The ghost of Christmas past

About five years ago Jen and I started using an Advent calendar as part of our Christmas tradition. Our version was to have a set of 25 'pockets' - one year they were just paper bags, then Jen hit on the idea of using noodle boxes. and this year I used one I bought in Bergen. Each day the pocket would contain a piece of paper with a bible reading on it (using a suggested set of readings that focus on the biblical leadup to the birth of Jesus), plus some sweets. After lighting a Christmas candle, reading and discussing the bible passage and eating the sweets, we would read from a book. At least three times, and again this year, it was a version of Charles Dickens' classic tale 'A Christmas Carol'.

This was the first time I partly identified with Scrooge. In the two weeks before Christmas I had to find time to buy presents for about 20 people (the previous division was that Jen would buy for her family, and I for mine). My family had two separate events in Melbourne in the last week, and then we travelled up on Dec 24th to be with Jen's family. Christmas lunch was a multi-family affair encompassing 25 people. It's probably not much more hectic than for most families, but I found myself longing for Christmas day to be over, one more milestone in surviving another year without Jen, and an emotional low point.

Christmas Day is a amalgam of traditions. On one side is some kind of European pagan mid-winter celebration, that now functions for us in Australia as an end-of-year ritual, an occasions for family reunions and exchanging gifts. It's as arbitrary and necessary a way of marking the passage of time as a birthday. On the other side is the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus, the rituals of which are sometimes fused with and sometimes overwhelmed by the secular ritual. Our advent calendar tradition was partly an attempt to maintain a more Christian focus during this period.

In Dickens' tale, the first ghost shows him scenes from Christmases in his past, as reminders of the celebration that he once experienced, and the person he once was. It reminded me of the Christmases of my childhood - familiar elements of the anticipation of gifts, putting up the tree, church occasionally on the day, a big meal with one part of the family that day, and another extended family occasion on Boxing Day. My happiest memories involve the relaxation after Christmas lunch, finding a quiet place to read a new book and consume some chocolate.

As an adult, though, I look back and reread those occasions as being about who wasn't there as much as who was. As divorces reshaped the lives of my uncles and aunts, so that was reflected in the choice of who to be with. I understand more the stress experienced by the adults, even in the preparations of those expansive meals. From the recollections of friends, I know that in families with greater dysfunction, Christmas Day could be a time of significant tension, tiptoeing around 'difficult' parents.

Jen brought to our marriage an enjoyment of Christmas rituals, especially the decoration of the tree, for which she had a whole box of special ornaments. We continued her family tradition of giving each other an ornament each year, and the use of stockings, which could be opened on the morning as soon as you awoke. Although we would both make Christmas lists, Jen would strive to find especially thoughtful presents that were not on the list. Having children also of course transformed the occasion -- even when I feel jaded, I know that these are the Christmases of their childhood, and I want the darker side to be hidden from view.

This was our third Christmas without Jen, which should I suppose create a pattern for the future. We have continued some aspects that Jen delighted in (e.g. the tree and the advent calendar ). But her absence was obvious too in every detail. This was the first Christmas I can ever recall when I didn't open a present on the day. I don't say this to trawl for sympathy, for I had family presents earlier in the week, and by choice we had deferred some other family presents until Boxing Day. But it was something that Jen herself would never have allowed to happen, and it marked to me her absence.

The Christmases yet to come will inevitably involve further loss and grief. Without wanting to darken the occasion too much, I wish that we could also find a way to acknowledge that experience too, instead of always playing the 'happy families' card. I'm sure divorced people find it even more complicated than the bereaved. Afterwards I thought it would have been good to have a toast to Jen's memory at Christmas lunch. Perhaps next year.