We survived Christmas and enjoyed it!

Dan was hoping for snow.

When I was a chorister in Southampton, my Mum thought I should be a vicar, but I always lacked one fundamental requirement. I suppose that, not having any faith,  I also lacked enough cynicism, but, all the same; here begineth my sermon for the day.

Hands up those who think Christmas is humbug!

Well, you two, what do you do about it? Flee to the Far East? Turn off the lights and pretend no-one is home? Or do you grump and grumble your way through the whole affair? Perhaps you keep your views to yourself  but watch the whole thing as though it's happening to someone else. I must admit that the trip abroad to a non-Christian country with sunshine appeals to me. Perhaps Jersey?

Maybe you love the family get-together, the tradition, the carols, the food and the booze, and even the slushy sentiment; but hate the commercial side of Christmas that brings on the stress, pushes the credit card to melt-down and means that everyone is actually a bit disappointed that they didn't quite get what they really wanted? Perhaps you are not a Christian, or you are a hard-line atheist, or just a pinko agnostic?

Thea plays the tenor sax for the 1st time.

None of this matters because it ain't about you: It's about relating to the other people around you. So you have to decide to get on board or bugger off! You can't sit on the fence.

There is another approach: Total acceptance. Just give in, surrender yourself to the whole thing and enjoy it; otherwise you might just make yourself, and everyone else, miserable. It doesn't matter that logic is on your side. What you need is a lot of muscle-relaxant in a bottle, and a sense of the absurd. A sense of humour definitely helps.

These thoughts were occupying my befuddled mind on December 23rd when the last few dozen presents were being wrapped and Hanna was saying we needed to buy some more to make sure both of our sons and the grandchildren would have the same number of parcels to open.

Jake has a new scarf

Everyone was set to arrive for lunch on Christmas Eve, so it was too late to turn back. With 11 mouths to feed, Hanna was kept pretty busy in the kitchen and our son Dan, who has Angelman Syndrome, was a bit overwhelmed by the scale of the event, so he kept us occupied by throwing things at people and repeatedly banging the piano lid shut. Molly the dog wasn't thrilled about the prospect either. We reckoned a good old carol service would set things straight.

The Ely Cathedral crib service is always crowded out, but it's short, magical and hilarious and the setting is inspiring. But this year, to avoid an hour in the car, we decided to go round the corner to our parish church. Having gone to school here, Nick was mortified at the idea of seeing old chums at an event he would normally go a long way to miss. Several years ago, we stopped attending the evening carol services because there was too much "gloom and doom" in the air. But this was to be a crib service for the tinies with dozens of little shepherds, angels and at least three wise men. What could go wrong?

James deals with another crisis in the NHS.

To give you a flavour; last week, we sang carols on the village green. It's always a simple affair and none the worse for that. The lady organist plays from inside the Methodist Chapel, there's some basic lighting that usually enables us to see the carol sheets. About 50 of us join in and it's a proper village knees-up, but technology always finds a away to sabotage the event. This year, the techie-man set up his DJ desk, lights and sound system then went away (down the pub?) saying his brother would be back to manage things later (meaning, put everything back in the van to stop it being stolen). The psychedelic lights made the trees look nice ( I had a quite pleasant flashback to Glastonbury 1970) but they were useless for reading carol sheets, so after the first verse of each carol, we just mumbled our way along or fizzled out completely. The DJ left one microphone on the organ, but I think he switched it off. The second mic was with the minister, who came down from Yorkshire or somewhere. He was really nice, but obviously a Technophobe (Wikipedia: ancient Yorkshire tribe dedicated to cocking things up). The whole event descended into farce as we tried to use one microphone to do everything. He just couldn't resist switching it off at key moments to add a bit of tension.

Nick joined the Monkees.

That concert on the green was sophisticated by comparison to what happened on Christmas Eve. Obviously we had a cast of three and four-year-olds to deal with, so you look forward to some chaos, but a computerised PowerPoint presentation was prepared, using animated clip art from a Christian software shop. (Do you see the red lights flashing already?) It didn't work, obviously. The poor chap running it was a self-taught silver surfer who probably topped himself before midnight out of pure embarrassment. I nearly did him in myself. He kept the projector on through all his attempts to re-boot windows and search through his list of programs, about 80 times. A simple key combination lets you toggle between the projector and the lap-top, but he didn't know that. Oddly, I suspect that every one of the 50 dads in the congregation could have sorted him out, but none did. Is it British reticence of just a playful sense of the surreal at play here?. Maybe everyone thought, like me, that if you are going to put on some sort of performance, or make a living as a clergyman, you should at least master the simple technology involved.

Of course the kids were wonderful, especially the little angels, but the grown ups were generally hopeless. It didn't really matter though. It was all offered and received in good spirit. For a finale, all the kids were given little glow sticks in the shape of a candle (from a Christian website, run by a Gujarati in Canada.) I bet the little darlings all bit the ends off so their urine glowed in the dark. I know I did.

Molly caught a skunk.

And so Christmas arrived amid the usual hilarity. It was every bit as good as the service at Ely Cathedral when the Archangel Gabriel's head caught fire due to a lethal mixture of tinsel halos and naked flames.

In the same spirit, I gratefully accepted the gift of underpants with a rear vent to allow the escape of gas and cheerfully photographed Dan throwing corn starch around the Christmas Tree to make it look like it had snowed.

I was in the zone:So I survived Christmas.