For many years I have had a love/hate relationship with Christmas. As a child I looked forward to it, what would Father Christmas bring me in my stocking? Being an only child I loved spending time with my cousins. Christmas during my teenage years had both the highs and the lows, but I don’t have bad memories. For two of the Christmases in my twenties I was in Canada which was fun. Then came my late twenties and onwards.
The first Christmas my future husband and I were together, he went to his family and I went to mine. On Christmas Day I was in bed, feeling very sorry for myself and suffering from laryngitis. I was supposed to phone my then boyfriend, but it was left to my dad to phone to say I wouldn’t be able to talk to him. This was surprising given the animosity that had already started to arise between my dad and husband to be, stemming from the first time they had met. A year later our first Christmas as an engaged couple we spent with my parents, best behaviour all round.
It was from our first Christmas as a married couple, complete with new born son that Christmas became a time of year that started to become very stressful. Two incidents from that first holiday season as a mum stand out. The first being, my son who was only a few weeks old decided he was hungry around the time Christmas lunch was served. We had gone to my in-laws for the day, it was noisy but the atmosphere was quite good. As everyone moved to the dining room to eat, I slipped away to feed him. To this day I don’t understand how anyone didn’t notice I wasn’t eating with them. There was hardly any food left when I appeared, and to be honest I can hardly remember what I ate. What I do remember is feeling totally detached from it all. It was though I wasn’t part of the family.
New Year was spent with my parents in what became in my mind the battle of the heating. For reasons only known to my father he decided to turn the heat up. The room we were in got incredibly warm and my son was very fussy. My husband went and turned down the heat only for my father to turn it up again. It wasn’t a good visit.
From that Christmas on I developed a love/hate relationship with the season. I love putting up the decorations, loath all the commercialism that goes with it. I do enjoy Christmas music much to the annoyance of my sons. Apart from that I find it very stressful. Before we moved to the USA we had the usual which parents did we spend Christmas with debate. My own parents did spend one Christmas with us; less said the better about that one. Going to my in-laws I found it noisy, but there again it was Christmas.
The first Christmas in the USA was notable in that my parents decided to invite themselves over for a visit. My father got sick and ended up in hospital, finally coming out just before New Year. It was also to be the last time I saw my parents due to an incident that occurred that my husband used to split me away from them. As I now see it, my UK support network was taken away from me.
Christmas time from then on fell into a regular pattern. In the run up I would ask my husband about buying presents for the boys, making sure I didn’t spend too much. The two areas I could spend money on were food and his presents. As time had gone on buying presents for him had gone from being a secret to telling him what I was getting him.
Food no matter what time of year was a huge expenditure, Christmas time more so. I mentally budgeted for what to buy over the Christmas period, only for my husband to come up with items that destroyed it. Near where we lived in Oregon there was an award winning creamery that produced specialised cheeses. I will admit they were good, but oh they were expensive. That didn’t stop my husband going there in early December to spend a $100 or so on cheese. That even now is a lot of money and back when he was self-employed and for a few years towards the end of our time over there, going to the bank of mum and dad to keep a roof over our heads, a $100 was a huge amount. This was on top of our weekly shop which averaged $150 to $200 per week. Then there were the visits to the liquor store. In Oregon we could buy beer and wine at the grocery store, but drinks like brandy, liqueurs and whisky we had to go to the liquor store. Even now the thought of how much we spent makes me shudder.
When looking back over the past few years, I do have some good memories of our last Christmas in the USA. I do consider it to be our last reasonably good Christmas. By that stage we had sold or donated a lot of items that we weren’t planning or were unable to bring back to the UK. This included majority of our Christmas decorations. I am what I consider to be messily creative, by that I mean I am creative but make a mess when I do so. As we didn’t have a Christmas tree, I decided to trim some twigs off one of the many trees that we had and decorate them with homemade decorations.
Christmas Twigs 2019
Food expenditure was high, and money was spent on the boy’s presents. I can’t remember what I got for my husband or what I was allowed to buy for myself. None of that matters, what is important when looking at the picture is that to have a happy holiday season is that you don’t need a lot. No Christmas wrapping paper, the paper used was sheets of coloured paper that we weren’t sure if we were going to bring back. They were brilliant substitute for wrapping paper, but only if you have small presents.
The first Christmas back in the UK deserves its own article, but for the moment I will briefly touch on the events of those days. We were living with my in-laws and I was counting down the days until we moved out, which would take place early in the New Year when my husband started his new job. All of his family appeared, those that lived away stayed and those that were local arrived on Christmas Day. It hit me hard that I didn’t have my own family apart from the boys and my husband. In his usual fashion he ignored my discomfort, which is if he even noticed it. The boys did and it was they who managed to pull me through a difficult time.
The Christmases of 2011, 2012, 2013, were spent partly at home and partly with the in-laws. In the run-up to the Christmas of 2011 my husband declared he wanted a chocolate cheese cake for Christmas. I went and added the ingredients to my shopping list. Just before Christmas I made the cake, or rather attempted to make it. Initially it went spectacularly wrong. My elder son came to the rescue and somehow the mess was rescued. There was so much mixture that not only did we have one chocolate cheese cake but lots of mini ones as well. My husband had a small piece and didn’t eat anymore. It was left to the boys and me to eat them all. Up to the writing of this article I haven’t eaten another piece of chocolate cheesecake.
