So This Is Christmas

I recently remembered a relative from childhood.  You know how sometimes an event or person is entirely forgotten until something jogs your memory?  Well, this was a great uncle.  

As a child, he was very puzzling to me.  I knew he had lived with his mother but she died when I was a toddler.  (I have no memory of her other than the gates of the hospital where she died - an enduring memory which I cannot account for at all.)  He had stayed in their home and we would occasionally be taken to visit.  The house was a small terrace and I remember mostly just perching on an uncomfortable scratchy sofa while I waited for my parents or grandparents.  Although he was a bit of a hoarder so any rogue trips upstairs were always filled with danger and fascination.  Piles of stuff to clamber over even to reach the landing.  Stacks of empty margarine tubs in the bedrooms.  That sort of thing.

At Christmas times, however, this great uncle would become a very different presence.  He had a physical disability with one leg.  This had been exacerbated by poor treatments, I believe.  I remember issues with getting him in and out of cars, which chair he would have and so on.

But it was his personality which endures in my memory.   There were long-festering resentments towards my grandparents.  He said awful things to everyone.  He was rarely pleased to see us children.  There was always tension in the run-up to a visit.  What mood would he be in?  Would he come at all? (He specialised in last minute decisions, to try to spin the attention out.) Would he behave if he did come?  I recall being ushered upstairs with my brother whilst the great uncle was dealt with.  I seem to think he once even physically went for my grandfather as grandad was driving him home after another disastrous lunch.

He was one person.  A person who had chosen his own path yet still preferred to blame everyone else for its direction.  Yes, he did have problems and he did have a disability.

Yet somehow he dominated family events like Christmas.  It is important to welcome family members at such times.  But bad behaviour should not be tolerated if there is no reason other than sheer bloody-mindedness.  In our busy lives, all family time is precious. 

Later we discovered that one of my grandmother's mental health problem 'triggers' was her brother.  And thinking about him now, I am not surprised.  I completely relate to it.  It is surprising and upsetting just how much damage one person, determined on being 'difficult', can cause.  He could have been grateful for so much.  So many people have nothing and no-one.  Just yesterday, I met a homeless man who was sitting on the street in freezing conditions.  I stopped to talk and give him food.  His manners were impeccable.  He even wished me a Merry Christmas as I went guiltily away, back to my warm home.

I wish you the best of Christmases.  We all have things and people to deal with at these times.  'Tis the season to be kind and inclusive.  But not at the expense of our own peace of mind.

See you in 2018. xx

Happy Holidays

Not blogged for a few weeks (apologies to my regular reader!).  Been trying to write a satire based on Brexit but since the situation daily becomes more farcical ‘in real life’, this has proved to be rather difficult (as I write, I think we are up to £57 billion for the ‘privilege’ of leaving).  I also wrote a ‘tall tale’ for my writing group - about Melania Trump being a robot.  Only to find, two days later, that it was not so tall - the press were speculating on her use of a body double.  What the hell is happening to the world?!!

Anyway…  just over twenty years ago, I was working for an American investment bank.  My first Christmas there, I received a package from the partner in charge of our department.  As did everyone else.  The label said ‘Happy Holidays’.  I remember commenting on it to my boss.  She and the partner were both American and she explained that he was Jewish and that in the US, this was the more inclusive way to wish people ‘Merry Christmas’.  

[I also remember being told to take down a small picture of Chandler from Friends from the wall of my cubicle.  She said if I was allowed to have that, it would encourage men to have scantily clad women on their walls.  Still not sure what I think about this.  The feminist me agrees.  The me which had to live with the awful things she said and did to me thinks ‘you always were a mad cow’.  Sorry.]

But in the last week, Trump has begun to make a big deal out of not using ‘Happy Holidays’.  He claims to be be restoring Christmas.  It was apparently a campaign pledge - a defiance of politically correct language.

And I think, in essence, this action sums up what we are dealing with in the White House.  It is petty in the extreme.  It immediately announces a complete lack of inclusivity for anyone who does not celebrate the proscribed Christian festival.  And it is designed to appeal to the section of the electorate who gave him the presidency.  Trump believes that as long as he keeps his core supporters happy, he can disregard the opinions of everyone else.

In the UK, we haven't adopted ‘Happy Holidays’ in the twenty years since it first puzzled me.  But maybe we should.  Maybe we should all be tweeting it to @realDonaldTrump  It is not a new phrase.  It is a well-established part of US inclusivity.  And it may seem like a little thing but as I have discussed before, the Nazis started with the little things and look where that led...