2010 – The Year We Went ‘All Out’ On The Christmas Card

2010 – The Year We Went ‘All Out’ On The Christmas Card

I’ve never really been bothered about Christmas cards. Even as a small boy I used to wonder why people bothered. I grew older, and more self-conscious, until eventually I was too cool for Christmas. Presents were still distributed amongst my nearest and dearest, obviously. But as my teens turned to twenties, the holiday season became nothing more than an excuse for a couple of good boozy nights out. Beyond that, I was 24 karat humbug.

Can you guess what happens next? Of course you can. I met Emily in a crowded bar. She was wearing an acoustic guitar, an electric blue sweater, and a pair of eyes that could stop riots. She was funny, she was tough, she was kind, she was patient. And before we knew it, she was pregnant.

I really messed up our first Christmas as a couple. I had lazily assumed her attitude towards Christmas would chime with my own. She was a musician, a songwriter, an artist. She read French literature and made her own earrings. Surely she could see this tacky charade for the thinly disguised capitalist wage harvest it obviously was?

No. No, she couldn’t. Those limpid blue eyes wide with pain, as if hurt for the first time. Her beautiful bottom lip, trembling slightly, as she murmured, “No, that’s fine. Don’t worry about it. No, it’s too late now, Dan. I didn’t want anything anyway”.

I learned my lesson. The following year I took her to Venice. I learned something very useful that year – the best present you can give is tickets. There’s less wrapping to do, and the delayed gratification is sublime.

Our first daughter, Rhea, was born less than a year later. For our first Christmas as a family, I was determined to keep my game strong. I’m quite fond of dressing up, as it happens – comes with the territory of being a musician, I think. Earlier in the year, my big sister had treated me to a stovepipe hat, and thrown a huge bushy false beard in for good measure. I tried them on. My god, I looked fantastic.

“Where are you going to wear that?” snorted my best friend. I stroked my new beard thoughtfully. The cogs were turning.

Emily had a pretty sweet part time job working at Astley Hall, a stately home nearby. Along with the antique furniture, and a massive pair of boots dubiously claimed to have belonged to Oliver Cromwell, the hall had a fantastic costume department. Emily would usually come home tired from a long day of dressing up for the local schoolkids, delivering history tours.

As the nights drew in, and our creaky old car got harder and harder to start, my musings resolved into a plan. We were going to give Rhea a Christmas that she would in no way remember, given that her brain was still too small to make coherent memories. But it was going to be a Christmas that she could look back on afterwards and think, “Wow. My mum and dad were a bit odd when they were younger”.

We co-opted my Dad as our photographer. He’s getting on a bit, but he can still move pretty fast when the stakes are high. We picked a Sunday afternoon in late November, when the only staff working in the hall would be slow and incurious. I snuck my glorious beard and hat combo past the main doors inside my rucksack, and we ducked quickly into the costume cupboard. Rhea and my Dad stood outside the door on lookout duty.

Giggling helplessly, we assembled our Tudor/Victorian outfits, then emerged from the cupboard. I grabbed the thoroughly confused Rhea under my arm, and we headed to the parlour. We dived over the ropes and assumed the position, while my Dad snapped away. Within seven minutes, we were back in the costume cupboard, returning ourselves to our modern style, with the snoozy staff none the wiser.

The resulting card elicited a variety of responses from our friends, family and workmates, ranging from guffaws to weary eye rolls. We liked it, despite some of the anachronistic historical mismatches only visible to the trained eye.

I’ve not sent a Christmas card since. Nowadays, I just sign the ones Emily sends instead. I still really enjoy Christmas, though.