He’s making a list

When he was six, my son devised an unimprovable experiment to find out whether Father Christmas existed. Some time in the weeks before Christmas he wrote a letter to Santa and hid it in our chimney. Critically, he did this without telling anyone, so I only became aware of its existence ten years later when I tore out the fireplace. He had asked for:

My own house

Some computers

A kitten (eight weeks old)

A snake

An emerald that gives me powers

Obviously, if I’d found this list at the time I couldn’t have done much about any of it. I don’t like snakes, and we already had a senior cat who was not only capable of killing a kitten, but would have done so with enthusiasm. The rest of it was beyond my capabilities. 

But my not knowing was the whole point of my son’s exercise. Writing directly to Father Christmas without any adult intervention - with, moreover, the intent of testing the man’s capabilities to the absolute limit - allowed him to just come out with all of the stuff he actually, really, properly wanted. Which included, apparently, the opportunity to live somewhere I wasn’t.

(What makes me want to cry is that after opening his presents that Christmas morning - he got an iPod - he must have had a definitive thought: welp, that’s it then. No Santa. He didn’t say anything at the time, but the following Christmas it was evident that he no longer believed in Father Christmas. Mind you, he’s an empiricist who requires proof for all assertions - to put it another way, he’s a mathematician - so at some level he got exactly what he wanted.)

The older I get, the more apparent it is that Christmas is all about lists. Letters to Santa are just the most obvious examples, the lists of our childhood id, full of urgent craving. In some corner of my soul I will forever want a Girl’s World because my mother refused to buy one for me, despite repeated requests. (Girl’s World was a disembodied plastic head to which you applied make-up and hair rollers, as though tending to a close relative who had recently been executed.) 

Hamley’s predicted best-selling toys, Christmas 2023:

Barbie Pop Reveal Fruit Series
LOL Magic Flyers
TY Marvel 14” Squish-A-Boos
Harry Potter Bears
Beast Lab
Magic Moving Car
Disney Winnie & Piglet's Treehouse
Wooden Bus

But then, all lists are expressions of longing of one kind or another. They are descriptions of an intended future perfect, a tantalising point at which everything will be fulfilled. They are pictures of what our lives would be like if we didn’t have weaknesses and foibles, a tendency to slump or shout or eat too much bread. They represent our desire to be fully realised superbeings in a harmonious universe. They are, in effect, spells, or prayers; invocations, summonings. 

Metro essay

Dad photo albums

Take Boots parcel back

Funky Kingston remaining shopping

Reply to Helen

Wrap D’s present

Chase surgeon

Do nails

On my desk right now there’s my usual ‘things to do’ list (see above; my dad is waiting for a hip operation, I’m not chasing surgeons for sport), and a second list itemising things I need to do for my actual paid work. But in the last week I’ve started a third list, on which I’m noting things that specifically need to be done before Christmas. 

Wreath

Lights around front window

Sort boys’ presents from dad

Big Shop

Glue dots

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In adulthood our relationship to Christmas lists changes; we stop placing orders and become the fulfilment centre, and other people’s wish lists become our to-do lists. Christmas is extraordinarily labour-intensive. If you don’t already know this, either you don’t celebrate Christmas or someone else is doing all the work. Separate from my three paper lists I keep a spreadsheet of master Christmas lists: a list of lists (yes, I might have a problem). These are lists of annual Christmas tasks, lists of the people for whom I need to buy presents and, of course, a master list for the Big Shop, because we eat the same things every year: 

Sage 
Thyme
Rosemary
Bay
Bag of salad (use-by date no earlier than Dec 24)
4 medium red onions 
7 medium white onions
2kg King Edwards 
1kg sprouts 

As Christmas Eve approaches we turn to the holy of holies: Delia’s list of Christmas dinner timings. (Her book Delia Smith’s Christmas opens with a section called ‘Lists and more lists!’)

CHRISTMAS EVE LATER PM Make the stuffing

CHRISTMAS EVE EARLY EVENING Make the cranberry relish

CHRISTMAS EVE BEFORE YOU GO TO BED It is important to take the turkey out of the fridge. Slip in the white wine, champagne, mineral water, children’s drinks

CHRISTMAS DAY 7.45AM Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 7

CHRISTMAS DAY 8.15AM Place the turkey in the pre-heated oven. Now begin making the bread sauce.

It’s the ‘Now begin…’ that kills you; the moment you’ve ticked off one thing, the next task looms.

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These list-based strivings towards the perfect Christmas find their highest expression in Christmas songs. Songwriters struggle with Christmas in the same way that novelists and screenwriters struggle: what is there to say about a flat wash of generic festivity? One of the reasons almost everyone loves ‘Fairytale of New York’ is that it managed to do something genuinely surprising and emotional. Most Christmas songs, however pleasant they are, are simply lists of seasonal emojis: 

Frosted window panes
Candles gleaming inside
Painted candy canes on the tree

Bells, snowflakes, robins, Christmas trees, candles, carol singers: these are our common icons of festivity. They are, in effect, an attempt to pin Christmas down under glass, and to summon the things that characterise a ‘perfect’ Christmas - which, tellingly, is full of things that hardly ever happen in real life, and that we cannot control no matter how many lists we make. You can’t buy snow; you can’t get other people to sing carols as a backdrop to your shopping trips. Christmas love songs are full of thwarted longing; it’s the season for it.

The snow's coming down
(Christmas) I'm watching it fall
(Christmas) Lots of people around
(Christmas) Baby please come home

The church bells in town
(Christmas) All ringing in song
(Christmas) Full of happy sounds
(Christmas) Baby please come home

One of the most totemic modern Christmas songs is also the most list-y: The Christmas Song, a short and to-the-point effort written by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells in the broiling summer of 1944. Tormé said: ‘Bob said he thought if he could immerse himself in winter he could cool off.’ Two men sweltering in a hot studio, yearning for ice:

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
Jack Frost nipping at your nose
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir
And folk dressed up like eskimos

A snake, a kitten (eight weeks old), some computers. Make it so.

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And for all those people who refuse to make a list, like Dad, we’ll just have to make a list for them: