Christmas

Boston Harbor Hotel, 6:42 a.m. I tossed on a robe, had a fight with an unfamiliar coffee machine, then threw back my bedroom curtains to soak up the best part of chronic jet lag. Fuschia skies intensified before a beautifully fat, gold sun peeped above the horizon. Some hours later, a three-tier stand stacked with PB&J sandwiches, smoked salmon, vanilla bean scones and fig jam obscured the same uninterrupted view, from the Rowes Wharf Sea Grille downstairs. Proffered a frankly overwhelming selection of colorful loose leaf teas, the irony wasn’t lost on me, a Brit, as I raised a pinky. “Green Sparkling… Tropical Oolong… Organic Big Ben English Breakfast… Chai Imperial? How about L’Herboriste?

The Lord of Misrule is surely the jolliest spirit of Christmas past. He is certainly the best named. He used to gambol through cities and courts, churchyards and dining rooms, telling jokes, performing tricks and spreading good cheer. Society shook itself upside down at his coming, so knaves played at being kings, children became miniature tyrants and noblemen misplaced their manners (an exercise in which some, admittedly, needed little assistance). His origins can be traced back to ancient Rome, where each December masters and slaves swapped places for the festival of Saturnalia and engaged in various acts of tomfoolery while gorging on food and wine. These traditions survived the advent of Christianity and found their own expression in the Church.

Had Benjamin Franklin stuck around another two centuries, he would have added “Holidays Promise Travel Hell” headlines to his list of life’s certainties, though the Hellfire Club’s most famous member would no doubt take umbrage at the implication. The featured players in America’s security theater, as well as its taxpayer-bailed-out airlines, rival only deadbeat dads in their inability to prepare for annual celebrations. There’s a reason transportation secretary and closet-2024 presidential contender Pete Buttigieg flies private these days, even as he reassures frustrated flyers about the abundant supply of useless meal vouchers and travel credits on offer from America’s most incompetent industry.

Today, shortly before 3 p.m., there will be a collective heave as backsides – weighed down from turkey and roast potatoes – are prised from dining chairs and plonked on to sofas to tune into the King’s speech. So I very much hope. For the royal Christmas broadcast is important, and this year’s of course marks a new era. This afternoon our televisions will bring us not only the first Christmas message from the new King, but indeed the first from any King. For while the tradition of the Christmas message began in 1932 under King George V, the first Christmas broadcast to be televised was not until 1957, and that of course was by Queen Elizabeth II.

Somewhere in the midst of the hurly-burly antics and preoccupations of life, I think maybe, I’m probably a Christian. Not the type who sings in church with his eyes shut, but an extremely moderate, unthinking Anglican for whom the prospect of the existence of nothing is too painful for words. That makes me the sort of Anglican who starts to pray once the 747 has been in freefall for six seconds or more over the Atlantic, or the type that looks heavenward when Harry Kane is about to take the most important penalty in the recent history of English football. As a result, the Great Being plays precious little part in my day-to-day life; I fear I’m essentially Godless.

Let Bing sing about a white Christmas, if he insists. My kind of Christmas is more eggnog-toned: yellowy, like old-fashioned incandescent string lights; rich, like real velvet ribbon on presents; topped with pale froth of the most non-utilitarian and fluffy kind; sweet, with a kick of rum or bourbon to redeem it from sentimentality; stippled with a dark sprinkling of freshly grated nutmeg on top to ginger up the olfactory receptors. Uncanonical as it may be to view this time of year through an eggnog-tinted lens, it seems to me that food and wassail are more essential to Christmas than snow. What is the celebration without culinary traditions, even though one man’s festive favourite may be another’s pet peeve?