You’ll be pleased to know that at least in our family, the high level domestic abuse didn’t last for more than seven years. It was Biblical in its proportions while it lasted, right enough, but like plagues of locusts and grain famines, we endured our seven years and then we escaped. And it was during Advent that we followed Caesar’s advice, as I’d learned it my first year at primary school – ‘and each went to their own land to be taxed.’  Well, we escaped at any rate.
 
We had, by this time, a house in the countryside, some fifty miles away from Edinburgh, which we went to at weekends and holidays. The money from the students staying in the flat with us paid for it. So you see there are always silver linings to the clouds. And since my step-dad couldn’t drive we often went there without him, leaving him in Edinburgh working.  I guess that was the first sign of the marriage breakdown. My mum was running a careful game to avoid the inevitable beatings – keep the house full of people and have a bolt-hole.
 
Well, the year I was about to turn fourteen, my mum shared a secret with us. We were flitting. She was going to serve divorce papers on my step-dad and it was all timed for the last day of Christmas term. The planning went on for weeks before. It was an Advent to remember. We had to denude the flat of all the possessions we wanted. For weeks we took trips to the country house with books, toys, clothes and the like. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t noticing things getting thinner around the flat. Once he did ask my mum what was happening, why things were moving, and she said she was doing some re-organisation and cleaning out. De-cluttering. Somehow she convinced him that she had found some great storage solutions and that loads of things were being held in the capacious storage cupboards. He bought it. He didn’t have the same inquisitive nature as I did about opening doors in Advent. The cupboards became increasingly more bare as the month went on. And every day had the frisson of Advent I remembered from the early days of opening the calendar. But with none of the pleasure, only rising fear with each day.
 
I guess with students and Christmas coming and general mayhem and him not paying attention anyway because he was busy at work, we somehow got away with it, but I still look back and wonder how it was managed. I had never been so glad to be at school during the days because I was sure all during Advent that we’d be caught. As the days ticked down towards the flitting, I got more and more tense.  It was an event looked forward to with even more intensity than Christmas ever could be, and with a deal more trepidation.
 
But the great day came. It was one of those years when Christmas was on a Sunday and so school went right through till the Thursday. I left for school that last morning as normal but was due back before lunch – just the carol service to endure. I was under strict instructions to come straight home. Did I want to be left behind to face the music? No way. I was out of school like a rocket when the last carol was sung.
 
The memories of that day stick with me as mildly comic, now that the immediacy of the fear is gone. I remember the moment my mum said we were taking the washing machine. The WASHING MACHINE. It was a hundred and twenty three steps up to our flat and we’d made every one of them literally hundreds of times in the last month. But a washing machine? She was determined.  I wouldn’t have been much use in the exercise given my small size and weakness, so I left my mum with my brother (he went to a different school and had already broken up) struggling down the stairs with the washing machine. I couldn’t believe it. Did she want to be caught? Never mind the weight of the thing, but the audacity to remove ‘white goods’ just stunned me.  But, practical to the last, a washing machine was the one thing our country house didn’t have and my mum wasn’t for leaving any more behind than she had to. I can never look at a washing machine even today without thinking of the great feat of daring undertaken in the ‘flitting’. Shifting that washing machine down all those stairs was a woman the age I am now and a teenage boy. Hats off to them.
 
Luckily we had a big estate car and the washing machine fitted into the boot. I remember turning the corner from school to see them all there, waiting for me. We were ready to go. I don’t remember shutting the door on the flat for the last time, I don’t remember any sense of loss or sorrow, or anything except adrenalin fuelled fear, as we were about to pull away.  I remember much looking at watches and I think we began our escape around 12.08 but of course I could be making that bit up.  That’s the thing when life becomes legend, the legend grows. But this is how I remember it now, and I’m pretty sure it’s near as dammit accurate to what happened then. 
 
We knew he had been ‘served’ the notice at midday at his office and I swear (though of course this could be a fantasy memory coming through) that we saw him charging up the street across the park towards the car as we pulled away.  It was what I feared, so I may have imagined it. But I think not. I’m sure we laughed about it afterwards, when we were in the brief aftermath period of thinking we’d pulled off the flit of the century, got one over on him finally – escaped to freedom.  We knew he couldn’t drive (not legally) and so couldn’t hire a car that close to Christmas without a lot of bother and would need to ‘find a friend’ to bring him over the bridge, so we felt pretty safe for a while. I know that in life you have to take the rough with the smooth and not every advent door that you open has a decent picture in it. Not every present you open is something you wanted. But that Christmas we believed we’d got what we wanted. Freedom from harm. It was intoxicating. While it lasted.  

I find that as I look back I can’t always pinpoint at  which particular Christmas any of the following ‘incidents’ happened, but believe me they did. I know that I may seem an unreliable witness what with my suggestion that my grandad burned me with a match (I really don’t think he meant to and I may well be misremembering that in some important respect) and my complete gullibility regarding Santa; added to my own crime of advent calendar opening. But believe me, there are some things, and it doesn’t matter the day or the date, which you remember for ever. So, since it’s the 13th and my title is ironically Goodwill to all men, I’m going to open the door on some of these events, to get them out of my box. It may explain what happened next and it may explain a lot more than that. Either way, its time these things were unwrapped.  I’m sorry if they make hard reading, but believe me they made pretty hard living for a child. All of these events happened when I was between the age of 7 and 14 and I contend that no child should be exposed to such things.  When they talk of childhood abuse, and domestic abuse they always skate over the actuality with the phrase – too graphic to tell, or too graphic to show.  But I think that if people did reveal the acts in all their gruesome detail, more people might put more effort into stopping them. 
 
My family was seen as solid middle class. There was a big smokescreen going on. My mum and my step-dad were local councillors. Most people didn’t even know that my step-dad was that. They changed our surname when they married without even asking us. And my brother used to get seriously annoyed when people (as they often did) told him he looked just like his father. He does. It’s just that his step-father wasn’t his father and that’s who they were meaning! People see what they want to see. And you can cover up a lot of domestic abuse if you’re the right class of person. Believe me.
 
Enough of the skipping round. This is a particularly difficult door to open. But here goes. It doesn’t matter which Christmas it was, but here’s some reasons I don’t like Christmas. Where to start? My step-dad had an uncontrollable temper. Nice get out clause eh? He went into ‘red’ rages. We learned early to try and avoid this but we also learned that anything could bring them on. Like the time I was sitting quite peaceably eating breakfast at the kitchen table – a big, heavy wooden one – and some argument kicked off. This time it went beyond the flinging of grill pan and he came towards the table – which I’d just absented myself from on the way out the door, fearful of said grill pan – and he upended the whole thing. It sat in an alcove and he simply turned it upside down with all the ephemera of family breakfast still on it. None of the finesse of a magician pulling a tablecloth from the table and leaving the crockery unharmed. The scene was one of complete devastation. But at least no one was harmed.
 
