The sadness Christmas can sometimes bring

I was lying on a bed in a physiotherapist’s ward in Randburg with an ankle injury and listened to an elderly female voice querying another woman: ‘So what are you doing for Easter?’ I had seen the two slowly hobbling into the ward and they were definitely old hands at being “senior citizens”.

“Oh… I don’t know,” she faltered evasively.

After a silence the first voice despondently said. ‘Nor do I. I hate Easter.” That second sentence was tiredly and resignedly emphasized. “There is just no one around.”

This was followed by a long silence. My heart went out to them both. If they were despondent about a relatively minor Western festival like Easter, then what about the big one, Christmas?

My missus, the Chook, is used to big Christmas gatherings. Her two adult children (not mine), the grandchildren, other relatives, the in-laws, their children and so forth. I only experienced with Chookie one Christmas like this before we left South Africa for England (and later moved to China). Chookie was, as per tradition, put in charge of making Scotch eggs, for which she is justifiably renowned, making jars of pickled onions as gifts (I watched the procedure with a kind of sacred awe) and the preparation of a variety of dishes for the huge day.

She clucked round my usually silent kitchen – she had moved into my home a few months before – and this was now some seven years ago. There must have been at least twenty people at the clan gathering, including her ex-husband with whom I got on very well. There were exchanges of fun and silly gifts where everyone was supposed to bring along a gift valued at no more than twenty bucks. The present was put into a box and you choose a different one. One “senior citizen” in the clan got bondage handcuffs and he burst out laughing. A younger member of the extended family negotiated a swap with him with all the gibes flung around. It was a magical experience for me – virtually a completely new experience in fact. Why?

I do not say the following out of self-pity or a desire to invoke pity in my reader. There are many who went through far worse than me.

My father was an alcoholic and pretty much ruined every Christmas we had with his violent behaviour. The family, such that we had, understandably made excuses for not attending our Christmas parties and we were seldom invited to theirs. I could only put these pieces of the puzzle together again as an adult. Then half my immediate family was wiped out in my final school year in 1981, those persons being my father and my sister in different incidents. As a result of the trauma and the dysfunctional family I grew up in, my mother and I became somewhat estranged from each other, unable to communicate with each other and certainly did not want to experience “Christmas” and its ghostly memories for a long time.

I knew all I would think about was my sister, Tammy. I fled Jo’burg, and all the memories, for Grahamstown and Cape Town. My mother in Jo’burg often made excuses to friends and family alike on invitations to Christmases for reasons I have never really understood except she clearly never dealt with the anguish of losing her husband, and far more painfully, her daughter.

Please, I ask: People who have lovely family days over Christmas need to remember those who don’t. It may be the Christmas message of “Joy to the world” and giving and perhaps remembering their saviour and so forth, but that is not the case for far too many others. Research has shown that Christmas is a time when the average suicide rate in many parts of the world goes up.

The situation with “semi-orphaned” people like I was in my twenties and sometimes in my thirties is that at Christmas you cannot exactly ask if you can join other people’s celebrations of the event. I was and am a very sociable person but Christmas is a different occasion altogether. Firstly, the friend you might ask cannot invite you as the events on the 25^th and 26^th of December are usually closed family affairs. Secondly, the person you ask or “sort of” hint to, then feels most awkward and perhaps put out as he or she realises your Christmas is going to be spent on your own. (I was only 25 and naive when I once did hint as I really did not wish to by on my own in Cape Town and quickly learned my lesson not to hint.)

Inevitably, I spent many Christmases reading a book in my student digs or later on in my first job by myself in the suddenly deserted commune I was living in: everyone was with family.

I refused and refuse to feel sorry for myself about that state of affairs. Whenever I meet people, young or old, who hate Christmas, or say bitter things about it, after a few questions I discover their childhood Christmases were mostly dismal. And those who love Christmas time have many glittering, adolescent memories. I refuse to be bitter, and choose to be grateful for being able to spend Christmas day with Marion at least.

I do, however, wish to point out that there are many, many people who go through extremely lonely times over this festive period. Let us please remember them, reach out to them. Once or twice I was invited to Christmases in my twenties but the occasions were awkward; I could see they — with the kindest and most heartfelt of intentions — really felt for my lack of family but it still did not feel right being there among their memories and intimate family rhythms. I felt that they had to suppress their usual ways of being when with only “the family”, such as their little language codes and private endearments and nicknames based on childhood memories… because I was around.

