A Christmas tradition I could do without...

"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out."

Walter Winchell

 Christmas hurtles towards me like a freight train and I lie there helplessly bound to the tracks like the heroine in the old silent movies.  Time is running out and I am bound tightly once again by time constraints, wider familial and society’s expectations and an overwhelming desire to do good deeds for too many at the peril of my own sanity and my little Gang of Four. Ho ho bloody ho.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the spirit of Christmas; that time of reflection and focussing on the good and the giving of one’s time and generosity of spirit if not our purse strings. The problem is...it also brings with it the necessity to spend time with people that I would normally run a country mile to avoid. You know the ones. Every family has them. The uncle that does highly inappropriate things to both the food and the guests under the influence of too much Christmas spirit, the in-laws that barely speak to each other under normal circumstances and feign Christmas cheer with such forced enthusiasm that I feel like I’m walking a mine field in a bikini, and then...there’s the so called friends.

Friends. Ah yes. In my case there is a group of people to whom I once was close – very close. I even shared house with one of them for a long time. Then we all got married and had our families and the visits and the catch ups became difficult to coordinate but we would always part with the usual lines of “It’s been great, we should do this more often” or “Let’s not leave it so long next time” or “I really don’t know where the time went but I’ve been meaning to get in touch.” You know the drill.

The problem is, for some of these people, I was only their close friend if I behaved a certain way. It just took me a long time to realise that. When we first met I was vulnerable and lonely and my family was in tatters and they filled a void for me. I didn’t realise how much I just moulded and adapted myself into the person they wanted me to be. They didn’t come out and openly say it, but it was just like the days in the school yard when you would be told “If you don’t do this I won’t be your friend.” How silly was I?  How sad that I was so vulnerable – that I was prepared to sell my soul to their particular brand of middle class conformist devil.

There’s nothing wrong with living the life they do but it just wasn’t for me, and it became less so. I don’t know...maybe it’s the old chestnut – ‘It’s not you, it’s me.” I changed. I grew. I got brave enough to be me.  The less we saw of each other, the more apparent it became to me that we were just in different worlds and that was ok. We could still be friends I thought. We had some fun times, some good memories, and we were all grownups, tolerant and accepting of each other’s differences.

It was in this spirit that BB and I confided in them and others and looked for support when he suffered a near breakdown due to work related stress nearly ten years ago and was forced to give up work. Once he was able, we took on a commercial cleaning business and various other jobs but ultimately we had to sell our home and move into rental accommodation. This seemed to be the clincher. Bad enough that BB had ‘mental problems’, but now we were no longer part of that most prestigious of nooses – the mortgage belt.

Oh dear.

Conversations became awkward. It was as if we were contaminated and our situation may be contagious; that merely being in our presence may cause some similar catastrophe to befall them. I’m sure they cared on some level, but it was all just too hard and outside their very limited world.

Then there is their politics, their environmental ignorance, the raised eyebrows over my tatt and that somehow that might make me a different person and a bad influence on their kids, their homophobia and their xenophobia. Makes you wonder why I was ever a friend in the first place, I bet?! Still I hung on to the friendship, such as it was. We had known each other such a long time after all and weren’t long friendships the best friendships?

Apparently not.

Fast forward to four years ago. Although BB – to his enormous credit – had pulled himself out of his depression and we were still struggling financially when I was whacked over the back of the head with a cricket bat called coronary artery disease and rheumatoid arthritis. BB did the right thing and rang these friends and others while I underwent a battery of tests and adjusted to a medicated life and – for a while – a walking stick.  At least I know when I do actually die, they’ll be there in a flash because they nearly turned themselves inside out to help. Here was a ‘real disease’ with physical symptoms – one they could get their teeth into – and I was inundated with advice, books and concerned looks, along with exhausting but caring conversations on the phone. It was at this time that I thought I could trust them with my big secret, hitherto unshared with all but a couple of people – that of my adoption.

I should have known better. When I dared to venture that I had decided to search for my birth mother, you would think I was planning the wholesale murder of my adoptive family. One friend – let’s call her Marg – could not get her head around why I would want to do this and “cause everyone upset” and I already “had a real mother, why did I need to find this woman who was just a stranger who gave birth to me?” and “she lost any right to you when she gave you up” and...well...you get the picture. Marg, I might add, is childless by choice, but somehow has assumed a rather rigid mantle that she wears with pride as an expert in parenting on all levels. That’s why she knows best regarding how I really feel about my adoption and all the people directly involved. Apparently.

So, after their total lack of support when BB was ill and we were hitting rock bottom, then repeating the act in a way when it came to the single most important and emotional decision of my life, I decided I didn’t need these people in my life at all.

But damn it – they just won’t go away! Listen, I know I could tell them all just to fuck off and leave us alone but I can’t do it – although I have come perilously close. I have withdrawn mentally and emotionally though so if I do have to see them then I can just go through the motions. Mostly this works well. I can duck and weave with the best of them.

That is until Christmas. For as long as I can remember, back before we were all married, we have gotten together for Christmas. It’s a tradition. I love Christmas traditions, like cutting our own Christmas tree, ham and cheese croissants on Christmas morning washed down with champagne, eggnog, Christmas Eve with some very dear friends of an altogether more supportive and entertaining variety and checking out the lights on the way home, eating and drinking far too much, wrapping the presents ridiculously late and getting the giggles from lack of sleep, eating ham, ham and more ham, sparkling shiraz, turkey, bread sauce, cherries, trifle  – I could go on. On the other hand, some traditions just outgrow their usefulness, their fun, their absolute joy and you find yourself thinking “What’s the point?”

That’s where we’re at folks. What’s the point of going to this particular Christmas function, where Christmas kitsch reigns supreme (and not even in a funny way, unless one consumes a LOT of alcohol) eating sub-standard meat and tepid beer (the salads and wine are spectacular – we take them!), getting bad Kris Kringles, and watching Marg in particular getting drunk and telling me yet again that I don’t know what I’m doing and to be judgemental and opinionated on a woman and her feelings and her reasons for her painful decision fifty odd years ago?

And yet, maybe because I just hope it will die a natural death as the kids all get older and go their own way (my two don’t like going any more than BB and I do), or maybe because I know somewhere deep inside they probably do have my best interests at heart, or maybe because it’s a case of anything for peace rather than peace and goodwill to all...it will be happening again this Sunday.

Sigh. Wish me luck.