I did get harmed in the next one. That was unusual. Normally I was a bystander – I learned that if I left the room the violence against my mum could be worse – so I tried to intervene simply by bearing witness. But one time, my threatening to phone the police backfired. I reached for the phone and he reached for my throat, and stood there, throttling me till someone (I don’t remember if it was my mum or brother) managed to get to the phone and start dialling. Then he dropped me. I know kids can be irritating but I will never believe anyone deserves that treatment.
 
Of course, domestic violence, untreated, escalates. And his did. So brace yourself. I should remind you that when not in his red rages, my step-dad was seen by all and sundry as a really friendly, charismatic guy. Learn from that what you will. It taught me to be very, very wary of people who are over-friendly on first meeting  - or at all. Never, as they say, judge a book by its cover. My mum fell for it, she didn’t walk into it eyes open, but once in, it was pretty hard to get out of. 
 
Our family has always been book-crazy. In what was their bedroom at the time there was a whole wall of bookshelves. Again, I don’t know what sparked the rage – it doesn’t matter does it, there’s no excuse for what follows – he turned on my mum. At the time she was pregnant with what would be my little sister and so his rage was turned (we thought) off person onto property. He launched a karate style kick at the shelves – we’re talking about ten shelves loaded with books remember – and he brought them all down. That sort of power is terrifying. The scene was carnage, but obviously not enough for him. This time there were afters. Before anyone could do anything – and what could a 4 foot 6 girl do against a 6 foot 4 man? – he launched at my mum, punched her in her pregnant stomach and the force sent her crumpling back upon the bed.  I remember thinking that he’d beaten up my sibling before she was even born. I wasn’t old enough to realise the potential danger of his action, and fortunately my mum got through it unscathed. He’d gone a step too far, realised it and left the room. Christmas was over for that year. No one spoke for days. Not until the Hogmanay party when everything was back to normal, bright, breezy, party-hosts and my mum never let on a word. Not that I know.
 
Another time a well aimed heavy lead crystal bowl, the kind you’d put a pudding in for a party, was thrown at my mum.  It hit her on the shin and cut right through. Not only were there shards of crystal everywhere but the blood flowed freely. That one ended in a hospital visit. But she didn’t (to my knowledge) tell them what had happened. Doubtless it was a ‘tripped and fell’ explanation or some such. No one asks too many questions if the victim doesn’t volunteer it. And no one volunteers such things because what is the way out? 
 
The last ‘incident’ I didn’t actually see but I saw the consequences of.  They were out in the car, just after New Year shopping. Just when you thought the Christmas flash point had ended. He launched out and broke her nose. That one landed her in hospital for a stay.  I don’t know if she told them how it happened. Probably said it was a car accident. The consequence of that was that he was left in sole charge of us for the best part of a week. Fortunately that week is something of a blank to me. 
 
But these are the memories that Christmas brings back to me. Like the rest of you, I’ve got some of those happy memories from being a small child, the magic of Santa and the joy of ripping open presents. But they cannot be stripped away from the later memories. Domestic violence isn’t just for Christmas, it’s for life and the memories associated with it don’t just come at Christmas. But Christmas was always a flash-point, I think it is for many families and I fail to understand why people keep putting themselves through the stress of it all. I don’t understand why society feels the need to put people under the kind of pressure that so many people can’t handle. There’s definitely something wrong with the profit motive, isn’t there? 

I suppose it might have been part of the never be alone ploy that meant we had a big Hogmanay Party each year. Because while Christmas Day, fraught though it was, generally passed off without a major incident – perhaps indeed because it was well structured and the flashpoints were managed, being obvious in advance – the whole Christmas period extends well beyond ‘the Day.’
 
And when Christmas fell in the middle of the week it meant my step-dad could be at home for the best part of ten days. And that was bound to cause trouble. So my mum extended the rituals to keep something happening and to keep people around. On Boxing Day we developed a tradition of going on a picnic. I know. A picnic in mid-winter. Crazy. Though actually I don’t remember the weather being worse than any other time we planned and executed a family picnic in my childhood.
 
Living in Scotland we got very used to having picnics in the car. We might have been used to it, but it never went smoothly. Someone would always spill something or drop something and spending time with your family in a confined space is the one thing worse than spending Christmas Day in each other’s pockets – in my opinion.  But the Boxing Day picnic was something of a triumph. Because we found a place that not a lot of other people knew about, that no one else would be daft enough to visit on Boxing Day and that was largely under cover, therefore avoiding the worst of the elements.
 
It was along the East Lothian coast just past Tantallon Castle, a place called Cove. It involved a bit of walking, in ‘bracing’ weather, and you had to remember to wrap up warm and take rugs, but mostly, it was a structured activity that took up a lot of time: preparing to get there, getting there, being there and coming back. Of course we ate turkey sandwiches. We were eating turkey sandwiches until Epiphany in our house due to the ridiculous size of turkey that was always bought.   So Boxing Day usually passed without incident, though there’s nothing to say that it wouldn’t all kick off once we got home.
 
But I don’t want you to think that it was awful all the time. It wasn’t. It’s just that I never knew when it would next kick off. The randomness is what caused the permanent knot in my stomach, the constant fear. It was an early lesson in absurdism!  And Advent came to represent the waiting for that year’s flash point which was inevitable to come at some point. However, there were, as I said, some good structured ‘events’ that mitigated for the rest of the time spent figuratively holding my breath.
 
We made it a ritual to go to the Victorian Pantomime at The King’s Theatre on Hogmanay evening. I don’t really like Pantomime, but we had a box and that made it kind of special. Being set a bit apart from all the ‘oh no you didn’t oh yes he did’ crowd made it a bit more palatable and the Victorian style was somewhat less irritating than the ‘modern’ equivalent which just blared pop-music and ‘celebrities’. At least there was some semblance of a ‘classic’ tale like Aladdin or Cinderella.  Modern ones tended to be Puss in Boots or Babes in the Wood and always had some form of sexual innuendo going along with them. The Victorian ones were a deal more classy!  Anyway, I remember enjoying them. In fact almost as much as I came to hate Christmas, I came to love Hogmanay. 
 
