The paradox of Christmas is what makes it so compelling

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The writer is the author of fiction, cookbooks and poetry. She The latest book is ‘The Dinner Table’, a collection of food writing

There is something paradoxical about Christmas. Maybe it’s the whole God-child business; Maybe it’s the pagan light-dark dichotomy. It’s probably the way we’re going to sleep better than the last 11 months. Maybe it’s just that we can’t escape the escapist nature of the thing. This is the epiphany of the year: I’m really good at Christmas because I’m really bad at Christmas.

I start thinking about it earlier, like October: buying something beautiful for the tree, looking at ribbons, considering my themes (!). I always have a tree, and usually one too big for wherever we live. There are two wicker hampers that live on a high shelf and I start thinking about opening them as soon as daylight savings begins: the minute, basically, I start succumbing to the darkness of the year.

Like many, my instincts are avoidance and seasonal affective disorder. I’d be fine if I were a bear (salmon sashimi, long sleep), but instead I’m a man with a big, happy family. We have traditions to uphold! Possible places! People to see! I have too much to do with sleep to be a viable option.

Also, I miss it. I spent a few years, for various reasons, very bad December and I couldn’t even help myself – the shots in the hospital hall, the calendars coming up on the ward floor, the tiny trees in the hospital lobby. A mini scale and some Pritt Stick. In the year when the world shuts down and everything can be skipped, I eat caviar and chips in the bathroom and watch. Carol Only on Christmas Eve: fun, exciting and the only way to go down a total pit of doom.

Christmas cannot be ignored. The alternative is not to have a clean bear: the alternative is the hole.

Which is why, I guess, if I’m in a house fire, I’d think of grabbing the Christmas box first. Never in my life have I built such an elaborate system of self-defense against darkness: velvet ribbons in six different shades, wicker angels, iced Indian baubles up to two fistfuls and a bit like a marble. Polished goat bone and some Polish colored glass. Miniatures of all kinds: toasters, toucans, stuffed fish and – fresh from the National Theatre’s new production – glittering glass ballet shoes on taffeta ribbons.

These wreckage piles up on my destruction, by which I mean, the reality upon us now: canceled cats, awkward Secret Santas, misunderstanding or unappreciated loneliness, regular loneliness, last-minute deadlines, delayed trains, baggage allowances, burnt beef, congested highways, Arguing families, driving in the rain, darkness, trauma, talking too much, Inadequate return effort and income tax approach.

As my mother likes to say (in one of many family traditions) and referring to her teenage boyfriend’s childhood neighbor’s mother: how was your christmas Oh, you know: a few rows and a few mistakes. These things, or some of them, are inevitable.

And yet other things may be inevitable. If you can’t beat them, if you can’t escape, join them fromEscape to theOr into.

There is a technique to calm a panic attack that depends on the patient carefully observing their surroundings when they are seen in the senses: five things they can see, four things they can hear, three things they can touch, two things they can smell, one thing they can taste.

This is always useful, but especially good now. The paradox of Christmas is that it must contain everything at once, which makes it so compelling: joy, pain, loss, longing, big sandwiches. It changes the microscope and microscope on your life, but you live it.

Such a high intensity of excess can only be matched by careful attention to details: spin and brightness, for example, a garlic bulb made of violet color on a fine gold thread; Angela Harding’s Entry Calendar Wood Interior; The demera sugar glaze on the star studded mince pie. Netflix’s Happy Rose Crackle 4K Birch Wood Fireplace For Your Home: Crackling Edition. A bowl of easy-peeling. Quality road wrap under the coffee table. A paper hat was torn off the giant head of a man’s uncle. Once the shortening of the day begins. left at midnight. Rejoice, where it can be found, and where it is very dark.