“Christmas comes but once a year,” my mother was apt to sing out on St Stephen’s Day, “but when it comes, it brings good cheer!” We children (eight of us by the end) exchanged meaningful glances.
Then Thomas, ever enquiring, spoke up: “Will Father Christmas come back next year?” Judith was more probing: “Where does he live all the rest of the year?” Since this was 1945 and my father was due to stand for Parliament in the coming summer General Election, in the Labour interest in Oxford, I thought it tactful to ask: “Will he vote Labour?”
My mother did not seem to like the political question very much. “Of course he will vote Labour,” she snapped, “and bring us a lot of good things, just like Labour will.”
I saw my chance: “But if he comes but once a year, that’s not very much, is it?” I added: “I’d really rather have something more regular, like a van which comes by. You’d know it was Father Christmas by his red jacket with the white fur and the funny hood.”
“Doesn’t Father Christmas have any other clothes? What about summer time?” It was Thomas, trying to ask an awkward question as usual. Then we all went on our separate ways, grumbling about Father Christmas, except me. I was in a romantic phase and only wondered if he was tall and dark and handsome. Or just tall, like a deer.
That night a very peculiar thing happened in our house which seemed in a bizarre fashion to answer Thomas’s question. Our Uncle John arrived for Christmas: he was our mother’s unmarried brother. He tended to sleep in a bachelor bedroom in the attic. I happened to be up there, no doubt up to some festive-related mischief, when I heard the familiar voices of our mother and Uncle John.
“They won’t show,” said our mother. “That’s important,” said the voice of Uncle John. He seemed to be wrestling with something. Then I fled and began wrapping my presents for the next day. But I managed to leave a vital object upstairs, and it was in that way, through another secret creep up to the attic, that I came upon a garish pair of tartan trousers lying half hidden by his bed.
Imagine my amazement when the next day, as Father Christmas danced in the drawing room, I saw, clearly visible, another pair of garish trousers beneath his scarlet robe. Another pair? Surely it must be the same pair… But that was impossible. How would Uncle John manage to get hold of Father Christmas’s trousers?
I decided to find out by cunning questioning. “Do you know Scotland, Uncle John?” I asked in a voice of casual politeness. (I was rather proud of that voice.) “No”, he said firmly. That was a bit of a facer. “What about tartan?” I persisted. “No, I can’t bear tartan.”
In a way that was a tremendous relief: I loved my romantic notion of the secret donor, and anyway our visitor had been quite tall, and quite dark and very handsome. I wanted this Father Christmas to be real.
“Christmas comes but once a year,” declared my mother at the end of the day in a proud voice. “And next year it’s going to provide more cheer than ever. Your father and I have bought a little cottage in Scotland. The only thing is that the Scots don’t really celebrate Christmas. It’s New Year up there.”
“New Year?!” I cried with horror. “But what about Father Christmas?”
“Oh, Father Christmas is coming too,” said Uncle John casually. “A real opportunity to wear my new trousers. I love dressing up and Christmas is the perfect opportunity. Did you think they suited me?
Horrors! Father Christmas really was just playing a game. I muttered to myself: “Christmas comes but once a year. And when it ends it brings a tear…”
And I decided that Uncle John’s trousers stood for all that was false in life.
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