First, I suppose was the feeling that we’d nearly survived the whole festive period – scathed or unscathed- if we got through without the intervention of the police or a visit to the hospital it was considered a triumph. And secondly Hogmanay was a big day on our calendar. Bigger than anything in Advent.  My mum loved to host a party. I can’t for the life of me think why. It’s always seemed like a lot of work to me.  But she was happy to put in lots of work to achieve the perfect party. I think she liked to impress. Outward appearances and all that. No one would have been impressed by the reality of our lives, that’s for sure. 
 
So on Hogmanay we used to have a huge party at home – lots of visitors meant less chance of violent outbursts.  As I remember Hogmanay, we spent the day getting ready for the party, then went to the Pantomime and then came home to host a party that went on till the wee small hours.  And that kind of party is the best for kids. Loads of adults not paying attention to you for a prolonged time. 
 
We only came together for the bells, and the rest of the time as I recall we used to play around in the hall, games featuring a sort of balloon badminton or volleyball, while the adults mingled between the lounge and the kitchen.  Adults en masse tended to be in a good mood on Hogmanay – perhaps they too were glad the whole festive season was winding to an end and a ‘new start’ would come along soon. And when adults are enjoying themselves, they’ve no time to get onto the kids.
 
I don’t remember many other kids coming to the party, but there must have been a few, mostly I just remember being ignored by adults and knowing that we were all safe because we were in a house crammed full of grown-ups having a good time.  And – because they were all up late, there would be no early morning hangover, no hoovering as a weapon till at least 10am and the happy glow of having had a good time might linger through until January 3rd by which time it would be back to work and nearly back to school and life would go back on as normal. Whatever normal was. For me, normal was waiting for the next horrific thing to happen and hoping it wasn’t anything I did that caused it. But January always offered something of hope. There was a future to look forward to. I could count down the years until I would be an adult myself, and escape from all this.  

I’ve already laid it out very clearly why Christmas was no longer high on my wish list. But life goes on. Years go on. Christmas is one of the ‘markers’ of the year. My mum still looked forward to it, even though we all knew that it was going to be one of the stress points of the year. Perhaps she thought if she just did it right it would all be okay. Or perhaps she just loved the fact that on Christmas Day she was completely in control.
 
Our family Christmases, even without my dad, had much of the same pattern and observed largely the same ritual, and this was it.  You didn’t get up before 7am. Once stockings were abolished it became 8am, but we weren’t keen to get up by that time anyway.  You got up and you had to eat breakfast which you didn’t want – knowing that the rest of the day would be spend stuffing your face – but which HAD to be eaten before the next part of the ritual could be attempted.
 
As I remember it breakfast was toast made on the grill. No toaster. Why didn’t we have a toaster? The grill didn’t work well. Things either didn’t cook or they burnt. And burnt toast could be enough to spark off ‘a domestic.’ More than once I’ve ducked as a full grill pan, with toast fleeing, came hurling across the kitchen at the wall. And to be totally fair, it wasn’t just my step-dad who did that. My mum took her part in the throwing, shouting, hitting and general bad behaviour that went on.  The only difference was that when he threw things or broke things it was never his things. Even when the ‘red mist’ descended he was well able to make sure his own possessions stayed intact. Whereas when my mum lost it, she picked up the nearest thing – usually a pan – and just threw it. And her aim, fortunately, wasn’t good.  But we learned how to duck.
 
After breakfast we had to wash up. Our new family rule was that the children washed up. Which usually meant that my brother washed and I dried and put away. I needed a stool to reach up to the washing up bowl. So I got to dry. I remember trying to dry pans that were too heavy for me even to lift, dangling them down close to the ground and hoping that this wasn’t ever going to be thrown in my direction!  I remember how carefully I had to undertake the washing up ritual, three times a day at least. Glasses were a particular fear. It’s so easy, even with small hands, to burst a glass. And in our family, all breakages would have to be paid for.
But not usually with money.
 
After washing up my mum hoovered. And we ‘tidied up.’ Everything had to be neat and tidy, at least to start with. My mum used the hoover as a weapon and at Christmas it came into its own. Because at Christmas there were the dreaded pine needles. I don’t believe anyone ever owned Christmas trees that shedded as much as the ones we had. Hoovering had to go on about four times a day during the 12 days the tree lived with us. And don’t let’s go into the palaver of taking it out on Twelfth Night!  In the flat we had high ceilings so we had a huge tree. I’m thinking probably nine feet. And that’s a lot of needles to hoover up.  And sometimes hoovers don’t like sucking up needles. It’s not really what they were designed for.  And a broken hoover was a major disaster in our family. What with it being my mum’s main weapon.
 
The rest of the year you could tell her mood through the hoover. If she started before you got up you knew you were in for trouble. If you didn’t get up, she’d come into the bedroom and if you were still in bed by the time she started hoovering under it, you might as well give up all hope.  At other random times of the day, the hoover was used to equal effect to get you moving. If you were sitting on a sofa or chair and she wanted you to be doing something ‘useful’ but didn’t feel she should tell you – you were supposed to know what needed doing without being told – she’d come and hoover round you.
 
But the Christmas Day hoovering holds a special place in my memory. It was part of the deferring of gratification. No presents could be opened till the last needle had been hoovered up. Early on in the game I realised the complete pointlessness of this activity. After all, the hoover cord was barely rolled up before the first present being taken from under the tree dislodged yet another pine needle. And so it went on. And then, by the nature of Christmas presents, there is wrapping paper and mess attendant. So that as soon as the presents had been opened and gratitude expressed (whether or not you wanted what you got you learned to act grateful!) everything had to be tidied away again and another round of hoovering undertaken.
 
My mum liked to play the martyr and Christmas was the perfect opportunity. We didn’t get up till 8 am or later but she was up much earlier par boiling potatoes and putting Tallullah or Tamara, or Tracy, into the oven.  Opening Christmas presents was just the interval for an orgy of cooking that went on until we were finally presented with Christmas lunch which was had at 2pm on the dot.  And we ate until 3pm at which point everything stopped to hear the Queen. And then we washed up.
 
But this was industrial strength washing up. We were always told that we should give the adults a break for Christmas and wash up after Christmas dinner. No one seemed to notice that we washed up every other day of the year too. Christmas was special. Christmas was about us ‘doing something nice’ and that meant post festivity washing up. It probably took as long to wash up after Christmas dinner as it did to eat it.
 
