Ghosts of Christmas past

I am watching A Muppet Christmas Carol, the fire is lit, the cat is sleeping. The box of Thorntons chocolates is open, as is the first bottle of Prosecco. My family are here, helping to prepare food, relaxing, catching up and appreciating the opportunity to be together. I am acutely aware that there are many other Christmas scenes. I follow the poet Lemn Sissay on Facebook, and he is sharing the preparations for special Christmas day celebrations for young care leavers in Hackney and Manchester tomorrow. What a brilliant way of celebrating the spirit of Christmas. The recent tragedy in Glasgow is heartbreaking. This time of year focuses joys and sorrows like no other, with its emphasis on the importance of family. Such a loss at this time of year is unbearable to contemplate. Christmas also focuses the memories, tracking back through the decades. The first Christmas without my dad, when he was working in Nigeria. There's a serious black and white photograph of my sisters and I round a tinsel Christmas tree. We recorded a tape to send to him, reel to reel on a Uher, with our festive wishes. My only memory of that time is of a deep melancholy, yet I know my mum would have been doing her best to make it a happy time back home in Manchester. Then there was our first Christmas term at boarding school,unhappy and out of place. A three day plane journey took us to the other side of the world, to join our parents in an surreal equatorial and exotic world. A post colonial Christmas at the club and jungle longhouses to visit, shrunken heads hung like baubles in the rafters. As I continue to search for a proper job and contemplate temporary unemployment in the new year, I am also acutely aware of the struggle for employment and a sense of worth that many of the young people I know are experiencing at the moment. I know I'm worth it even if no one else seems to! But that comes from years of experiences and excitements. I have a secure home and a lovely family. I look at some of their situations and recall the decisions I made in my late teens and early twenties that must have been difficult for my parents. And coincidentally Christmas was the time of year when things came to a head. The break up with the drug dealing boyfriend. The decision to drop out of my first university after a term. It all worked out in the long term, and here I am writing this. So as the year turns and we move towards 2015 I take heart from the memories of Christmas and wish all those who read this the best of times.