Christmas Crackers

Ever since my son was born on December 10, 1992, I’ve made it a tradition to put the tree up just before his birthday. When he was small, I liked to put it up because it gave his parties more of a festive atmosphere when all his adorable little friends came over, got high on the sugar content of Nigella Lawson’s buttermilk birthday cake, and went completely crackers. I vividly remember one particularly wild child, already quite a strong, sturdy boy at 4, who stood on the armrest of the sofa on his tippy-toes and tried to grab the silver-wrapped chocolates I’d purposely hung out of reach on the upper branches. Inevitably, he lost his balance, fell headlong into the tree, knocking it over and causing major bauble devastation. When he emerged on all fours, clearly unscathed and laughing like a character in a horror movie, I wanted to truss him in tinsel, take him outside, and leave him there to wait for his mama.

But I’m nice, so I simply used my words through gritted teeth, put the tree back upright, and got the brush and shovel.

None of the out-of-control kids seemed to register that there even was a tree during the most memorable party of all. My son’s 18th was beyond epic, with pukey Magalie defiling my Ugg slippers while I was wearing them, and inebriated Ivan standing on the toilet in the bathroom on the lower-ground floor, opening the narrow window and propelling himself upwards and outwards into the garden with the brusque, scissoring leg movements usually reserved for underwater activities. As a result, Ivan kicked a massive hole in the toilet bowl. Moments later, not-so-smart Alex felt an urgent need to use said toilet, flushed it, and stood there like a stoned dumbass as a mixture of water and soggy toilet paper shot out of the broken bowl, inundating the bathroom as well as a good portion of the hallway.

As early as nine o’clock, my son had come to find me with a worried look on his face, saying, “Mama, they’re awful! I wish they’d all go home.”

So did I.

Getting them to go home proved problematic, not only because most of them were so off their heads they couldn’t even remember where they lived, but also because most of northern Europe was in the throes of a blizzard. Idyllic from a purely esthetic point; my garden resembled a set for a Christmas movie. But my husband, away in London on business, called me in the early afternoon to say his flight had been canceled; nothing was taking off. Since he’d promised, hand on his heart, to be back to help with the party, he took the Eurostar train to Paris, followed by the TGV to Geneva.

When he finally walked in just after one in the morning, he found me curled up in the fetal position on the living room sofa, slipperless, my eyes glazed over, my last nerve long gone. Which was hardly surprising considering I’d just spent the past six hours trying to keep some sort of control over sixty-odd beer-brandishing teenagers blasting tuneless music with rude lyrics. They’d had a grand old time, traipsing in and out of the house in their muddy, slushy shoes, rolling around in the garden making snow-drunkards, lighting their farts, and playing beer pong in the laundry room.

The cleanup operation the next day? As epic as the party itself. We practically had to mop around several comatose teenagers!

However, come to think of it, my twenty-first wasn’t exactly cups of tea and jam tarts…

Anyway, fast forward to December 9, 2016, when in keeping with tradition I got ready to put the tree up for our first Christmas in our new house. We’d moved in over the summer, and because the house needed considerable renovation, a lot of our things went into storage. Among these things were our Christmas tree and several boxes of decorations.

With both our children soon due back from the UK, I looked forward to making the place look festive for them. I’d selected the perfect spot in the living room, on the right-hand side of the huge window overlooking the pond. The garden looked like a scene straight out of the Nutcracker, with the pond covered in a shimmering sheet of ice and a featherlight sprinkle of snow.

I put on some carols, spritzed myself with Shalimar (Christmas in a bottle!), and went in search of our Christmas paraphernalia.

I’d been collecting Christmas ornaments since my mid-twenties, before I even got married. There were the gorgeous, antique, teardrop-shaped, hand painted baubles that had belonged to my grandmother. There was the beautiful set of glass birds my mother had given me when I moved into my first apartment. There were several unusual ornaments I’d bought during our visits to foreign countries. There was my silly Ricky Martin ornament. Most importantly, there was the funny reindeer with the lobsided smile constructed from ice-cream sticks, red ribbon and dribbles of glue that my son made in Montessori school, and the toilet roll angel with the wild, pink tinsel hair that my daughter made in first grade. There were several wonderful pasta-chains festooned with sparkles and feathers, and adorably wonky father Christmases made from sticks and buttons and scraps of fabric and wool.

But where was it all? The house wasn’t very big, yet there were several places where my husband might have stored it. Could it be in the basement? No, it wasn’t there. Maybe in the bicycle shed? Nope. In the tumble-down garden shed? Nein. It wasn’t in the attic, either.

I looked everywhere. Nada. Nothing. Zilch.

“Ah”, I said to myself in a lightbulb moment, “it’s probably still in storage.”

So, I called the storage company.

“Bonjour, this is Madame Bossert! How are you? I think you have our Christmas tree and boxes of decorations! Do you think you can please pull it out for me so I can come and get it this afternoon?”

Brief silence.

“Err, I’m sorry Madame, but we do not have your Christmas affairs. Your husband came by last month to sort through all your things and to decide what he wanted to keep and that he wanted to throw away. I remember being très très surpris when he told us to throw out the tree and the boxes containing the decorations. Very surprised indeed.”

Not as bloody surprised as me.

What the heck?

 “C’est pas possible!” I told the Monsieur. “Surely not?”

But surely oui, unfortunately.

I flopped down on the sofa and burst into tears. All those special, cherished ornaments, some of them over 50 years old, thrown out like they meant nothing. All those perfectly imperfect little decorations made with such concentrated effort by my children’s tiny hands, ruthlessly discarded.

How could my husband have done something so insensitive?

I gave him hell for it, I really did. I was so angry. Now, of course, I’ve long come to terms with what he immediately recognized as a terrible mistake. I can visualize what happened, because my husband is a neat freak, he likes everything to be organized, tidy and clean (which is a massive plus 99,99% of the time!). Stressed out at work, he only had a limited amount of time to spend at the storage company. He drove there focused on being one hundred percent efficient. He switched to robotic mode and got the job done. He didn’t think. To him, at that moment, all that irreplaceable family treasure was just junk in dusty old boxes held together by layers of crisscrossed packer’s tape. Basically, he’d left part of his brain at the office.

He felt terrible.

2016 is the only year we didn’t have a tree set up for my son’s birthday. That weekend, my husband and I went to a nearby garden center and spent loads of money on a big new tree and on loads of beautiful new decorations that will hopefully, one day, be handed down to our children.

Of course, with all the terrible things constantly happening in the world, losing a reindeer made of ice-creams sticks, an angel made of toilet rolls, and a few sparkly pasta-chains is no biggie. The story has become a bit of a family joke, as in, “Haha, do you remember when Papa put Christmas in the rubbish?”, whereupon we all shake our heads and turn to look at my poor husband with WTF faces.

Even if it sucks to no longer have those lovely ornaments, when I look back at that unfortunate incident I can only smile. The weird thing about the moments in life when things go slightly wonky is that they often turn into funny memories. I mean, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to have my feet vomited on, or the toilet explode, or the decorations chucked out, or, or, or, but at the same time, those little bouts of chaos etched those events onto my mental map. How boring would it be if life was just one long beige cocktail party? Often, it’s just a matter of taking a step back and cocking your head until you find the funny angle.

Besides, it’s impossible for me to harbor resentment towards the man who, when his flight home was canceled all those years ago, could easily have kicked back in a swanky London hotel with a glass of wine and a good meal. Instead, he crossed half of Europe on two trains during a snowstorm after a full-on day of work, just because he’d promised to be home.

And those crazy parties? Such wonderful Christmas crackers!