Give Me a break:Some things are guaranteed to happen in my life over the next week. I will begin to do strangely creative decorative red-green-and-gold things with flower oases and shrub-cuttings from the garden, in an attempt to be thrifty, Danish and environmentally friendly, even though the bathrooms need cleaning. At least one major appliance will break down (this year it's the dishwasher and the downlighters over the sink, so that I'm already washing dishes by candlelight, but that's not as bad as the year the cooker went).
I will stay up until 2am on Christmas Eve wrapping presents while listening out for the children who might stray from bed to sneak a look. I will eat Santa's mince pie and Rudolph's carrot, leaving behind a few crumbs and scraps, in the interests of authenticity. On Christmas morning, as I struggle with a large item of poultry, I'll wonder why I didn't marry a man who could cook. I will intend to bring the family to church and have a 50 per cent chance of making it. I'll castigate myself for not having a home and menu worthy of the Christmas issue of Good Housekeepingor Oprahmagazines.
By 10am, with the presents opened, the children will be in the doldrums of a post-chocolate-breakfast sugar-downer, combined with the post-performance depression of the main Santa event being over. I'll attempt to bring children, dogs and husband on a bracing walk to get their appetites and moods up for dinner (in between basting the turkey with neurotic fervour).
When I'm finally able to leave the kitchen, there will be nothing good on TV. I'll watch something stupid while eating the slabs of marzipan and icing that my husband always leaves on the Christmas cake plate because he doesn't like them.
I will gain half a stone in one day.
And one more thing: I will feel inconsolably, desolately homesick. I will crave an extended family around the table and feel sorry for myself needing only a small turkey for a nuclear family of five instead of a 25lb one for the sort of multi-generational family you see in TV ads. I'll feel this way for about an hour, before I knock myself back into shape. I made my bed, I lie in it.
International marriages, like new pets, weren't made for Christmas. Think hard before you move countries for the person you love. Yes, it's wonderful and exciting when you rug-bunnies can't stop the magic and you have plenty of pre-children, pre- mortgage disposable income to pay for cheap flights around the globe. But once reality arrives, those cheap flights aren't so cheap and young children aren't always the best travellers.
There's more: if you're the person who moved country, it's not just Christmas with your extended family that you miss. It's other big events - weddings, birthdays, baptisms, funerals - because taking time off work and paying for travel are impossible. And it's probably the small things you miss most - being able to meet a sibling or parent for a few hours for an ordinary Sunday lunch, or even a coffee in town. It's about having extended family to rely on for impromptu babysitting and even off-the-cuff advice about how to fix the roof, what car to buy or what school to send your children to - because your original family lives in an entirely different context.
When they don't know your daily life, and you don't know theirs, your original family from your birth country become strangers, in a way. Every time you see them, which may be once a year or once every two years, have to get reacquainted. Your original family may even resent you for having left them to brave those illnesses and funerals and Christmases on their own.
People complain about Christmas Day obligations, but I envy people who have both their original families and in-laws to please within 100 miles or so. I think, so what if aunt Grace is a lunatic and your mother is criticising your stuffing and your sisters don't appreciate the trouble you've gone to and your brothers are at war and your intrusive in-laws are criticising your discipline regime with their grandchildren and by the time you sort it out, the turkey's gone dry in the oven. At least you're all together. You only have to put up with each other for a few hours. And if you have to eat one Christmas dinner in Co Meath and another in Co Kilkenny, at least you're in the same country.
When I start to feel homesick, I remind myself that there are far more people out there who are grieving far more serious things: separated and divorced parents, for example, who have to schedule time with their own children. People mourning spouses, children or parents who have died during the year. People who fear they may not see another Christmas.
After my Christmas Day hour of self- indulgent homesickness, I always come to the same conclusion: be grateful for the Christmas that you get. Love the ones you're with. Be glad that your three children are with you, tucked up under duvets watching bad TV on Christmas night while you scoff the marzipan in your untidy house. Be thankful for that husband whose stuck with you all these years, because if the time ever comes that the discarded icing isn't littering the cake plate, you'll be sorrier than you can ever know.
You make your bed, you lie in it. Love the people that life has led you to this Christmas. Keep your ghosts at bay. They're busy feeling homesick somewhere else. Realise that those of us reared in the Christian-commercial tradition want December 25th to be perfect because it's a snapshot of our lives the other 364 days of the year. We can accept it or reject it, though I think there's only once answer. Love the bed you lie in, at least for one day.
