Who is going to be where and with whom over Christmas? At either end of our lives, things become simpler because the decision tends to be made for us. It’s in midlife when the arrangements are at peak complexity. In your early days, if – and it’s a big if – you’re not split between two parents, then you have Christmas at home or, in a foretaste of tricky stuff to come, at one or other set of grandparents. Then you grow up and, should you partner up with someone, there will have to be a discussion as to whose family you go to. Throw children into the mix and the pressure ratchets up a notch or two. Because Christmas is all about the children, as we established when we were children ourselves, therefore everyone’s preferred option is to be with the bairns, and they can’t be everywhere.
Come midlife, you have adult children – and possibly their children! – to think about as well as your aged parents. Throw in a divorce or two in one or more of these generations and it all gets positively byzantine. There are your siblings, too, and their families to factor into your plans. Or you may be factored into their plans. Competing plans may clash, causing the logistics computer in your brain to crash. A reboot and rethink will be necessary.
Venn diagrams, flow charts and spreadsheets flash-crowd my mind. I have worked out that if we go to A on Christmas Eve and are with B on Christmas morning and C in the afternoon, then on Boxing Day D and E can come to join us at C. Bingo! That’s everyone sorted (apart from F and possibly G, who will be very upset and might both have to resort to going to H).
It’s Christmas Whac-a-Mole, in which dealing with one problem merely raises another. It’s mind-bending and guilt-inducing. I am looking forward to being ancient, without agency in this matter, shuffled off to whichever member of my family hasn’t come up with a good enough reason not to have me that year.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
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