Stuff the turkey

Saying no to another family Christmas was a landmark life decision, says Alison Stevens

You’ve only recently found the courage to tell your parents that actually the last time you wanted a cuddly toy for Christmas you were still in junior school. Now you have to hit them with the cruellest revelation of all – this year you won’t be spending Christmas en-famille at all. . .

My mum’s ‘feed the five thousand’ turkey probably thawed out quicker than she did when two years ago, at the tender age of 26, I finally made a stand and said I wouldn’t be home for Christmas. Even amidst the wailing and gnashing of teeth I knew this was an important moment in my life. A rite of passage somewhere on a par with ordering your first lager and black.

And when you do it, you have to keep nerves of steel. The emotional blackmail is intense. You’re seen as a fifth columnist. There to destroy the family structure. In fact, it seems like the whole of society’s social fabric will break down with this one act of betrayal.

One way to keep your nerve is to do what I did – reciting a mantra beforehand, listing my least favourite things of spending Christmas holed up with my (soon to be ex, as threatened) family. Number one, my dad’s insistence that none of us could open our presents until after lunch, and even then only in order of age and with the proviso that the wrapping paper be disposed of with military precision afterwards.

Which was followed very closely by my number two hate: Mum’s hit or miss approach to the Yuletide feast, best demonstrated by the year she melted the plastic dish around the Christmas pudding and still made us eat it.