And so to the final Christmas. By Christmas time rolled around in 2014 I was at the end of my tether. One half of me wanted out of my marriage but didn’t know how to go about it. The other half wanted to stay and fight for it. Our 25th wedding anniversary was in January.
By then we had given up with presents, the boys had some but we had stopped buying each other gifts. Nor did we bother with Christmas cards. My husband claimed he didn’t have time to go out and buy me a card or a present. Needing new underwear, I did ask him I could buy myself some. I’m not sure if he actually heard me as he was reading something on the Internet but he agreed, and I went ahead and bought myself some, nothing fancy, just basic plain underwear.
My elder son was living with my in-laws as he was going to college near where they lived and he had decided to stay with them over the Christmas period rather than come home. We were going to spend Christmas Day with them and other members of my husband’s family.
The morning of the 25th dawned and my husband decided he wanted to be at his parent’s house by 9 am. The journey took us around three-quarters of an hour. I didn’t see the need to go so early. My stress levels were through the roof. But then my rebellious streak kicked in and I went on a go slow. I took my time over breakfast. I then went upstairs to the bathroom. He came up to use it, so I let him. When he had finished I went back in and proceeded to take my time while putting my make-up on. He went out to the car. My younger son knew what I was doing and gave me his silent approval. Eventually I joined them both and we set off for his parents. The journey was completed in absolute silence. Upon arrival I put my smiley face on and somehow managed to muddle my way through the day. It was good to see my elder son, although he had a bad cold and was feeling pretty miserable.
I don’t remember much of the day apart from one incident. I was sitting next to my husband on the sofa in his parent’s living room. I turned to him and asked him “if we were alright”. He said yes. Even though I felt comforted by his answer, deep down I knew things were not alright, but even then I was hoping that our upcoming 25th wedding anniversary would be yet another reset.
Little did any of us know that when we left his parents that night, it would be the last time any of them would see my husband alive again. No matter my feelings towards his family, he was their son, brother, brother-in-law and in any circumstances losing a loved one is devastating. It was so unexpected. One minute you are celebrating Christmas, and then the next you are being told the next time the family will all be gathering is for a funeral. There were only twelve days between the time his family last saw him and the day he died. It wasn’t long.
For me however those twelve days seemed like a lifetime. We didn’t do much; he was on holiday over the Christmas period. For him this meant, actually I don’t know what it meant for him. Did he enjoy the time away from work or not, that is a question I can’t answer. There were two notable events that took place. The first a visit he and my younger son took to see if they could see my father. They arrived, found he was out and then came back home. The mood in the house wasn’t great to begin with, but after that it deteriorated even more.
The second was New Year’s Eve; my younger son had started a cold and spent most of the day in his room. My husband and I went for a walk in the morning, but barely spoke to each other. In the afternoon I went and did some gardening. Midnight approached and my son joined us in the living room. The New Year dawned year, at that point my husband decided he was going to watch some TV. I went to bed. Before doing so I went to kiss him and wish him happy New Year but he brushed me away. I went to bed feeling both angry and upset and wondering if this was the end of my marriage. Little did I know what was going to happen just a few days later.
I can’t say Christmas time has improved since 2014. I don’t remember much about Christmas 2015, by 2016 my son and I had moved. There was an invite to the in-laws, but I politely turned it down. I wanted to celebrate Christmas in the first house that I had ever rented on my own. Also there was the small issue of getting to visit them, given there is no public transport on Christmas Day and I preferred not to have to rely on someone coming to collect us and then bring us back home. I was also reluctant to be reminded of the last time my son and I had been at my in-laws which was Christmas Day 2014. Then there was the matter of seeing pictures of my husband and hearing how much he was missed. I didn’t want to see any pictures of him and by then I was remembering things long buried that was making me realise my marriage wasn’t what I had tricked myself into believing. So it was just the boys and I, so setting the pattern for the following years.
2017 through to 2019, followed the same pattern. I put up the decorations and my eldest would come over Christmas Day for dinner. That was Christmas. 2020 was for everyone a rough time. My eldest was living close and came over to visit, but chose not come inside. Instead we talked to him outside, keeping our distance, then after a couple of hours he went home. It was very surreal.
I doubt if the majority of people would have thought at the beginning of 2020 the year would be dominated by the pandemic or if someone had told them this was how the year was going to be, believed them. Now another Christmas is upon us. The house is decorated, earlier than I normally put up the Christmas decorations, but this year I wanted to do something different. They will remain up until February, a new tradition I am starting. On Christmas Eve my elder son is paying us a visit and this time coming inside. Fingers crossed given the Covid-19 rates are going up, that more restrictions won’t be needed. That is my greatest hope for this holiday season.
Once Christmas is over, my focus turns to the New Year. January is a horrible month, one that I would happily skip over if only I could. For me it is harder than December, given my husband died in January and it was the month that we got married in. Memories do come flooding back and overwhelm me at times. Somehow I get through the month and look forward to February and the rest of year, that is all the way up until December!