I never really felt bitter about empty Christmas days — it is sobering how most public places are utterly silent and empty on that day – though I did feel sorrow at times and wished the “jolly season” would pass so things could get back to normal. I thought of reaching out to the less fortunate on that day, going to hospitals and old age homes and keeping the elderly company, but I think I just wanted to minimize Christmas as much as possible and get the period over with.

That first real Christmas at age forty with my missus was a glorious event for me. I had never really, in all truth, experienced any Christmas like that before in my life. The following year we had another wonderful Christmas in England with Chookie’s family and some of their very close friends. Essentially two extended families got together with some jolly Catholic priests (Neither Chookie or I are religious people at all but respect others’ beliefs), hired a chef and we had a smashing bun-fight.

Since then Christmases have been in China more or less on our own together; enjoyable, poignant and sweetened with missed family back in SA, or scattered throughout the world. We have had some festive dinners with ex-pats at pubs and American style diners here in Shanghai and took along our own Christmas crackers. We are about to have our fifth Christmas in China.

Sadly, nostalgically, I sit in our kitchen looking at my cherished wife wrapping presents with glee for our maids. We only hired one maid, Tang Ying, but her mother is often around doing the cleaning and Papa Tang has popped in several times to help out with repairs. His raucous, dramatic behaviour is worthy of a blog on its own.

Affectionately, we call them the Tang Dynasty. We suspect Mom gets stuck in because we know we pay them far more than other employers (we have them three mornings a week), treat them well and they are part of the family. They have no sense of time and sometimes Tang Ying arrives at work at half past six in the morning while we are still snoozing in bed.

Sometimes Marion and I hear a pitter-patter and then feel clothing being flopped around on top of the blankets covering our huddled bodies. That is Tang Ying who is sorting out and folding the dried washing on top of our beds, on top of us in fact. They do not live with the same sense of when to arrive for work and the privacy we have. I have learned to enjoy it. They are virtual family.

so, to get back to Chookie wrapping presents for the Tang Dynasty: It’s winter here in Shanghai and all three Tangs are getting scarves. Mother Tang is also getting a sturdy, thick jacket to replace her ridiculously threadbare one (the temperature was minus six degrees Celsius here the other day; I don’t know how the poor soul coped) and another scarf Chookie found to match the jacket. Daughter Tang is also getting a shirt, a silver necklace and matching ear rings. Papa Tang is getting a large bottle of the lethal Chinese white rice wine, bai jiu which I tried once, battled to maintain consciousness after a mere three glasses and have never touched it again.

But we are told by his unsuspecting family he enjoys a glass in the evenings with his meal. It is the delight with which Chookie – who decided to get them presents (I didn’t) that both brings joy to my heart and saddens me. Just listening to the crinkling wrapping paper as she sits in the kitchen in the morning echoes with childhood memories, that crinkling sound behind closed bedroom doors and the whispers. Or the memories evoked by Chookie asking me to help her choose which paper and which ribbon for each member of the Tang Dynasty. For Marion, giving is as natural to her soul as the direction and outpour of a cascading waterfall. She really needs to start having large Christmases again with her family, several members of which are now in New Zealand where we hope to move some day. We hope to be there by the next Christmas.

To the reverse, after Marion’s divorce she, living in Jo’burg, decided to go down to Cape Town on her own for a real party over the Christmas season. She told me she thoroughly enjoyed it: the utter freedom from family and responsibility. The backpacker lodge where she stayed decided to name their pub after her: Marion’s Pub. Before going down to Cape Town she had gone through a severe post-divorce depression and her ex-husband, with whom she was still on speaking terms, was worried about her mental health in Cape Town and insisted she phone him if she had an emotional crisis.

But her Cape Town jol, single and free! free! free! as she likes to tell me, was far more than what any doctor could have ordered. So, interestingly enough, times like Christmas, alone or not alone, often really is just a matter of perception. Obviously it is just another day in the life of the Chinese here in Shanghai, though the period is used to commercial advantage.

Many of my classrooms at the school where I teach are aglow with Christmas decorations and a Christmas tree as part of their group projects on Western culture. But none, or very few of the kids actually celebrate Christmas in any way, including receiving presents. I have asked them and the teachers.

But again, let us not forget the less fortunate, who are also not so strong in mind and spirit, who dread this period. Mother Theresa once was on a talk show in America and they were discussing how to raise funds and what each person could do to ease the suffering of others. I know her answer was in the context of spirituality and a particular belief in the divine. But I still, to this day, find her reply most moving. Mother Theresa’s response was to this effect: Go out late at night and find someone who is abandoned and alone. Then thoroughly convince that person he is not alone.