Forget the anxiety over presents and whether the turkey will be cooked. If there is one thing I dread at Christmas, it is the human tragicomedy of the relatives: wildly disparate human specimens, linked by accident of birth or marriage, having to keep up a polite conversation over the brussels sprouts and mince pies.
Take my Irish brother-in-law, Tarquin. A lovely man, but polite conversation? He doesn’t do conversation, let alone polite. He can no more make small talk than he can slide down a chimney. He doesn’t feel Christmas lunch has started until he has muscled up a good argument, preferably about religion.
Typically, he will bide his time, wait until everyone has been served, then lob a hand grenade into the conversation. Thus, last year, Tarquin’s opening gambit was: ''Of course anyone who thinks the son of God was born in a stable in Bethlehem needs their head examined.’’
My mother pretended not to hear. My aunt asked loudly if anyone wanted more bread sauce. My sister looked daggers at her husband and I think started kicking him under the table.
Tarquin looked aggrieved, took a gulp of claret, then resumed. ''Of course, I am not saying there were not stables in Bethlehem, or that a young woman called Mary, who was up the duff…’’
My daughter, who is studying theology at Oxford, rose naively to the bait. ''How can you be so cynical? What if…’’
At this point, Tarquin will grin. He has got his argument. And that is Christmas lunch done and dusted for another year – bar a second argument, precipitated by the Queen’s Christmas message. Her Majesty may one day say something with which Tarquin agrees, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Similar scenes, with similarly disparate minor characters, unfold in every household in the land. It’s stress in its purest form. Members of the same family often share a surname and not much else. They are closer to their friends than they are to their relatives. And as family ties are loosened by divorce, and one family Christmas becomes a string of family Christmases, spread across the country, is it any wonder that nerves start to fray?
Spare a thought for a Welsh friend of mine called Nerys, whose drive is blocked by a mobile home every Christmas Eve. In it sleeps the ex-husband of Nerys’s daughter, Hazel, who has to be allowed to see his children at Christmas, but cannot be allowed to sleep in the same house as Hazel’s current husband, who cannot bear the sight of him.
The season of goodwill can turn into the season of ill will quicker than it takes to pull a cracker.
Sleeping arrangements over Christmas can be complicated. You may be cool with your daughter sharing a bed with her boyfriend of two weeks, but your parents are likely to feel awkward. I know a sexagenarian C of E stalwart who had to make small talk in her kitchen to a young man in his boxer shorts who was making a sandwich at one in the morning. She would probably have coped – if she had been able to remember if he was called Steve or Dave.
As the host, I know from experience that keeping everyone happy is a nightmare. I feel obliged to make an effort, because that is the meaning of Christmas. The shepherds were as much a part of the nativity as the three kings. Everyone has to be included. But it is a much harder trick to pull off in a semi in the suburbs than in a stable in Bethlehem. Good intentions flounder in a morass of administrative detail.
How many labellers of Christmas presents struggle to remember how their eight-year-old niece spells her name? Or even what her name is? How many carnivorous Yorkshire hostesses spend December fretting what they are going to give their vegetarian relatives from Surrey on their annual pilgrimage north?
One of my most fondly remembered Christmases featured my late aunt Victoria, a woman built along the lines of the Albert Hall, with the rectitude of her namesake. It had been rumoured that she had been writing a novel, but none of us quite believed it.
Then, one Christmas, as we were all slumped on the sofa after lunch, it appeared – a 300-page typescript that she fished from the depths of her handbag and handed to me, the writer in the family.
I started to read, curious. The first page was so racy and contemporary – it featured a woman who had lost her lover to an Aids-related condition – that I could not stop giggling. Bits of half-digested mince pie came spluttering to the surface. The book was just so deliciously out of character. It made me look at my aunt in a totally new light.
But for Christmas, and the rituals of Christmas, I would probably never have seen her hidden depths.
So, as you lie awake at night worrying what you are going to talk to Uncle Ron about for the three hours it takes Auntie Jane to serve up dry turkey, burned bread sauce and warm white wine, remember – he may not be as boring as he seems. The best way to survive your relatives is to learn to appreciate them. Yes, really.
Minimise the agony
- Spread the pain. Two mildly stressful family meals are preferable to one overly stressful family meal.
- Allow time for a family walk. Fresh air clears heads and cools tempers.
- Remember that a brother-in-law snoring on the sofa poses less threat than a wide-awake brother-in-law.
- Be generous with the port.
- Write down the name of your son’s girlfriend and keep it in a safe place.
- If hosting a sit-down meal for eight or more, make a seating plan to head off the worst personality clashes.
- Put the needs of the eldest relatives first. They won’t get the same attention at other times of the year.
- Don’t expect teenagers to be better behaved than normal.
- Don’t assume a TV Christmas special will solve interpersonal problems.
- Avoid referring to Nigella Lawson at any time.
