Our family Christmas was certainly noteworthy in at least one respect. Nine of us gathered together in a rented holiday house for the festivities, near a small village in Shropshire, chosen in order to reduce as much as possible the travelling time for so scattered a family. I admit that I was very nervous for several reasons about how well this might work. My greatest anxiety had to do with the possible consequences of the political situation in Britain coming up in conversation
I am well aware that several (perhaps most) of the group have quite strong views about politics in general, but more specially so about the question of British withdrawal from the European Union. Their opinions probably range across the entire possible spectrum, from passionate “remainers” to emphatic “leavers”, and on the basis of past experience several members of the family can be relied upon to express themselves pretty forcefully. Against this background I was having anticipatory visions of the entire Christmas holiday being consumed in argument, ending in a sense of exhausted relief when it was all over. It didn’t turn out like that.
It might well be the case that we had all sized up the situation and reached the same conclusion, as a consequence of which there was a tacit agreement to avoid at all costs this particular “elephant in the room”. So: in the event, Christmas turned out to be the season of peace and good-will. They do say that miracles can happen.
I gather that my wife takes a rather different view, and feels that we missed out on something potentially quite interesting. It has been said that some people feel that they have been born into the wrong age. As it happens, I have often felt that I would have been quite at home in Paris before the Great War. My wife, on the other hand, I reckon could possibly have enjoyed life as a Roman citizen, based on the evidence of her predilection for being a spectator of gladiatorial combat!