Jonny McCambridge: 6 ghosts of Christmas past that I’m going to miss this year

These bleak midwinter mornings with their red horizon can appear full of romance and enchantment, whereas without the coming celebration they may reek of hopelessness.

For a troubled mind, a personality prone to severe depression, this is something worth grabbing hold of. Much of the comfort is in shared experience, shared habit and shared memory. Almost everything good about Christmas is woven through with nostalgia and that is a drug which can be as potent as any antidepressant.

Of course it will be different this year. The social restrictions ensure that the shades of celebration will be slightly dimmed. That is the way that it has to be because the public health emergency trumps all other concerns.

But that does not mean that I will not miss some of the ghosts of Christmases past.

1 THE CAROL SERVICE - The handsome tree with the shiny baubles has been erected in the village, but the traditional service when the lights are turned on has been cancelled. Usually a crowd gathers and we see the families we have become friends with. We all sing along to the first couple of lines of Joy to the World and then mumble the rest because we don’t know the words.

The melodies of the carols are so familiar and come close to unlocking something inside us. An idea of something which provides succour. A link back to childhood and a time when we had a sense of wonder around Christmas. A feeling that we casually cast aside somewhere in early adolescence and then spend the rest of our lives trying to recapture.

2 THE OFFICE PARTY - An unusual nostalgic choice for me in that I don’t drink alcohol and almost always avoid parties and bars. Also, my total inability to sustain a conversation in company means that the seat beside me at the Christmas Do is the present which nobody wants.

But even though I don’t say much, I enjoy the experience of sharing a meal while watching colleagues assume a degree of comfort that cannot be achieved at work.

It reminds me, for one evening at least, that we have more in common than just sharing an office.

Also, being teetotal means I never have to wait for a taxi to take me home.

3 THE CHRISTMAS MARKET - It is over-crowded and the goods over-priced. The rolls served with the giant hotdogs are invariably stale and the onions seem closer to cardboard than vegetable. There is almost nothing in the market which I would ever consider buying.

Every winter I walk around the grounds of the City Hall in Belfast getting bumped and jostled while thinking it’s a poor imitation of the wondrous festive markets in Vienna.

And yet, until this December when the market did not come, I had never missed a year. The very act of bringing a celebratory crowd together in one place can itself be restorative and uplifting. There are few things as magical as gathering in the dark on a frosty winter’s evening and sipping hot chocolate, warming your hands on the paper cup while your breath forms clouds in the cold and crisp air.

4 THE NATIVITY PLAY - The annual school production is big business, run with the same sense of ruthless efficiency as the boardroom dealings of a global corporation (tea-towels around heads just won’t cut it anymore). Such is the size of the event that the classes are put on rotation for when it is their turn to participate. The last time my son was involved was three years ago when he was in P1 and he was in the choir. Since then we knew that his next opportunity to take part would be December 2020. Until Covid intervened.

By way of consolation my son’s class is putting together a mini nativity play within his bubble which parents can watch later on Zoom. He is to be a dancing wise man. The great seriousness of his expression as he rehearsed his dance moves in our front room, utterly determined not to make a mistake, underlined what could have been.

5 MEETING UP WITH OLD FRIENDS - My small circle of acquaintances is scattered across these islands and beyond. I am appallingly lax at keeping in touch with them all. Christmas is the one time when I know most of my mates will come home and we will take the time to blow the dust off old friendships.

It never changes. We tell the same ‘d’ye remember the time when...’ stories that we have been doing for the past 25 years. We laugh as if hearing them for the first time.

No matter how much time passes between meetings the conversation is always picked up seamlessly.

This year it is unlikely that anyone will come home, and even if they do I won’t be able to see them.

FaceTime is just not the same. Christmas 2021 seems an awfully long way away.

6 VISITING SANTA - Even the most devoted Christmas-phile would admit there are too many Santa’s grottos.

Sometimes they try too hard to get an edge. In recent years I’ve seen Santa abseiling down a wall and visited grottos with live reindeer, trains and rollercoasters. One winter my son saw six different Santas and I had to explain to him that most of them were just helpers for the real one (a seven-year-old can easily spot a false beard).

So perhaps a little bit less Santa is not a bad thing and will go some way towards restoring some of the elusive mystery around Father Christmas.

But as I’m selecting a photograph to go on this page I dig out some of the images of past visits to Santa. In the pictures I see the look on my boy’s face, the wonder in his eyes, the utter certainty of the magic of Christmas in his expression.

I remind myself that he is seven and I haven’t got many years left of this. Once that sense of wonder fades, it is gone forever.

I think it is that look on his face that I am going to miss the most.