And then we all had to go out for a walk. Then back for Morecombe and Wise and cold turkey sandwiches. It seemed like if there was enough structured activity all day then we could avoid a ‘domestic’ but equally, it just needed one little thing to go wrong – burned parsnips, the wrong look over the chocolate gateau, the breaking of a glass – to turn peace on earth into World War Two.  But mostly, I think that Christmas Day itself passed with an uneasy truce. For the adults it was probably a relief in a way. But for me, who never knew exactly what or when something was going to kick off, it offered no day of rest, it was just another day walking the tightrope, holding the breath, hoping that if you were ‘a good girl’ Bad Santa wouldn’t come and punish you. 

The next Christmas I think I’m ready for it. I know there’s no Santa. I’ve told them I don’t believe. My brother and I have both said we’re too old for stockings. It makes my mum sad, but my step-dad seems relieved. I don’t understand how my mum, in the face of it all, can still look forward to Christmas, can still ‘believe’ in the magic, but it seems she does. However bad it gets, she’s going to have a good day.
 
She must have a bit more wit than I’m giving her credit for though, because this year it is going to be different. Quite different. This year we’re not alone.  When it’s initially put to me I’m not too keen. We’ve got a family of dad, mum and one boy coming to stay for Christmas. I can’t remember if they’re staying overnight or just coming for Christmas dinner. But looking back I recognise it as the start of my mum’s new strategy. She’s killing two birds with one stone.
 
We have a big flat. Six bedrooms. We have it on a peppercorn rent – or HE does – and my mum’s idea is that if we have other people there, they will act as the distraction that has previously been reserved for the threat of calling the police. He won’t behave as badly when other people are there (is the theory.) And the second bird is – we can sublet. Charge people, usually students, to come and live in the spare rooms. Those students may not know it, but they’ll keep us safe. They’ll keep me safe. Or safer. Because they’re not always there. And sometimes they can’t stand the atmosphere so they move on. Often they ‘flit’ in the middle of the night, owing rent or not owing rent. It’s a tough gig living with us. The foreign students stay longer. They don’t pick up the vibes as easily.  But I’m getting ahead of myself and outside my Christmas remit – we haven’t had the students yet – but this year we’re giving some homeless people a Happy Christmas.
 
My brother and I are corralled into the sitting room while it’s explained to us that in the spirit of Christmas, and it’s better to give than receive… and that while it should be a time for family… and I’m not even listening. Yes, it would be a bit disappointing to have to make room at the inn for strangers if you were anticipating a Happy Family Christmas, but for me it just seems like the greatest idea.
 
We don’t have any more money of course, so sacrifices must be made. That’s when we tell them we don’t believe in Santa and we don’t need stockings. And the boy can have whatever present he wants, we don’t need anything.  I certainly don’t remember any Christmas present I got in the next seven years so whatever they bought me was a total waste. You can’t buy your way out of this sort of hell. There’s no advent calendars any more, it’s just a lot of stress leading up to a couple of days when the chances are that extreme violence will be served up along with endless turkey.
 
But this year, no. Because this year we are hosting the homeless. I think they only stayed one night. I wouldn’t blame them. I don’t honestly remember much about it. In the same way that my happy Christmases blur into one and all occurred before the age of seven, Christmases from age eight to fifteen were all one blur too. A different kind of blur. Where I learned that domestic violence is not just for Christmas, but Christmas does seem to bring out the worst manifestations.
 
Counting down the days is no longer anything of a treat. I wonder what it was like for those homeless people. It’s a strange thing, to know that you’ve shared an important event with people you can’t even remember.  I wonder if they saw through the fake glitter. I wonder if they wished we’d not had room at our inn.
 
They will have had a great feed though. My mum never missed out on the opportunity to put on a massive spread at Christmas. I remember going to the shops, and like that early hunt for the best Santa, we used to trawl round till we found the biggest bird that would possibly go into our oven. I remember standing watching it go along the conveyor belt in the supermarket – supermarkets were new and smaller in those days and conveyor belts were quite exciting. I remember we started a ritual of naming the bird. Always something beginning with T.  Tallullah, or Tracey or something. As outlandish as possible. I think my brother started that Christmas tradition. It seemed a bit ghoulish, but perhaps we needed some gallows humour in those days. It made us laugh anyway and few things did back then.
 
I remember having to go out and buy my step-dad a Christmas present. Every fibre of my being resisted it. I hated him for what he had done to my life and what he continued to do every day – including Christmas – and I hated the hypocrisy of having to be thoughtful, buy him something, and something that wasn’t socks or gloves, something ‘good’ so that he’d be pleased. It certainly took all the joy out of shopping. What do you buy for the man you wish you’d never met? Of course I can appreciate that it wasn’t all his fault. He had mental health issues. As did my mum. They should never have got together. These things happen I suppose. But like I learned when I opened the advent calendar early, actions have consequences and consequences are not just for Christmas. Some of them last a lifetime. If you live that long. 

Opening today’s door, we’re a year or two on. A lot has happened. For one thing my parents have now split up. We don’t see my dad any more. That door has long since been shut. In his place is a man who wants us to call him ‘papa’ but who is no sort of role model for a father figure. I miss my dad. We’ve moved from Dundee to Edinburgh, leaving the house and school I loved. The Happy Christmas phase is well and truly over. The rest of my childhood is a living hell. And worse at Christmas.
 
That first Christmas under the new regime I had more or less given up on Santa. I had more or less given up on everything. My life had been turned completely upside down and everything I believed in had not just been questioned, but ripped apart, scrunched up and thrown in the bin like so much wrapping paper. The glitter, it’s fair to say, had truly worn off.
 
Instead of a house with a garden we now lived in a top floor flat. There’s a park outside, but it’s not the same. There’s danger everywhere. I hate getting sent out in the dark for milk or whatever it is that my mum’s forgotten to buy to make the tea. I hate my new school and my new school mates appear to hate me. They lie in wait for me on the way home and slap and kick me. I tell my mum and she goes to the school and it only makes things worse. So I don’t tell. I just try and vary my route home. On the up-side, as we come near Christmas, there is a working fireplace and we’re on the top floor so Santa, if he existed, wouldn’t have far to come.
 
I don’t know why this happened. I thought we were all happy. I never heard my parents raise their voices. Which is totally different to now. Like I said, there is danger everywhere. And its worst inside the door of what, looking back, I find impossible to call home. My new step-dad has a temper. And then some. And I don’t understand that either. He doesn’t drink so there’s not that excuse.  It seems to come out of nowhere. He’s fine until something upsets him or someone crosses him or something goes wrong. And of course in life, however much you try to walk on eggshells and do the right thing, there’s always something which can upset someone and there’s always something to go wrong.
 
