because much thought was given to the wrapping.

But the real excitement of Christmas was not the presents, but the transformation of the front room in my grandmother's house, which is where all the creative energy was focused. It took place at the very last minute. We were Catholics, and all trooped off to Midnight Mass. I went, too, even when I was very young, and was then sent to bed, sufficiently exhausted to allow them to do their work undisturbed.

Santa's little helpers - they really were, these women - were fortified, unlike Father Christmas's diminutive workforce, with Scotch whisky and an unlimited supply of cigarettes. They made over the front room into whatever that year's theme decreed - a Japanese garden, a bierkeller, an Antarctic outpost, an African village Christmas as such had very little to do with it. It was a sort of grotto of one type or another, and discovering it on Christmas morning - all done for me, the only child, as I felt - was as thrilling as if I'd gone to Japan, Germany, Antarctica or Africa. Later, the party would be held there, and all the strings of coloured lights would twinkle away.

But first there were the presents - again, of course, the lion's share were for me - and my Oscarworthy performance of surprise, amazement and delight; easily done, because I had often forgotten what they were and they were all so cunningly chosen. Once they were all opened, I would sit there, surrounded by my loot, feeling almost drunk with sated happiness. The workforce had by now moved to the kitchen to prepare Christmas lunch; there was much bawdiness, imperfectly understood by me, from the women concerning the sausage rolls and chipolatas. My task was in the dining room, helping to lay the table, which was a serious undertaking, with all the best china and linen and cutlery and priceless glass goblets (as I was solemnly assured) brought out for their one and only annual outing. My aunt had made ornamental pieces - snow-covered logs bedecked with holly and robins - which formed the centrepiece of the table, and the whole room was hung with Chinese lanterns and strings of paper chains, with sparkle everywhere, scattered about, eventually getting into the food and people's eyes.

At about midday, men appeared. There was no way that the meal could have proceeded without men, and their arrival occasioned an increase of excitement. By now the booze was flowing furiously, and the men made mannish jokes, and flirted and opined and took command. The star guest was Uncle Fred Eustace, who had fought in the Boer War and the First World War ('and not a scratch'). It was his privilege and right to carve the bird, which was generally a goose - a great monster of avian amplitude - and he was very deft at it, quite a virtuoso.

Fred died when I was still very young, and then everyone started to get older, and so did I, and there was no one to do it all for. I preferred postal orders to presents and it all seemed very mercenary. And then I turned against it, for many years. I've come back to it now, in my dotage, thanks to a partner who genuinely loved it, and though we've broken up, I look forward to doing it properly - honouring it, as the phrase goes. Ironically, because I'm doing A Christmas Carol, I will have no time this year to transform my front room, or to cook, much less carve, a goose. Instead I shall swan off with chums to the Savoy, which is about as theatrical as you get - a sort of movie fantasy of Christmas.
A Christmas Carol with Simon Callow is at the Arts Theatre until 14 January

Tamsin Ormond's Boxing Day adventures

You know the days between Christmas and New Year, when your belly is full, your bank balance low and you've had about as much 'family time' as is reasonable at any one sitting? In these moments, newsrooms across the country are searching for a story. Everyone (even the seriously organised criminal) is on holiday. There is no news. England, and most of the world, is taking a break.

These are the moments that we dedicated activists dream of. The moments when you call the newsroom and not only is the phone picked up immediately but the reporter is excited to talk to you. Right then you are the only person trying to say anything coherent and newsworthy, so the Christmas season is when my activist brain gets ticking for stunts that might get people talking about climate change over their turkey sandwiches.

Last year it was Christmas carols. While UKUncut was protesting outside Topshop, Boots and Vodafone - businesses whose offshore accounts allow them to evade paying millions of pounds of tax - Climate Rush (the environmental group I founded) was huddled round the heater in a recently opened squat drafting Christmas carols. Our plan? To enter Parliament, whip out our songsheets and entertain MPs with climate change- related cheer belting out 'I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas' in the Central Lobby (where MPs hang out and listen to concerned citizens). By the time the police came to kick us out we had carolled our way through 'I'm Dreaming', 'Silent Spring' and 'The 12 Days of the UN Climate Talks' - catchy title - twice.

The year before that it was coal in stockings, (gently) nailed to the front doors of the Big Six energy companies' chief executives' homes. Their profits were huge and still they raised their tariffs, keeping us cold over Christmas. We might pull this particular protest out of the sack again this year, since the Big Six are increasing our fuel bills yet again. And the year before that we were in Sipson, the village that was set to be demolished to clear the way for Heathrow's expansion. This time we were carol singing to the
residents, joining forces with them to oppose the third runway.

My childhood Christmases were somewhat different. The extended family (and there's a lot of them) would descend on my grandparents' Dorset home. It was about as traditional as you can get: walking to church on Christmas morning, nagging the grown-ups that it definitely is present-time, watching films on the BBC, looking out of the window and hoping for snow. And then there was The Performance. I suppose, in one way or another, that has been a constant embarrassing Christmas feature. But what used to be me plus 11 cousins enacting a family story, is now me plus 11 activists on the doorsteps of power.

