If you were ever under the impression that being a parent of young children at Christmas was magical, let me tell you about my Yuletide hell
You feel the pressure to go to Winter Wonderland slowly increasing. In desperation, you darkly mention terrorist targets and being safer in the playground. Your children remind you of their stance to lead their lives unaffected by fear. You feel ashamed and guilt-buy them tat
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The incontinent dog has donned her Santa outfit, already displaying worryingly intimate stains that will ensure even the randiest reindeer will give her a wide berth.
The 17th au pair has been on 46 Tinder dates this year, none of which ended well. The best was the 5ft ex-matador with one testicle who informed her as she bit down into a piece of chorizo sausage that she was “sweet but too fat”.
Husband has not enjoyed a year of great sexual frolicking but is obviously looking forward to Christmas Day when, just like his birthday, he gets to experience the biannual pleasures of the flesh in the short window between “Mary Berry’s Christmas Treats” and Ian Beale crying in a bad Christmas jumper.
I have long abandoned my summer “pool-party-ready” extreme diet and now breakfast on Zingy Orange Matchmakers and dine like a king on Mini-Cheddars (Stilton Surprise flavour).
But all of this is peripheral, unimportant. Because the festive season is not about us adults or even the troubled pets – no, Yuletide is of course for the children. Our dewy-eyed, rosy-cheeked cherubs with cute snub noses pressed against the window, patiently waiting to catch a glimpse of Santa’s coat-tails in the ether as he starlight-Ubers from Luton to Lower Slaughter, from Milton Keynes to the warm mince pie bosom of Melton-Mowbray.
No thought crosses their minds of a rose gold iPad, a smart watch or an Xbox OneX – they dream only of stockings filled with coal and tangerines grown outside of the European Union.
And yet, as we count down towards the big day, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to feel Yuletide joy. From the moment the kids break up until the big day itself, there lie 12 days of Christmas hell.
The inevitable truth about Christmas is that all roads lead to Winter Wonderland – and it is there, deep in an MDF Alpine hut, that the existential angst will become too much and you will contemplate washing down 50 paracetamol with a vat of gluhwein while an abused reindeer looks sadly on and a zero-hours Christmas elf asks you if he can follow you to your car and wash it. Your last moments could be spent prone on the gingerbread men-strewn ground ,your phone ringing endlessly in your pocket as someone asks you over and over again whether you’ve been missold PPI.
For all those of you lucky enough to be spending Christmas on your own with an M&S Christmas dinner for one, or, even more enviably, abandoned by your family in some cosy soup kitchen somewhere, let me count you down through my 12 days of child-imposed Christmas hell.
Day 1
The first day of avoiding going to Winter Wonderland. You feel a misguided confidence that this year you will get away with it. You attempt to entice your kids to the local shopping centre to see the REAL Santa.
You decorate the Christmas tree. Your children refuse to hang any baubles unless a gender-neutral fairy is purchased to top the tree. The 17th au pair sobs upstairs in her room, pining for the heartless Spanish matador.
Day 2
You feel the pressure to go to the ironically named Wonderland slowly increasing. In desperation, you darkly mention terrorist targets and being safer in the playground. Your children remind you of their stance to lead their lives unaffected by fear. You feel ashamed and take them to Tiger to guilt-buy them tat.
You spend £150 on mugs with eyelashes on them and 28 Christmas bopper headbands. On your way home, the bus goes past Winter Wonderland. Your children press their noses against the semen-stained window and immediately contract the Sars virus.
Day 3
You attend the office Christmas party. Everyone is suddenly and inexplicably 20 years younger than you. You panic-eat McDonald’s on the way home and consider the futility of your own existence. You’re home by 9.30pm.
Day 4
You decide you need a Christmas Day outfit, so you can look sexy with your fist up a turkey’s arse among a mystifying mix of senile aunts and grandparents who have lost the ability to masticate.
You begin at Topshop, gaze deludedly into Forever 21 and flirt with a thigh boot that stops at your ankle. Just as all roads lead to Winter Wonderland, one other separate road, just as pre-destined, leads to M&S. You buy a midi tunic and a sensible heel and eat a Whopper meal (again) on the way home.
Day 5
You go on Facebook and realise that every single person you know is in the Maldives. You furiously inform your husband you are withdrawing his biannual shag and withdrawing your vagina for good until it is flown to a desert island and installed in a hut on stilts above the water, where the water is so clear you can look down and see it reflected back at you.
Day 6
You receive an email from the Alpine Hutte at Winter Wonderland, offering you Bavarian pizza, hand-baked by carolling members of the gig economy. You comfort yourself that you are saving your children from a gluten apocalypse.
Day 7
You can no longer fit in to the midi tunic you bought two days earlier. You panic-eat a kilogram of panettone and consider the unbearable futility of being.
Day 8
You watch Harry and Meghan’s interview on a loop while panic-eating Mini-Cheddars (Original flavour). Harry proposed while they were just roasting a chicken. The most interesting thing that’s ever happened to you while cooking a chicken was almost getting carried away with the lemon reamer.
Day 9
It is 27 degrees in the Maldives. You forget your fingerless gloves on the way to Asda and your frozen hands drop your Rollback frozen pork cocktail sausages onto your foot.
Later, your big toe will swell to the size of a giant cocktail sausage, making a thigh boot even more of a passing dream.
Day 10
Your children attempt to convince you that Winter Wonderland is just a traditional Christmas market with a few rides. You momentarily forget the horror and mutter something that sounds like a concession. They fling their rose gold iPads in the air in joy and Facetime their friends in the Maldives who choke on their lobster in envy.
Day 11
You buy tickets for Winter Wonderland. They cost just under the price of a seven-night stay in a glass-bottomed hut in Kunfunadhoo.
Day 12
You are at Winter Wonderland. And oh – the horror, the horror.
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