And especially at Christmas. By this time I’ve grown used to standing outside doors listening to rows. And the one I hear this year is the final nail in the coffin for Santa. In some families rows end with slamming doors and silence. In this new family unit rows usually end with someone getting injured. And it isn’t my step-dad. Things are thrown and they get broken and then people get hurt. Sometimes it’s me. Mostly it’s my mum. She provokes him more, but she doesn’t deserve it. None of us deserve it. It’s no way to live. But we’re living it. We’re facing our first Christmas in the trenches.
 
I’m standing outside the door and I hear the ebb and flow of voices. I’m wondering whether I should go in, because I’ve learned that while it’s dangerous to enter the fray, if I do I might be able to stop him hitting her. I’m learning about intervention. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it just gives them pause for a moment. Sometimes he diverts his anger onto me of course, but that’s the price you pay isn’t it? Sometimes you have to sacrifice your body to the team? And sometimes we learn that if you go to the phone and say you’re calling the police, it stops him.  Like all escalating events though, this only works so far. One time you do actually have to call the police. They come. And when my mum refuses to ‘press charges’ they go away again – a domestic they call it – and they seem to hold her in scorn. But what can she do? Unless they took him away then and there and put him in prison, we’d just be in a worse situation.
 
The one thing none of them, not one of them, seems to see is two children who should not be going through this.  No one suggests that we’re ‘at risk.’ We’re a nice middle class family having a ‘domestic’ you see. So though we might get threatened with the children’s home by my mum (and often it seems like a decent alternative to the hell we’re living through) we know there’s no escape. I say we but by this time my brother and I are living pretty isolated lives. I’ve enough to cope with living through this for myself. You might think that ‘at least we have each other’ but I don’t recall that being the case. I just recall being frightened and alone all the time.
 
I’m standing outside the door. As usual. And the argument is about Christmas. I curse myself. I curse Santa. I curse Christmas. Of all the things to have a row about. This is so unnecessary. I keep listening. My step-dad is shouting about the money. Or lack of it. I don’t remember the fine detail, but obviously my mum – who loves Christmas - wants to give us more expensive presents than either he thinks right, or than we can afford. Who knows what we can afford any more?
 
The whole Santa myth crashes right down on my head in that one moment. This is what’s wrong with the lie. That for every family who happily run along playing Santa, there’s another family for whom the ‘secret’ means financial hardship.  Spending money to keep children happy. It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong before I’m eight years old, and I don’t want it. I don’t want them to be coming to blows about my Christmas stocking. I don’t want to be the cause of any of this. I don’t want Christmas at all if this is the ‘spirit’ in which it’s to be played out now. I want more than anything to go into the room and shout, ‘I know Santa doesn’t exist so stop arguing. I don’t want any presents. I don’t need a stocking. I just want things to be like they were.’
 
And of course the one thing I really, really want for Christmas is the one thing I know I won’t get. My dad back. During my many nightmares, where my brain tries to make sense of the violence; through dreams of black clouds and rushing railway trains and cages filled with dripping meat in underground caves, I keep wishing and hoping that my dad will come in and save me. I need saving, not stocking fillers. There will be no peace on earth in this house for Christmas that’s for sure.
 
But I don’t go in. I go to my room to read a book and hope the shouting ends soon without too much bloodshed.  Later, on what I assume must be Christmas Eve I discover another secret.  I think I was probably on my way to bed but the old rituals of dressing the tree and getting together and sitting on laps with cuddles has gone and it’s more of a creeping quietly round the flat trying to work out where HE is and keeping out of the way. The door to the living room is open. I’m about to go in, but I see HE is there and as I silently retreat I see that he is writing ‘Santa’ large on a card that he’s about to attach to the top of a filled stocking. It is the ultimate irony. And it makes me sick to my stomach.
 
He’s trying to con me into thinking he’s Santa? He’s playing Santa to me? Come on. Apart from the fact that he has the most ridiculously ornate calligraphy styled handwriting which he always uses – is so proud of - so that it would be recognisable even in a court of law, the fact that I’m going to be expected to wake up in the morning and take joy in this thing that has been the cause of all that fear – it’s just not going to happen.
 
In the years that follow I often wake at four in the morning, but I’ll never again wake with the excitement of a stocking full of presents at the bottom of my bed. It’s not my step-dad’s fault that Santa doesn’t exist, but he didn’t have to forge his signature. Not after shouting about how we can’t afford Christmas. Not after making us feel guilty for even being there. So this is the year I really started hating Christmas. And I think you can probably allow me that.  There is no good will to all men here except blaring out on the radio or record player. It’s a tinny equivalent and the real thing in no way lives up to the billing. 

But among the dolls I did get some good presents. I just can’t remember which came when. One year I got a plastic Dalek suit. It was great. Plastic was, as I’ve mentioned before, the must have thing in my childhood. This Dalek suit was red (television was still in black and white so the colour was a surprise. There was a heavy (for a child) black helmet with the iconic plastic stalk on the front of the ‘face’ and this huge, enveloping red with black dots plastic body. It went on over the head and I ran around endlessly shouting ‘ ‘sterminate, ‘sterminate.’  I remember that we adapted the Dalek suit (as we did most of our toys) later on, turning it upside down to play Siamese Twins. If we put it on that way we had plenty of room at the top and it tapered down so that our feet were pretty well stuck together at the bottom. No so much running around that way, but it still amused us!
 
But the last best Christmas and presents I can remember as a child happened the Christmas we stayed at my grandparents. Of course I was fully expecting more doll horror along with the Christmas Annual which was my grandparents’ standard offering. And I was somewhat concerned that Santa (who I really wasn’t sure even existed any more) would find us.  I was re-convinced when shown that my grandparents had a real chimney. So in fact it would be easier for Santa to find us. And hadn’t I written him a letter telling him we were going to be at our grandparents for Christmas? Of course I had.  But I didn’t give him the address. I didn’t know the address, I just knew it was Grandma and Grandad’s and a long way in the car.  I was reassured that Santa would know the address.  I finally bought it. I mean, if he can flee round the world in one night delivering presents to all the good children, a small thing like a change of address isn’t going to stump him now, is it?
 
That last ‘Happy’ Christmas does stick in my memory. So I’ll open one last door with a nice picture for you. I warn you, it’s all going to get a lot darker from here on. A lot less fantasy, and a lot more real.
 
