Angela Mollard: Secrets to ensuring a messy Christmas is still a merry one

This season is a celebration that masks complications and hurts, but there are secrets to navigating a messy Christmas, writes Angela Mollard.

This Christmas marks 10 years I’ve been with my partner. This year will also be the 10th Christmas I’ve spent apart from him. This is not because we don’t like each other.

Rather, we are participants in messy (as well as merry) Christmases, an increasingly common proposition for many families as longer lives, widowhood, divorce, estrangement or garden variety antipathy makes the festive season complicated. Or you’re Prince Andrew and you’ve excused yourself from the family shindig, having displayed gobsmacking dim-wittedness once again.

To be honest, I envy Andy because there’s been a few Christmases I would’ve loved to invoke the “I’ll absent myself because I’ve been fraternising with a Chinese spy” excuse. Great way to get yourself out of an awkward church service and having to eat your big brother’s homegrown, flatulence-inducing brussels sprouts.

Prince Andrew with alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo. Picture: PitchatPalace/YouTube

The truth is my widowed partner and I don’t spend Christmas together because he has three grown sons and a grandson, and I have two daughters, and we live a seven-hour drive apart. Of course we could Brady Bunch it but that would mean my ex wouldn’t see our daughters and my partner’s boys might look askance at being served poncy Ottolenghi salads rather than their traditional ham, mashed potatoes and peas.

When a conventional family falters through misfortune or design, you have two choices – resent the changes or go with the flow. Picture: iStock

Am I upset by these circumstances? Not a bit. The fact is that when a conventional family falters through misfortune or design – and plenty do – you have two choices. You resent the changes and set rigid requirements for how you want your Christmas to look despite, in many cases, being the architect of the family breakdown. Or you go with the flow.

This year my daughters will wake up and open presents with me, then head to their Dad’s where they’ll swap gifts and have brunch with him, his partner and her two adult kids. While they’re gone, I’ll pop on a face mask, read my book and stuff my face with chocolate-coated ginger safe in the knowledge that no one will exclaim: “Oh Mum, that’s disgusting, how do you eat that stuff?”

In the afternoon all of us, including my ex and his partner, will join friends for Christmas dinner, which includes a quiz and games of Finska. It’s fortunate we all get on amiably enough because those wooden blocks could prove quite the weapon.

Is it ideal? Of course it’s not, but how many families are? Even the intact ones are riven with resentments and sibling rivalries and in-laws who can’t fathom that when their child partners with another they’ll only see their offspring every other year.

Even intact families are riven with resentments and sibling rivalries. Picture: iStock

If you were to record the conversations that unfold in the car on the way home from Christmas lunch you’d unearth the truth of the season: Namely that’s it’s a celebration that masks complications and hurts and the messiness that is the hallmark of human life. Christmas, in a modern secular sense, is love propped up by hope, knowing that at any time the delicate construct could topple. Lubricated with alcohol, it’s even more likely.

Yet there’s a secret to navigating a messy Christmas – although it will depend on what category of mess you’re dealing with. A handsy uncle, for instance, will require a different approach to spending the day with a sister-in-law you know has cheated on your beloved brother. Or a sibling that turns up with their dog even though you’ve insisted on no pets.

I’ve learned to have very low expectations. So low, in fact, that if I was gifted a vanilla candle (ugh), my pavlova sunk, the prawns were off and lunch broke out into an almighty brawl, I might still be found cheerily uttering: “Oh well, at least we have the Gavin and Stacey Christmas finale to look forward to”.

Look for “glimmers” or tiny moments of happiness or pleasure. Picture: iStock

If you do have expectations, it does help to declare them. Or meet it yourself. I’m a fan of cranberry sauce and will take it rather than rely on my host to remember it. Blended families need to employ this tactic more than most because you’re flying blind, establishing new traditions and (hopefully) approaching it all with flexibility.

A decade into my reconfigured Christmas I live by the mantra that “unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments”.

My other tip is to look for “glimmers” or tiny moments of happiness or pleasure. Maybe it’s the sound of a child laughing, or a parent with dementia savouring a mouthful of the lemon cheesecake they always loved. It could be absenting yourself to stack the dishwasher if only to grab a quiet moment to yourself.

Finally, however messy and fraught, you are here, alive for the experience. My partner will wake up on Christmas morning at the home of his youngest son, a young man who lost his mother to cancer when he was just 12 and is now a new dad himself. His mum will never cuddle her grandson or see the truly wonderful father her boy has become.

We may not be gifted the Christmas we want but we’re here for it, and that’s worth honouring.

ANGELA LOVES

Unprompted Kindness

The picture sent to me by my ex is a Pohutukawa tree, a sign of beauty and blessings.

My ex is in New Zealand as I write this. We were together 18 years and therefore he knows I love the native pohutukawa trees that bloom in my country of birth at this time of the year. I was touched when he texted me a picture of a spectacular one.

Wise Guy

Ted Danson is superb in A Man On The Inside (Netflix) a wonderfully original comedy about a retiree who goes undercover in a retirement home. Hilarious.

Sticky stuff

Do yourself a massive favour and buy a roll of sellotape on a dispenser. Every damn year I forget and waste valuable time trying to find the end on some gnarly roll. You’ve been warned

Originally published as Angela Mollard: Secrets to ensuring a messy Christmas is still a merry one