New Traditions

I love Christmas.

I love Christmas films. I love Christmas music. I love Christmas parties. I love tinsel and fairy lights and commemorative baubles. I love mulled wine and pumpkin pie and those Christmas tree brownies that they do in Starbucks which are just a normal brownie cut into a triangle and turned on it’s side. Christmas, for me, is a celebration of warmth and light and glitter, right in the middle of what can be a really difficult time for a lot of people. Christmas has pizzazz, and I love pizzazz.

I love Christmas traditions: the ones we all share, and the ones we make for our-selves.

We have Chinese food for Christmas dinner every year.

A few years ago, I was in Edinburgh with my family. It was three days before Christmas, the day before my boyfriend’s birthday, and we were going out to celebrate that night. He was working, and the plan was that he’d go home and get ready, then I’d meet him off the train for dinner, and we’d head out for drinks with some of his friends. It had been a good day, and I was excited for a good night out.

Me and my sister were sitting in the mall at Edinburgh Waverley, eating a (fes-tive) Greggs and waiting for my Mum to get back from her (festive) pilgrimage to the big Primark - her own Christmas tradition - before they got their train back. We’d done the Christmas market, checked out a Christmas exhibition at one of the galleries, and had dinner at Pizza Express, which was not very Christmassy per se, but was still nice.

My phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognise.

‘Is this Michael Richardson?’ A gruff voice.

‘Who’s this?’

‘There’s been an accident.’

It was a nurse, calling from the hospital. There had been an accident.

My boyfriend had been walking home from work to get ready for our night out when, whilst crossing the road, he’d been hit by a car.

It would later turn out that it was the women from a nearby strip club who had phoned in the accident. When I think about them, they’re standing at the win-dow, topless and shocked, before flying into action.

I owe those strippers everything.

‘Will he be okay?’ I can remember asking the nurse on the phone.

The nurse didn’t say anything. I don’t imagine they’re allowed to say anything.

I don’t even remember what happened next except there was a part where I was crying on a Scotrail train, and then somehow I was back in Glasgow, in a taxi to the hospital with my Mum.

We sat in the waiting room at the Infirmary, and it was weird to have to drink bad coffee from a vending machine and talk about what we’d been watching on telly while, somewhere behind the A&E doors, my boyfriend was being stabilised and checked over by doctors for god knows what.

Somewhere, in the back of my head, there was this nagging thought that they weren’t letting me see him because something was wrong.

About two hours later, they finally let us through. Callum, my boyfriend, was on his way to have an X-ray, but I could see him, for a bit.

My strongest memory from that time is this image of Callum sitting up on a gur-ney. His face was a mess, still bloody and starting to bruise, and all the drugs they’d given him to manage the pain had somehow made him bloat. He seemed bigger than life, and if it wasn’t so frightening it would have been funny.

The X-ray showed that he’d fractured his cheek bone and part of his eye socket. He would need a metal plate fitted, but that wouldn’t be until after Christmas,

Still, they wanted to keep him in for a few days, until they were sure he was sta-ble. I went home with my Mum and sobbed.

Sometimes, when really big, scary things happen, the only thing you can do is sweat the small stuff, because that’s the only thing that seems manageable. So every day, while I sat next to his hospital bed, reading books while he slept and sharing the same pair of earphones so we could listen to podcasts while he was awake, I worried about traditions.

I worried about not being able to open Christmas presents. I worried about not being able to make Christmas dinner together. I worried, mostly, that I wouldn’t get to see him on Christmas day, or that we’d both have to spend Christmas Day on the ward.

I even worried about what I was watching on telly. When I came home at night, and my brain wasn’t up to much but still wouldn’t turn off, I watched a bunch of properly bargain basement rom coms on Netflix, because I didn’t want to watch anything I actually liked incase it became ‘tainted’ with horrible memories or a horrible time.

Again, a big, scary thing had happened, and all I could do was sweat the small stuff.

Late on Christmas Eve, we got the best news: he had been stable enough for long enough that they were going to let him out, but he’d have to spend the next cou-ple of weeks in bed.

Deal.

That Christmas Day there were no Christmas traditions.

I moved the telly from the living room and into the bedroom so we could watch stupid Christmas telly and Christmas films, Doctor Who, A Muppet Family Christmas (the superior Muppet Christmas film, don’t come for me), Batman Re-turns.

We lay in bed next to each other all day. I couldn’t be bothered to cook, so we ordered Christmas dinner from the local Chinese takeaway. We ate chicken curry from paper plates in bed.

It was the best Christmas I’ve ever had.

That Christmas Day there were no Christmas traditions, but we made some new ones.

We have Chinese food for Christmas dinner every year.