On trying to write something profound about Christmas

It's bleedin' impossible. So I wrote this instead

Oh God. I’ve done it. I used generative AI to produce this image. I typed in ‘multi-coloured fairy lights on the floor in a mess with a hand holding them,’ and here’s what I got.

I didn’t write to you last week because … deep breath … I didn’t really have anything to say. And I’m really sorry about that – especially if you’re one of the people who has recently signed up and are here expecting some philosophical musings about life. (Hello! And welcome! And let me know a little about you in the comments below, if you’d like to!)

I guess you could call it writer’s block, plus I was worrying about whether my writing is any good, whether it’s useful/helpful/entertaining. Plus my brain was full up and tired because I had been DOING.

Doing work, doing socialising, doing hangovers, doing leaf clearing-upping, doing volunteering and doing a 3am wake-up for a flight to Germany for work. Doing online Christmas shopping (it’s all done! It’s all wrapped! This is VERY unlike me), doing digging out of Christmas decorations from under a pile of suitcases in the shed. Doing finding extension leads to plug in all the lights and fibre optic accessories. Doing allllll the things because I am finding out what makes my heart sing and how to do more of them (turns out some of those things are volunteering in You Me Bum Bum Train and helping out at dance party The London Loft).

Sometimes my brain is so full of ideas and excitement I can’t sleep, and I lie in bed with all my thoughts fluttering around for attention, like so may butterflies on a buddleia, and I have to write them down immediately or they will fly off to the next pretty bush.

And then I have peaks of energy where whatever I put out appears to come back in a good way – positive vibes seem to bring serendipitous connections or new work clients and I run around for a few days like I’ve had far too much coffee (I’ve usually had far too much coffee).

At other times, I feel like the child who sat near me on the Tube the other day yelling: “But I don’t want to do something else. I don’t want to do one more thing. I want to go home!”

And then last weekend I found I had fuck all to say, frankly. Nothing about midlife, or childfree life, or childless life, or solo life or why people are so surprised when ‘old’ people do ‘young’ things, or my alter ego Text Lucy or any of the topics you might hope to read about here. So I am sorry, but I thought better to be honest, given this is The Honesty Box.

Today, I thought I might do my tax return but I defrosted the freezer instead. As a writer/overthinker who needs to give her brain a rest, this is how exciting my ‘doing’ life sometimes gets. And it doesn’t exactly make for great copy.

So my resting brain felt empty. But then I overthought for a bit and decided I might have something reflective to say about Christmas.

I thought perhaps I could explore my innermost feelings and curiosities about this tradition that screams church! candles! family! memories! presents! presents you had to pretend to like! birth! make that a virgin birth! santa! scented candles! finding my first roll-on deodorant at the bottom of my stocking aged 11! Coca-Cola! commercialism!

When I have nothing to write, I read. So, this I duly did, and I thought I could try to be profound and beautiful, but I ain’t blimmin’

Katherine May

or

Susan Cain

or, heaven forbid,

Miranda July

(don’t get me wrong, I LOVE these writers, I’m just not one of them). So I read these brilliant women and then I did the thing I always do, which is to sit looking at a blank document and just start.

So now I have a whole Word doc about Christmas traditions and how one of mine is where I attempt a new and ambitious dessert recipe on Christmas eve and get in a rage with the bain-marie or fail to separate seven eggs correctly. (This year it’ll be a chocolate and cream pudding with a secret ingredient - breadcrumbs - that my grandma saved from the back of a packet in about the 1970s. Surely nothing can go wrong?)

My chocolate yule log will almost certainly turn out like a sticky brown brick that needs repointing

I jotted down notes about the Handley family tradition where someone sets fire to something after deciding Christmas is much better when the whole house is lit only by candlelight and we don’t notice until the sweet smell of the antique corner cupboard burning reaches the dining room.

Then I thought I might tell you about how it usually takes about three consecutive Christmases for me to realise something does or doesn’t work, such as using half a loaf to make a vast quantity of bread sauce that nobody wants or eats (although I’m sure my dad used to have bread sauce in his turkey sandwiches on Boxing Day), or accepting that my chocolate yule log will almost certainly turn out like a sticky brown brick that needs repointing instead of a lightly snow-dusted fallen tree you might come across in Narnia.

I tried to write about the first Christmas after my father died (which was always going to be shit) when we spent six hours in A&E somewhere in Oxfordshire nursing my poorly grandma who was sick after her turkey pub lunch, or another time (it could have been the same year), me, my mum and sister rolled around on the floor laughing at my mum miming ‘Walking with dinosaurs’ during charades with just the three of us, or about when my sister and I pulled down the giant icicles that dangled from the roof of my grandmother’s bungalow and had a sword fight.

But I couldn’t think of a deep or delightful way to express these things, and to say Christmas is emotional in lots of different ways seems like stating the bleeding obvious.

And I wanted to be deep and delightful, and for everyone to say and comment on how beautifully I express everything, but right now the best thing is to accept that today I can’t be, and that to try and be profound about Christmas is impossible, and finally to say that I am now off to do my tax return and put all the half frozen things in my garden back in the freezer, if the foxes haven’t already got to them.

At least I showed up this week, and I tried. I really tried. Happy early Christmas.