Baubles, Bublé, Bible: what is Christmas really about?

When I reflect on past Christmases, I always think of my living room. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first house we ever lived in, my dad’s house, or our shared house at uni. It’s a collage of every festive experience I’ve ever had, anywhere. 

There’s always the tree. Usually decorated with silver baubles and tinsel, gold lights meticulously placed by my mum. There are presents under it, at first. Then a flurry of red wrapping paper, spread messily around the perimeter of the room. Then there’s my dad, with the role of cleaning up said wrapping paper. There’s a cinnamon candle, there’s paper crowns, and there’s always my grandma with a new dressing gown for me (yes, every single year.) 

For me,  Christmas is characterised by its comforting and never changing aesthetic. It is the most predictable, most distinctive time of year, which comes as an absolute blessing with the last few years of absolute chaos we’ve endured. Christmas is dependable. You can count on the red and green, on hearing ‘Fairy-tale of New York’ about 60 times, and you can count on Michael Bublé coming out of hiding. You can count on your housemates watching ‘Nativity’ every night like it’s a competitive sport. And to be fair, if it was, they would win it.

You can count on your mum telling you how stressed she is trying to make Christmas dinner by herself, refusing everybody’s help, and then making one of the best meals you’ve ever had in your life. You can count on an advent calendar, even at the big age of 20. These things come around every December, like clockwork. And we welcome them, every single year without fail.

For a generation that is defined by throwaway culture and a rapidly decreasing attention span, we sure know how to recycle the exact same Christmas experience every year. I think, in this way, Christmas is defined by tradition.

Not necessarily a religious tradition, or even a family one, but a sense of predictable community. Whether that’s the annual argument with your relatives over the dinner table, wearing ridiculously ugly jumpers, seeing your friends from home or sitting with a hot chocolate in front of a warm fire with a good book.

Christmas is a lot of different things, to a lot of different people. At the heart of it, though, it is time set aside to spend with those you love most. The family you choose.