The first thing I should tell you about my relationship with Christmas is that I’m not saturated in essence of humbug. My approach to a big family Christmas is the same as my relationship with Mexican food: if it’s put in front of me I’ll enjoy it, but I probably wouldn’t ever purposely seek it out for myself.
With no family to speak of within 200 miles and with a fiancée who usually has to work on Christmas Day at her job as an NHS intensive care unit nurse, I’ve spent quite a few recent Christmas Days on my own in London. On the first year in particular, I admit I did slouch around the house with a face like a farrier’s anvil. But I now regard spending the day alone as something close to sapient, coming as it does with an entirely gratis dose of utter irresponsibility, a lack of relatives you don’t like hogging the downstairs loo and the freedom to eat and drink whatever you damn well please.
If you’re embarking upon this most potentially foetid of experiences, then there are some tips I’ve gleaned which can make the day a quiet joy and stop it descending into anything remotely approaching scrofulous torpor:
Forget about eating Christmas dinner for one
If turkey was such an amazing tasting meat then we’d eat it all year round. So salute your sabbatical from the festive roast with glee and relief, and don’t bother cooking anything at all. Indulge in a picnic of cold cuts which you should absolutely eat in bed if you wish.
Splash some cash on smoked salmon, pate, pork pies, salted butter, your favourite bread and any cheese that doesn’t come in a rectangular slab. You are now devouring what the silent majority of people would infinitely prefer over sprouts, parsnips and chocolate log.
Have a drink, but make it the right drink
Having a beer in your bathrobe at 10 a.m. on Christmas Day could be seen as a way of unleashing your inner Withnail or Kingsley Amis. But you deserve better than this. So, depending on your emotional reaction to alcohol, if you’re going to booze, then drink something that reflects your self-worth.
A stiff gin martini has always worked for me, followed by a couple of decent single malts in the late afternoon. Don’t attack the box wine or the Stolly bottle under the misapprehension that ‘if you feel awful it’s because you haven’t drunk enough yet’. That approach to alcohol didn’t work for John Bonham or Keith Moon, and it won’t work for us mere mortals either.
Don’t watch festive television
Chiefly because it’s all absolute baubles, of course. But also because telly on 25 December can induce a (misguided) notion that, if you’re tuning in solo, you’re missing out by not being part of the collective family viewing experience.
The reality is that the days of half the country sitting down together to watch Eric and Ernie are long gone. If you were at a family Christmas today, you could be certain that anyone under 30 would spend the entire day staring at their phones, giving them the conversational skills of a dead cactus.
If you’re on your own, then I heartily recommend spending a chunk of the day watching something lengthy (and entirely non-festive in theme) that you’ve been meaning to view for yonks, but have never got round to. Me? I watched Pennies from Heaven last year for the first time. Dennis Potter is an excellent antidote to Christmas; a bit of oneiric fantasy mixed with Albert Finney or Bob Hoskins at their peak is a sublime distraction from any thoughts that perhaps the Christmas edition of Celebrity Catchphrase might not really be that bad.
Abandon notions of a walk
Yes, we’ve all been told ad nauseam that a 30- to 45-minute brisk stroll is an excellent antidote to feeling anxious or mildly depressed. But you should resist this bromide more vigorously on Christmas Day than on any other. Shut the door, turn the central heating up, wear the most comfortable clothes in your possession and stick two fingers up at the nanny state.
This is not a day to chastise yourself for your calorie intake (and nor should any day be, if truth be told). Nothing’s open on the high street anyway and the parks are full of children breaking their new gifts while the adult members of extended families exchange in strained interactions about Rachel Reeves and the water content of Lidl tomatoes. By staying in, you’re well off out of it.
Save someone else’s Christmas by phoning them up
I’ve long stopped feeling like I shouldn’t ‘disturb’ anyone on Christmas Day. Quite the contrary; by 4 p.m. many people are actively willing the day to end and would love an excuse to get away from the cold cuts and a game of Newmarket with Uncle Giles in order to go to another room and have a chat with someone they chose to be friends with, rather than being forced to maintain conviviality through inconvenient bloodlines.
So don’t feel like you’re getting in anyone’s way. A call may prove to be the high point in the day of someone who urgently needs a break from continuing to persuade a dozen people that the selection case they ordered from Virgin Wines really wasn’t in any way disappointing.
Get out the following day
Like Queen Hermione, you may well be regarded by your friends on Boxing Day as someone who has come back to life after, presumably, spending the previous day as a fleshy, slipper clad statue. There’s no real need to tell them that you actually had rather a pleasant time on your own. Just smile benignly and listen to their stories of Sopranos-style family tensions, stodgy food and the fruitless search for Rennies after Aunt Susie overdid it with the stilton.
Most importantly, remember these tales of festive stress that others regale you with. You didn’t have to bother with any of it. So invite a couple of people over for the rest of the smoked salmon back at your place (which doesn’t have more dirty crockery than a Somme soup kitchen) and don’t have any guilt about maybe, just maybe, feeling a teensy bit smug.
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