My grandfather smoked a pipe. And cigars. And cigarettes. It wasn’t that unusual in those days but my grandma didn’t like it. So he was banished to one room in the house which was a constant fug of smoke. I quite liked the smell, of the cigars and the pipe tobacco at least. And I loved my grandad. My grandma, I could well do without. She was the buyer of dolls. And through the year she sent monthly magazines for which we had to write thank you letters, even though she sent magazines we didn’t want to read instead of ‘The Beano,’ ‘Roy of the Rovers’ or the ones we did.  She sent improving magazines with ‘facts’ and ‘knowledge.’ We wanted entertainment. Grandad knew that.
 
I remember clearly that he took me on his knee in his room during that Christmas and proceeded to read me Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  ‘Marley was dead: to begin with, there is no doubt about that.’  I was hooked. We must have had several sessions of it, and I have an overwhelming fuzzy happy memory of the whole thing. Apart from one moment which I’ve never been able to make sense of. And almost can’t believe.  It alerts me to the fact that memory is not always fixed, not always reliable and not always clear.
 
Grandad was one of those who played the coin behind the ear trick, and the blowing smoke out of the nose trick. Was it nose? Or ear? I can’t remember. Anyway, at one point in the narrative (I think I remember) he broke off and told me to put my hand on his chest and if I pressed I’d be able to see smoke coming out of whatever orifice it was.  And then, while I was looking hard, I felt a sharp burn. He’d put the end of the match on my skin.  Now, even as I’m writing this I can’t believe it. Why would you do that to a child? Why would my grandfather do that? I’ve even tried to remember it and wondered if he stubbed the end of a cigarette on the back of my hand, but I cannot believe that was what happened.  The memory is too vague for me to really know what I experienced then or what in fact he did, though the sense of pain and shock is still real. He didn’t blow smoke out of his ears that’s for sure. I will wonder for ever what it was that actually happened. Obviously he was playing a joke and maybe he made a mistake, maybe he never thought of the consequences. I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt me, and I’m definitely not accusing him of anything.
 
After all, I have a memory of my father shutting my fingers in the hinge of the door. He did it. But he didn’t know he did it. He was the other side of the door. My fingers shouldn’t have been there and he didn’t know they were. But for a child that sense of something going wrong and the realisation that adults don’t always keep you safe, is palpable. The fact that everything that went wrong in my childhood happened (what seemed) horribly soon after the fingers in door incident, didn’t help to make it seem less significant. It was the first sign that my father, in whom I trusted implicitly, could hurt me. And he did. In absentia. A door was shut metaphorically that was more painful than the real one. A pain that has lasted most of a lifetime.
 
But let’s hang onto the good memories as long as we can.  If I can shut my eyes over the moment of madness of the pipe/match/smoke in ears, and focus on the frisson of fear yet total excitement of the Dickens narrative as told by my grandad, then I’m ready to complete that final Happy Christmas.
 
The presents that year were amazing. Maybe I got a doll. I don’t know or care. Because what I did get, what we both got, were space hoppers. Giant orange bouncy plastic. It gets no better for a child of the late sixties/early seventies.  But wait, it does get better. Because I also got a Red Indian outfit. Not a full head-dress, more the sort of squaw type Indian, and if I think back carefully the top was probably more like a tabard (the kind of thing I hate in normal life, the kind of thing cleaners wear or they got you to wear during craft sessions at school so that you didn’t get your clothes dirty. I hated craft sessions).Why force us to wear tabards when dad’s old shirt on backwards would do just as well? That’s what we used at home.
 
The Indian suit did have fringing on it though. That was the main thing. Fringing on the trousers and on the top. And it wasn’t a cowboy suit. Because I was always the one for the underdog. If we played Cowboys and Indians, I was always the Indian. If we played Batman and Robin, I was Robin. I don’t remember whether my brother got a cowboy suit when I got my Indian one, I think he’d have been too old to appreciate that. And I have no idea what he got when I had the Dalek suit – what present could possibly have topped that?  But I do remember that Christmas at my grandparents there was none of the usual torment that went with our Christmas mornings. I’m sure my mum and grandma were horns locked over who could be the most martyr-ish regarding cooking Christmas dinner but we had both a grandad and a dad to keep them at bay and a huge garden to run up and down, and bounce up and down.
 
I remember that initially the Space Hoppers were to be played with indoors but soon we’d caused enough mayhem that we were allowed to risk the fact that plastic might burst – so stay off the gravel – and bounce them up and down the garden.  In my case, dressed as a Red Indian. I may have been the only Red Indian ever to master a space-hopper! There’s no such thing as incongruity in a child’s imaginative play. It was a great Christmas. The last great one ever. But even Space Hoppers don’t last for ever. And sooner or later you have to face the fact that Santa doesn’t exist. But that will keep till tomorrow. 

... to the non-believers 
 
When I look back on childhood Christmases they do seem to meld into one or two ‘iconic’ ones. Some of the events I’m recalling must have happened during the same festive season, but under the age of seven I wasn’t really paying attention and they all do tend to collapse into one loose memory where chronology seems unimportant. In general I think when is probably less important to children than what. Anyway, I call these memories the ‘Happy Christmas’ period.  That happiness was soon enough to end, and while I’m wise enough now to know that it wasn’t my Advent calendar crime that sparked off all that followed, I think that was the year that marked the beginning of the end. Let’s assume it was the same year that my brother really started agitating that Santa didn’t exist.
 
I suppose that I was now getting ready to accept the fact, because after all, I’d committed the crime and I hadn’t been a good girl and so if I believed in Santa he’d not be rewarding me but punishing me, and why believe in someone who is only out to punish you if you fall short of their intolerably high standards?  This is a question that might be asked of all the Old Testament type religions.  God, and his representative on earth Santa, ought to be love, not accountants doing an audit on how ‘good’ people are. But it all gets warped too early on. There’s far too much scope in the whole Santa myth (and for my money the whole God myth) for things to turn bad, to be bad and to make people feel worthless and guilty. There’s not enough love in the world.
 
