“I’ll be home for Christmas
You can plan on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents on the tree”
Christmas has always been a tough time for me. I wanted my family around me, laughing and loving. Carols blaring and all of us singing them together. Decorations covering the furniture. A massive tree with sparkling tinsel, flashing lights, shiny baubles and a brilliant star on top. A big feast with all the trimmings and bon bons to snap when we were done. I didn’t care about presents. Even as a little kid. I just wanted my family together.
Just one day in the year when we were happy.
Instead, I got an angry, abusive, drunk father who couldn’t bear to be in the same house as us. A scared mother who tried her best but always failed to protect us from his rage. And a brother and sister who just didn’t share the same feelings about Christmas as I did, and they weren’t shy in teasing me about it.
Why?
My dad was a Muslim and my mum was a Protestant before she converted to Islam. This made for a very confusing, tense household during what was meant to be a festive holiday.
Mum wanted what I did. The whole Chrissy shebang. Despite trying her best to be the perfect Muslim wife, she couldn’t let go of her childhood memories of Christmas. And she wanted that for her kids. Dad wanted nothing of it. And you know what? I didn’t blame him for that. He was a Muslim after all. Fair enough. But he didn’t give us anything to replace it. In fact, he never gave us anything, except for the belt and a slap across the face.
My parent’s would argue about Christmas. A lot. Our houses were always very small so each argument was magnified in its intensity. My older sister used to hide me under the bed in our room when things got really bad.
Christmas was a nightmare. Mum would do her best with what she could. She’d cook turkey, stuffing, roast potatoes and vegetables (albeit boiled to death) and gravy, and we’d all sit around the table at lunch to eat, no one looking at each other because the tension in the room was excruciating. Dad would sit at the head of the table with his long neck of Southwark Bitter. He’d drink himself stupid and mope. I ate as fast as I could. My bedroom meant reprieve. There was no Christmas tree. No decorations. No carols and certainly no singing or talking for that matter at the table. Not ever! We did get a small present from mum. She had to hide it from dad so he wouldn’t get angry or take it away.
Merry fucking Christmas!
When I got older, Christmas day began to improve. Either mum stood up to dad or dad just decided to give up. He would wake up early and leave—for the whole day, only coming back late at night, stinking of beer and collapsing on the kitchen floor, passed out.
Mum would do the same lunch every year—turkey, stuffing, roast potatoes, vegetables and gravy. She’d put on Bing Crosby’s White Christmas and her and I would sing along—her as Bing and me as the Andrews sisters. By then we had a tiny Christmas tree decorated with the littlest baubles. Mum kept it in the kitchen, as far away from dad’s domain (the lounge room) as possible. It was nice. We’d eat lunch, just the four of us, laughing and joking around, something we were never allowed to do when dad was around. But when lunch was over, mum would busy herself tiding up and doing dishes, cleaning the house and rearranging furniture—the sign that she was upset. My brother and sister would lock themselves away in their rooms for an afternoon nap.
I was left alone.
I cried a lot on Christmas day. It was a letdown. A big fat flop.
Where was my happy family? Why didn’t they want to spend the day with me?
Early on I would ask my brother sister to forgo their nap to spend time with me. They would laugh and tease me about my obsession with Christmas. They didn’t get it. I guess I didn’t get it either. Why was I so consumed with the perfect Christmas day? Why was I so different?
Even though Christmas began to improve as I got older, the tension was always there. One year, mum bought me a can of spray on snow. I proceeded to decorate the windows with festive cheer—pictures of Santa and his elves. Merry Christmas wishes adorned with mistletoe. Then dad got home. Because I had written Christmas which has Christ in the word, I was punished. Smacked and sent to my room. I was a bad Muslim. I still remember sitting cross-legged on my bed crying my heart out, wishing I belonged to a different family.
Now that I am an adult with my own family, Christmas is much better. I put on Bing Crosby’s White Christmas every year and sing to my heart’s content. I sing both parts now. But there is still a part of me that mourns my lost childhood. I still cry. Every bloody year, I cry. My wife is amazing. She looks at me with loving and sympathetic eyes and puts her hand on my leg for comfort. I pour my love for Christmas into my wife and kids and that makes me happy.
But a corner of my heart is still damaged. Yearning to be filled up with Christmas joy for all of the years as a kid I spent alone.
What does Christmas mean to you?