Esther's blog: Season’s greetings and Happy New Year

I find that my WorkLife Central blog copy deadline falls just after Christmas, but the blog will be published early in the New Year, so I hope you don’t mind if I dwell briefly on the contrasts between these two occasions, as I see them this season.

My brother and I typically spent family Christmases with our parents (both only children) and their parents, making just eight round the table.  We sang carols on the village green, my mother always cooked turkey and the trimmings, my brother and I helped my father to wash up.  And so our little nuclear family carried on until things became more complex in my teenage years.  I wonder how many WorkLife Central still manage that “nuclear simplicity” (which I’m aware can have other, less positive connotations if relatives spend too much time together!).  Certainly, by the time you’ve been through one long marriage and into another one, and by the time the children of the families are adults pairing up with other children of divorcees, and having children of their own, it is virtually impossible to achieve and, I have come to realise, perhaps even to hope for.

This year my second husband and I had a gastronomic Christmas on the 20^th with some of our children (i.e. turkey etc. was served), and an exchange of Christmas presents on the 27^th with all of them, and we spent an entirely secular 25^th with my brother and his wife (also a divorcee, with a daughter and grand-daughter abroad), feasting on a delicious ham.  This was the first year since 1984 that I’ve not hung up a Christmas eve stocking for someone of the next generation and, despite the occasional nostalgic pang, I think on balance my families’ Christmases this year have been good: we spread love and seasonal hugs and kisses across the week, rather than trying to compress everything into one day of high expectation. Maybe those of you with very little children who still believe in Father Christmas, or those who care for religious observance, are looking on askance.  But at least my account shows that, even when fairy tales come to an end, families - with a bit of good will, good humour, and forbearance - in all their complexities, pluralities, and ambiguities can have a fun time together.

As for New Year: somehow that has always been a less ‘laden’ experience for me.  One second it is one year and then, as Big Ben chimes, it is the next.  The lawyer in me loves the cleanness of that transition:  up with the glasses, taste the fizz of cold champers, maybe even make a New Year resolution.  Over the decades, I’ve spent that moment with parents, husbands, children, friends, strangers.  I’ve always loved that magical sense of collective goodwill and optimism. Happy New Year everyone!  I hope all your wishes will come true.