So, for a time, the space maybe of several advent calendar openings, I toyed with the idea that my brother was right. That Santa didn’t exist. I started an investigation. Asked for evidence (but not too much evidence, I still wasn’t totally ready to lose the ‘free’ gifts.)
‘So who is it?’ I asked.
‘Our parents,’ he replied.
‘But how about the carrots and the water and the mince pies?’ I asked.
He rolled his eyes. He was three years older and experienced in the difference between circumstantial and ‘real’ evidence.’
‘And I’ve heard reindeer,’ I said. I didn’t want to let go. I was clutching at straws. ‘On the roof.’
‘Well stay awake all night and you’ll see he doesn’t come,’ he said.
Now that was just stupid. Now I knew Santa existed and my brother was just trying to get me into trouble.
‘Of course he won’t come if I stay awake all night,’ I reasoned. ‘He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake…’ I quoted what is not strictly a carol but a Christmas Song all the same.
Eyes rolled again. ‘You’re too old to be so stupid,’ he said. ‘Ask at school. You’ll see. No one believes in Santa when they’re seven.’
‘But I’m not seven yet,’ I said.
 
My brother was a player, even before we knew what one was. Maybe it’s the province of the elder child. They’ve seen it all before. They are destined to know more than you right through the joint childhood which you share but which is not conducted on an equal basis.  You feel aggrieved that they get to stay up later, seem to be treated better; whereas they bang on about the responsibility of being elder and never quite get over that you were the manifestation of a ‘surprise’ they found they didn’t really want and certainly never asked for.  I guess if you’ve suffered the ‘surprise’ of getting a little sister when you were hoping for some more model train track, you are going to see through Santa pretty quickly.
 
But for me, the best evidence at all for the existence of Santa was that my brother was becoming insistent that I should stop believing. I became sure it was part of a plan – probably in revenge for the advent calendar incident, which he probably knew about but hadn’t said – he was probably working on the revenge is a dish best served cold plan. The more he kept telling me, giving me what he stated was incontrovertible evidence, the less I believed him.
 
The one question I didn’t ask him in my exploration into ‘truth’ was – why. If Santa doesn’t exist then why do our parents pretend he does? It was a question I did turn round in my own head, or started to that year. And it was a question that would come to the fore soon enough. But that year, while I was still desperately clinging on to the myth with the tinsel, I didn’t ask why.
 
I played along with all the ritual. We fought over hanging the decorations on the Christmas tree. Our family always had a real Christmas tree. Like everyone else the fairy lights always broke so that was the first family argument. Then we couldn’t find the baubles. Then someone broke one of them – always a special one – and was chastised. Then we argued about what should go on top of the tree – a star or an angel.
 
Our tree was always a last minute affair, put up on Christmas Eve.  One year when I was very young, I remember going to buy the Christmas tree with my dad. We went round a nursery, it was a bit reminiscent of the ‘pick the most photogenic Santa’ affair, and we picked out our own tree, brought it home on the roof of the car and into the bucket it went.  That tree, like every other tree we had, started shedding needles straight away so that even Christmas Day was not a hoover free day. Indeed, hoovering had to be done before presents could be opened.  The torment of Christmas morning was seemingly never ending. It was always ‘no presents till after’  and ‘no presents till after’ as they sat there stacked under the tree. And heaven help us if we actually went under the tree before Christmas morning to see which present was allotted to whom. It was strictly a no-go zone, and that not just because of dodgy fairy lights and shedding needles.
 
Stockings were the big pull for me. Consequently Santa was probably the best bit of Christmas. And that’s because you were on your own, in charge of your own ‘fun.’ As long as you were quiet you could wake as early as you liked and as long as you kept yourself quiet you could have a good couple of hours of enjoying the presents before you had to get up, eat breakfast, jump through the many present opening hoops and begin on the ‘oh that’s lovely’ routine where you show the right amount of gratitude for each gift. In my case this was often hard because one of my grannies insisted on sending me dolls and I was not a doll type child.
 
In my time I got small china dolls that couldn’t be taken out of the box, baby dolls that cried and wet themselves (I buried that one in the garden) A Cindy doll when my brother got an Action Man, (I got an Action man for my birthday that year, so I obviously didn’t disguise my lack of gratitude that well!) and one year this huge doll nearly the same size as me. I remember she was called Susan and I was pretty scared of her to tell the truth. At least she wasn’t a present from Santa. If she had been, I’d have known he didn’t exist. 

Another Advent ritual, one that happened very early on – and may indeed have been before the Calendar itself was hung each year – was the making of the Christmas pudding. Yes, in the good old days before microwaves and consumer capitalism took over the world, puddings were made by hand.
 
I’m guessing it would be the first weekend in December, or it could have been as early as the first weekend after Guy Fawkes, the Christmas pudding was made.
 
Even as a small child I didn’t like Christmas pudding. It has always been too rich for me. But what I did like was the process of making the pudding. It’s up there with the memory of Listen with Mother – ‘are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.’ Though obviously if we made our Christmas pudding on a weekend Listen with Mother wouldn’t be on. You can’t trust memory 100 %.  Things get mixed up, like the pudding. But the ingredients remain the same.
 
My mother used one of those big buff ceramic bowls with patterns on the outside and inside it was white. It was also used throughout the year for making other cakes – and it was the nirvana from which we got raw chocolate cake mix on a wooden spoon.  The treat of getting to ‘lick the spoon’ was an excitement not just reserved for Christmas.  Indeed licking the spoon wasn’t part of the Christmas pudding ritual. It was substituted by being allowed to stir the pudding.
 
I remember the weight of the spoon as it worked its way through the thick mixture. I remember standing on a stool to reach up above the kitchen counter so that I could get enough purchase to actually move the spoon round the bowl. I didn’t pick up the bowl and stir with it under my arm as my mum did. I couldn’t even lift the bowl.  But I took my turn in stirring.
 
The stirring was good but the most exciting bit was the dropping in of the sixpences. I don’t know how anyone else did it but in my house we wrapped sixpences in silver paper and dropped them into the mix, then stirred them in. I remember wondering if I could in any way control and then remember where they ended up.  I don’t know how many we put in, but it wouldn’t have been more than two or three. It wasn’t like you were going to get a sixpence with each portion. No, in the days before the Lottery, getting a sixpence in your Christmas pudding was like winning the lottery.
 
It always gave me a dilemma. Like I said, I’ve never really liked the richness of Christmas pudding and after a roast turkey with all the trimmings (on top of all that pre breakfast chocolate!) I could most happily have said no to it. Except for the prospect of getting a silver sixpence.  Sixpence wasn’t a huge amount of money in those days, but it would buy you a quarter of humbugs at least.  So I weighed up the  options and I always opted for the pudding.
 