This year we're aiming for the Christmas number one. After all, why sing to politicians or pester CEOs when YouTube can get everyone tapping along to your Christmas message. Britney Spears will be our muse, 'Toxic' will be our medium, and anywhere in London where air pollution is at a 'Toxic' level will be our stage. First stop, London City Airport; next stop, the Euston Road. Between Christmas and New Year we'll be hitting all of London's pollution hotspots.

So while you're rushing after that final Christmas present, or piling potatoes into sizzling goose fat, spare a thought for this enterprising activist for whom Christmas is the perfect protest opportunity.

Jeremy Langmead's dysfunctional family festivities

The doorbell to my Primrose Hill apartment usually rings at 9.30am on Christmas morning. My two teenage sons, who never normally rise before the crack of noon, will be standing on the doorstep, in pyjamas and bare feet, having dragged their stockings over from their mother's house, three doors away from mine, to open their presents. Within an hour, the door will ring again. This time it will be my mother, with her fifth husband in tow, coming to see if I've opened the stocking she made for me. Each year, she rents an apartment nearby so that she can see us all, but escape the chaos when she feels the need. We're too noisy apparently. Not long after, the bell goes again. This time it's my sister, who lives a few hundred yards away, coming round to see if I received more presents in my stocking than she did. She's 43.

By midday, everyone scurries back to their various abodes to wash and change for the day proper. An hour later, we reassemble at my ex-wife [the novelist India Knight]'s house where each year we all spend the day together. As well as the smattering of Langmeads, there will be my ex-wife's ex-partner after me, plus the daughter they had together (my god-daughter), his mother who comes down from Scotland, my former mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, plus their partners and children, and at least two stray friends. The last always look a tad terrified when they first walk in and face the throng. This tradition started about ten years ago, and it's never felt weird. Numbers increase as new family members join, and exes add up as the years go by. But with so many people, any awkwardness gets lost among the crowds and the wrapping paper.

My ex-wife's house looks like a Hollywood film set at Christmas: the tree is ginormous and weighed down with hundreds of coloured glass baubles and miles of twinkling fairy lights; cobwebs of snow cover the windows and jolly Santa Claus figures peer out from all sorts of unexpected places. My children find it amusing that I, in stark contrast, decorate my flat with only a tiny table tree covered in black baubles and one small black china twig that, each Christmas Eve, I ceremoniously remove from its box and place on a bookshelf.

We eat lunch very, very late. Firstly, with around 20 of us to feed, the turkey takes forever; for space reasons, half of the vegetables have to be cooked in my oven - I spend most of the afternoon carrying trays of burning hot oil to and fro across the square; and, after quite a few cocktails, we all rather lose interest in what's bubbling away downstairs in the kitchen.

When the lunch/dinner - hours in the making, minutes in the eating - is over, we play a few party games. My mother refuses as she hates games or jokes (unless it's about a cat, and then she will laugh hysterically for hours). Eventually my children sneak off to play computer games, the toddlers get taken up for baths and my mother, weary from the noise, returns to her flat.

This is when the cocktails return and my ex plugs in her beloved karaoke machine. For an hour or two, we'll all sing along heartily - my signature song is Aqua's 'Barbie Girl'. I usually call it a day when she starts on Meatloaf. That's when most of us call it a day. For quite some time, as I lie in bed, I will still be able to hear her rendition of the Meatloaf oeuvre echo across the square as she happily continues singing, alone in the sitting room, until the early hours.

On paper, our family Christmas is utterly dysfunctional. In reality, it's one of the happiest.
Jeremy Langmead is editor-in-chief at mrporter.com

Ex-MP Ann Widdecombe's Xmas on stage

For 23 years of my life Christmas was on Boxing Day. The day itself was fully taken up with visiting the emergency services in my constituency: fire, police and ambulance in the morning, the homeless shelter at lunchtime and then the hospital in the afternoon. I distributed humbugs and fudge, which was no less than they would expect from the House of Commons. Once there was no lunch laid on by the shelter, but I got to the hospital in time to see the surgeon carving the Christmas turkey. I looked at the slices and uttered a silent hallelujah that he was not operating on me.

I would be free by early evening and would then drive from my Kentish constituency to the parental home in Surrey. The next day my brother and his family would arrive; he also having worked on Christmas Day because he was a vicar. His children loved it because they effectively enjoyed two Christmases - one on the day and another with Gran and Grandad on Boxing Day. The festive meal, crackers, presents and games all happened twice over.

Before I was an MP we would all travel to Bristol and quarter ourselves upon the vicarage. My sister-in-law's mother was also there, so we would be nine around the table. The return from church would mark havoc as the kitchen filled with too many people trying to help. In my agnostic days I cooked the meal alone while the others worshipped and I firmly repelled boarders on their return by putting the drinks in the lounge and shutting the kitchen door. It would have worked had the dog not nudged it open and wandered in, followed by three children trying to look nonchalant.

It was always the same: a huge meal of turkey or pheasant or venison (poor Bambi, that was not so popular among the small ones), followed by a cheer as the flaming Christmas pudding was carried into a darkened dining room, then presents by the fire and tea with Christmas cake during the Queen's speech, after which we would all stand for the National Anthem. One year there was no fire because my nephew had let a balloon float up the flue and block the chimney. The room filled with smoke and my father gave a yell, which frightened the toddler.

When I was a child my father was in the Admiralty, and there were three Christmases in the blazing heat of Singapore when relatives sent photos of snow and cards with sleigh scenes. During those years (1953-6) the familiar figures of my brother and grandmother were absent. The first had been left behind at boarding school when we were posted and the second had been deemed too elderly to cope with the tropical heat. There is no one Christmas scene from my childhood because we moved about with every posting. In Bath I tobogganed down the slope of a nearby field; in Haslemere I broke the ice on the small pond in our garden; in Guildford I admired the frost on the row of tall cypresses.

Last year my Christmas preparations started late as I was focused on Strictly Come Dancing. The first thing I said when I got back to my dressing room after I was eliminated was, 'Now I can get the Christmas cards done.' Thanks to Strictly, this year I am in a panto, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I'm doing it with Craig Revel Horwood, lucky me. Craig - who I know from Strictly - is playing the Wicked Queen, and I am his 'Widdy-in-Waiting'. I've never done panto before and I'm having to work at the singing and dancing: I'm tone deaf, and I can't follow a routine.

Because there are productions on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, and the show is on in Kent, I will be far from my native Dartmoor on Christmas Day. Instead I have invited myself to a widowed friend for the Yuletide celebrations. Christmas will be the roar of children. Will I love it? Oh yes I will. And I will certainly be sorry when it is behind me.

Hardeep Singh Kohli's Christmas dinner for one

You're not meant to be anywhere but with other people on Christmas Day. Them's the rules. In fact, folk go out of their way to inveigle an invitation to lunch with people they only ever see when they inveigle an invitation for Christmas lunch. Alternatively, some ask round those they least desire to be with on that one special day of the year. Why? Because that is the Christmas spirit.

Growing up as the child of groovy, pan-religious Sikh parents, we more than celebrated on 25 December. A tree was unboxed and regaled with decorations as old as my older brother. As the baubles were unpacked so were numerous stories of the past: the different flats and houses my folks had lived in and where they had placed this self-same tree. They were always lovely to hear. Selection boxes were smuggled out of the kitchen cupboard to the loft where specific confectionery was selected and consumed, the boxes then surreptitiously replaced whence they came. Presents were given and received. Mum made vegetable broth, cooked turkey and crafted the most delicious of all stuffings. The boys made inappropriate jokes about chipolatas. The Great Escape was watched. And yours truly broke the maternally enforced silence of the Queen's Speech with bottom burps (nothing quite like it to irritate my mother).

That was then. The family was nuclear. Aunts and cousins who ordinarily orbited our lives were pulled in closer still. Now the nuclear family has exploded and the fall-out has to be managed. For the past four years the un-certainty of my Christmas couldn't be more antithetical to the bosom-warmth of my mum's house in the 1970s. I no longer share a house with my children and their mother. There is still an abundance of love between us all, but the intense memories of Christmas Day make the ghosts of what could have been yet more difficult to digest. A few years back, having been asked by my mother to spend the day with her and my wider family in Glasgow, I eschewed the offer. If I couldn't spend the day with the three people I loved the most - my kids and their mum - then why not spend it on my own?

I was living in Clerkenwell at the time, the sort of neighbourhood that swaps weekday bustle for a weekend Marie Celeste. Christmas Day was very quiet. The TV remained on standby; Radio 4 and the music of Elbow kept me company throughout. The ghostly quiet of the streets was sporadically punctuated by clutches of people arriving or departing, throwing off the shackles of protocol for one day, wishing strangers a Merry Christmas and having the sentiment returned.

I chomped on a cheese and Branston sandwich (on granary) and enjoyed the settled space around me. I felt very much connected to my own life. Alone but not lonely. Later that evening I ventured out to see my best mate and his partner. Strangely, of all the Christmases I have spent, in many ways it's the most memorable.

This year my ex isn't clear about what she is doing. And to be in Glasgow, surrounded by two-parent families, may not be the best thing for my heart and my soul. But maybe I'll upgrade the sandwich; maybe I'll have roast pork belly for one. I'll probably still listen to Radio 4 and Elbow ('Grounds for Divorce', perhaps?), and maybe even have a long bath. But as age softens memories, I may just turn on the Queen's Speech, think of my lovely mum, and break wind. Isn't that what Christmas is all about? ES

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