The Old Man of Christmas

I wrote this some years ago and hope you don’t mind me re-visiting it. Dad’s funeral is next week so I’ll give you a reprieve from Dad memories after that. Thank you for your forbearance.

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I can’t remember a bad Christmas from when we were kids. My Dad loved Christmas: an over-abundance of decorations, food and gifts; games, TV and friends. He’s was always a generous man who liked to give to people, especially friends and family, and Christmas for him was the ultimate big-it-up expression of this. He was also a big kid too. He revelled on ripping wrapping paper off to uncover the gift within. Socks, smellies, books, it didn’t matter what it was, the unveiling was half the thrill.

As he got older, his Christmas ‘novelty’ purchases become more garish, more ridiculous even, asserting their Christmassyness so they couldn’t be ignored. He never lost his love of the season, and every year the tree and decorations and lights go up at the beginning of December and in the last few years a remnant of Christmas has remained all year, much to our Mum’s chagrin.

He was never been bothered about getting gifts per se, and always told my sister and I not to bother. We tend to give comestibles these days - things we’ve made very often, sometimes things we’ve bought. Make no mistake he enjoyed them – and him alone! Chocolates and foodie gifts are never for sharing, which is really strange in such a generous man.

We’ll remember him this year at Christmas especially. He’d be gutted he didn’t make it a few more weeks and I have no idea what to do with the chocolate fudge I bought him.

A love of Christmas is one of the things he’s passed on to my sister and I. We celebrate in our own ways and have made our own traditions, pared down, less gregarious, but joyous nonetheless. I think the fun has been contagious.

Cheers, Pops! We’ll raise a glass.