So this was Christmas

 

At Christmas little children sing and merry bells jingle.

The cold winter air makes our hands and face tingle.

And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle.

And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful if you're single.

Wendy Cope

Well maybe not quite as unbelievably dreadful as Wendy Cope says but nothing much in the four lines is actually very realistic, is it now? Little children sing and merry bells jingle? Of course they do, can't you hear presents being handed over in return and cash till bells ring out in happy abandon? Cold winter air has been pushed out by climate change, we've had mild airs and uniformly grey clouds raining on us. As for the happy families trooping off to church, you couldn't fill one of our Anglican churches if you had just one service for half a dozen villages.

I was one of those who spent Christmas in splendid isolation. My son and daughter-in-law came for two nights before Christmas.They didn't have more time because they were expecting their entire mixed clan at their house for Christmas and needed to get ready for the onslaught. Don't pity me, I would not have enjoyed myself among the throng, not that I was asked.

Instead I spent Christmas Eve, the most festive afternoon and evening in the German calendar, by doing first my annual tax return and then, after successfully and relatively painlessly finishing that, by celebrating on my own, treating myself to a (genuinely) festive German TV programme, music, good food and drink and a few chapters in a favourite Christmas book, one I get out every Christmas Eve. Yes, I would have liked some company, but no, it was not unbelievably dreadful.

I usually leave my tax return until the last minute (deadline is 31st Jan), so getting it done and paying the tax due by 24th Dec is quite an achievement for me. Something to be proud of, actually; I dread and fear filling in these forms online. Other years I have to have go after go, getting it wrong each time and getting more and more flustered. This time, I firmly shut my eyes, and begged the taxman to grant me an even path, a boulderless advent to the heights of access to my account and, hey presto, it worked. It shouldn't make me happy to be allowed to pay income tax, but acc to Benjamin Franklin "nothing is certain except death and taxes", so I'd like both processes to be relatively pain free. I have yet to experience the first of them, of course. but one can always hope.

Christmas Day wasn't bad at all. Also solitary, I was still full of a sense of achievement (pathetic, aren't I?).  I had planned an indulgent day, so this is what I did: I finished cooking a delicious meal of duck breast in Hoisin and plum sauce, with a home made potato pancake and red cabbage with apple and wine. Most of the meal was part cooked already and I certainly didn't slave over a hot stove. It was delicious. While the vast majority of people in the country was choking on dry turkey I tucked into a beautifully tender and juicy duck breast. Result! To cap it all I opened a bottle of 2006 Rioja Reserva. After a chocolate pudding I had not the tiniest space left in my tummy, so sat and watched the Queen do her 10-minute-stint and promptly fell asleep.

By about six pm on Christmas Day I usually have become bored with the whole palaver, solitary or not, and I want it all to be over. So sitting watching what passes for TV holiday specials for as long as I can bear, then grabbing a favourite book, more often than not ends the big day for me. There was a time when the evening was spent reminiscing but those days are long over. Families disperse, the older generations die and youngsters find anyone over thirty boring, unless they are a favourite grandparent who is allowed, and even encouraged, to be ancient. 

Right, only New Year's Eve and Day to go. And a Happy New Year to all and sundry. If only.