Ever since I was little, Christmas has been the emotional pivot of the year for me: the high point from which the rest of the year hangs, like a nail in the wall. Perhaps because I'm a Christmas baby and it was the first thing my brain ever registered, it has an importance for me that none of my friends seem to experience. When I was tiny, by the beginning of November I'd start feeling queasy with excitement; by the end of the month - when the trees were up and the music was playing - I'd be unable to sleep at night. By the time my birthday was over - barely even registered, as overshadowed as it was in my head - I would be a small, twirly ball of frantic nerves and hopes and expectations and dreams. Visions of sugar plums didn't just dance in my head: they paraded, they stomped and they generally made noisy nuisances of themselves and kept me up at night, bouncing on my bed.
Every year, I would wish that it could be Christmas forever. The lights, the trees, the music, the smells, the open fire, the chocolates. The scent of orange and cookie and cinammon; the warm, fluffy films on telly; everybody looking happy even when it was dark; my parents moving my presents every day because I wouldn't stop looking until I had found them. Okay, I wouldn't let Father Christmas in my room at night to fill my stocking - having strange old men in my bedroom scared me - but I would still creep down to the fireplace every hour or so to check if he'd been, and if the reindeer had eaten the carrots. Christmas was magic; it was the only time of year when anything could happen, and where good reigned, and where beauty triumphed, and where I was allowed to wear my best dress to school without being told I'd end up ruining it.
And then it would be over. After two months of tail wagging and sticky palms, Christmas would be over: an open stocking, a lot of wrapping paper and a Queen's speech, and everyone would be asleep in front of the tv, stuffed to the brim with roast potatoes and snoring. The magic and the beauty of it always seemed to pop, as if somebody had taken a pin to Christmas and it had exploded. And every year - when I waited for my dad to start farting in his sleep in front of the telly - I resented it a little bit more. It depressed me a little bit more: that the magic could disappear like that. That it could be all over, like that. Until I stopped looking forward to Christmas, because it was only going to disappoint me.
I'm 28 now: this will be my 28th Christmas, although I was only two weeks old the first time I had one. And I know, now - finally - that it was never about Christmas. That the day itself doesn't matter.
Christmas is not about the 25th of December. It's not about the brussel sprouts and the roast potatoes and the crackers and the snoring. It's not about the farting and the inevitable quarrels and your sister's rabbit eating the bottom half of the tree lights. It's not about one day at all. Christmas is the hope of brussel sprouts and roast potatoes; it's the magic of dreams, and looking forward to something, and believing in something that isn't real and doesn't have to be. It's about the happiness that can only be got from expectation, and plans, and the total and whole hearted embracing - without fear, without restriction - of something that will always, always, always end, and was always going to.
Just because something ends, just because it disappoints, just because it doesn't turn out the way you hoped it would, doesn't mean that dreaming of it, and hoping for it, and expecting it, is a waste of time. Dreams can stand up on their own, without the realisation of them. They don't need to be made real to be worth having. And the Christmas I loved, I realised eventually, was the hope of Christmas. And that hope of Christmas - that build up to it - may have been inside me, but it was just as important and just as tangible as anything on the outside. It was just as special. And it was just as worth holding on to.
This year - on my 28th Christmas - I'm having to deal with a lot of disappointments, a lot of crushed dreams, and a lot of tailored expectations. The end of a lot of the things that seemed so magic to me for so long, and popped overnight.
But I will not regret them. I will continue to hope, and dream, and be disappointed, and watch things end. Because it doesn't matter. If Christmas - the Christmas that matters - is in the hope of it, then so, too, is life. And I shall continue to have great expectations of it.
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