Then I picked my way through it – you had to - because there was nothing worse than biting into tin foil, unless it was not getting a silver sixpence at all and being faced with having to eat a whole plateful of the stodgy, rich pudding.  No one wanted to trade Christmas pudding. Even those who loved it couldn’t eat more than one portion. And at Christmas dinner, at least in our house where we still knew that there were starving children -  Biafrans in those days if I recall correctly – it was not the done thing to try to fob off your good food.  Usually I could get away with palming something to my brother. But at Christmas dinner you were under the spotlight. You didn’t want anything to spoil the cracker pulling moment, which wouldn’t  happen till everyone had a clean pudding plate.
 
Perhaps it was during Christmas dinner that I first realised the painful power of ritual. The mountain of food I didn’t really like, and didn’t have room for, playing against the guilt of someone having put themselves out – and my mum really did love to go to town cooking Christmas dinner. It was her favourite meal of the year, she always said. It was my least favourite.  Turkey has always tasted bland to me, like chicken that needs salt on it. I’ve never been a fan of ‘proper’ roast potatoes –all that goose fat or lard – and my mum was of the old school for whom a vegetable really had to be boiled to perdition before it was put on a plate. Gravy, stuffing, chipolata sausages, it all just added to the pile that had to be forced down my throat in full knowledge that Christmas pudding was the next inevitable step. And that you had to ‘enjoy’ every mouthful or you were ungrateful. And being ungrateful that soon after Santa had been was unconscionable.
 
My childhood was really the age of plastic. But you didn’t dare suggest putting leftovers from Christmas dinner into Tupperware.  The toys we treasured at Christmas were plastic and usually didn’t need batteries. But I certainly needed recharging after Christmas Dinner. With the prospect of cold turkey sandwiches and home-made Christmas cake to come, let’s just say I was not in my epicurean heaven. Christmas cake is overkill. It’s just cold Christmas pudding without the silver sixpence but with the addition of marzipan and icing. I liked the icing but not the marzipan. That’s Christmas for you, isn’t it? Everything’s a trade off between what you like and what you don’t. But you have to act like you’re having a great time, however sick you feel. At least we did in my family. Even by the time I was 6, Christmas was starting to lose its glitter. 

Christmas had been a magical time for me, as I suppose it is for most children, and that’s why, I suppose people keep on doing it – but nothing that magical can last. I was six when I first felt guilt. And when I knew that if Santa asked me if I’d been good, I wouldn’t be able to put hand on heart and say yes.
 
And it was all down to advent calendars.
 
Unlike today, in my childhood an advent calendar was a pretty simple affair. And my brother and I had one between us. To teach us how to share. In those days advent calendars were a way of counting down the days, not the giver of daily gifts or chocolates or daily brand promotion like they are today. So why would each child need their own? There were two of us, so we took turns opening the door.  It was a ritual first thing in the morning, before breakfast. We would gather round the advent calendar, which as I remember was hung (or stuck) on the wall by the cupboard under the stairs. The cupboard which houses adult exciting consumer items like the Hoover and the ironing board.  Just along from the twin-tub. Oh, we had it all!
 
There it hung. The Advent Calendar. Teaching us the date and how to share. Turn and turn about. It was exciting – for a moment – to open the door and find what the picture was. Even though what it was wasn’t exciting at all. A picture of a gift box, a tree. You know, I can’t for the life of me remember what was behind those doors, but you knew that on 24th you’d get the nativity scene behind a bigger box. So that if you were on the even days (as I usually was, because after all I was the second child) you had one less surprise to come.
 
I think this was somewhere in the back of my head in my warped logic as I prepared to commit my crime. 
 
It was early in December. There were at least 20 doors to be opened. The anticipation was the biggest part of the excitement. That every day you would find something new, something you couldn’t know about till that little cardboard door was prised back.  But the year I was six (at least I think it was then) I did a terrible thing. My first terrible thing.  I opened my brother’s door. A day ahead.
 
I might blame it on my reading matter. ‘My Naughty Little Sister’ was a favourite and I clearly remember Bad Harry sneaking in and eating all the little silver balls off the cake. I remember the warm spread of guilt up my own neck, allied with some kind of a vicarious thrill of the crime as I read it.  I didn’t think carefully about the consequences. I obviously got lost in the narrative. I was a copycat criminal. I have no other excuse.
 
It was a pre-meditated crime. It had to be. I had to find a time when I could be alone in the hallway, when everyone else was busy, so that I could open the door, peek inside and shut it again.  Which I did. I hadn’t reckoned on two things. One that it would be the devil’s own job to shut that little door again and make it look unopened. I really should have figured that out in advance! And the second thing was the sense of guilt. Now that one I could never be prepared for, even given my experience of Bad Harry. I learned the difference between reading and doing! The guilt was all consuming. From the moment I opened that door it was like Pandora had opened the box. It was an act that could never be undone. Could never be expunged from my life. All I could do was tell, or keep it a secret. 
 
I kept it a secret. Till now. That’s one door open which will never be shut again.
 
You’ll probably be laughing by now. It’s hardly crime of the century is it? But it serves as my first (and not last) experience of feeling real, personal guilt. And it never went away. It coloured everything about that Christmas, and everything about Christmases after that. I never wanted another Advent Calendar. The excitement of opening doors was never to be mine again. Every time I looked at one, I remembered what I’d done. I’d cheated. I was not to be trusted. I’d stolen from my brother.  Even though he probably never knew and certainly never cared - it’s just a lame picture of a donkey or a ball or some such isn’t it? Even though it never mattered to anyone else in the world, it was my shame.
 
The worst was standing there the next morning. Pretending to be excited that I didn’t know what was behind the door. Hoping that no one noticed it wasn’t quite as stuck down as it had been. Returning to the scene of the crime isn’t a comfortable feeling, believe me.  And all around me, Advent continued along its ding dong merrily on high way.  No one knew. But I knew. And Santa would know. I was NOT a good girl. And there was no way back.  It was the first step towards not believing in Santa. All the good work of the previous year with Pippin Fort was lost in the mists of time. No way would that miracle ever be repeated.
 
I remember the next even day telling my brother that he could open my door if he wanted – that I didn’t care. I remember him looking at me strangely. I thought he knew. He probably just wondered what was wrong with me. Why make such a fuss? It’s a little cardboard door. From that moment on the ritual lost its charm. The potency of excitement of the unknown was lost in the reality of guilt.  I hated Advent Calendars. I hated myself. And I learned the most valuable lesson of my life. Actions have consequences. And consequences can hang around a long, long time. So be very careful what you do and think before you act.